The "electric" share here includes plug-in hybrids which, if we're nitpicking, have an internal combustion engine.
Doesn't affect the overall conclusion as even if they were all hybrids the number of cars with internal combustion would still be lower.
I'm very, very bullish on EVs, they're going to take over the world rapidly but this graph isn't great support as you can't see the exponential rise very well and it's swamped by other data inluences.
Even in cities that are pretty hostile to bikes, electric bikes/scooters are an amazing middle point between walking and all the expense of a car (purchase, loans, fuel, maintenance, insurance, registration, tickets, etc.).
The problem with electric cars is that you're still taking a heavy metal box, a large storage chest, a couch, and two recliners with you whether you need them or not. That's always going to be a problem, no matter how well charging works.
That's part of it. I had a look in central London and I could sort of charge but the costs are very different too - something like £20k for a car whereas I got a used ebike for £180 and it's much quicker to get around on and you don't have the parking issues.
It’s not so much of a problem due to the average daily drive being a fraction of range. So long as you can charge at home, city life is fine for electric cars.
Most countries still do not mandate that new apartments include charging ports for parking spots. So densely-populated areas will still be plagued with non-EC compatible buildings for decades to come. That's what "city life" mean in several countries.
Cities shouldn't have to mandate carparks, let alone charging in them. Having no car at all should be viable and we should build toward that.
Pre-empting, obviously many places still require cars, but we shouldn't codify cars into the building code. It makes everything that bit more expensive, and it's a waste of valuable city real estate.
At the moment the cost per square meter in Melbourne and my city means a single carspace is worth more than my salary. That's ridiculous.
Electric self-driving taxis are going to be big in the medium-term. Or some other personal transportation method. Static routes and stations are not really up to the job.
(Edit: not that these necessarily need car parks, but they'll need to wait somewhere when they're not carrying passengers)
"Having no car at all should be viable and we should build toward that."
Yeah its sounds great until you need mass transport system to support this idea which means only mega cities can benefit the most when tier 2 and tier 3 cities is having a hard time investment
Densely populated areas shouldn't have surface-area-inefficient cars as a main mode of transportation at all! Good public transport and the other 2-wheel modes should do just fine, but of course those aren't as profitable.
Good public transport is the key part and I can tell that in most European cities, not the capitals that everyone visits when they say they have been on country XYZ only hanging on the city center without even venturing into the suburbs, that is quite far from where they were supposed to be.
Agreed, but they're not that complex to retrofit to a parking space. I can foresee a future where each space has a port and an account card reader - they'd make the buildings more valuable, the supplier to that space has a basically guaranteed income stream, and the government has an easy emissions reduction. Wins all round, so why wouldn't it happen?
The operator could demand an exclusivity contract from the landlord, provide faulty equipment, then charge high fees to repair it, eventually leading to many stalls non-functional until the contract is invalidated in court or the two parties settle, the chargers are ripped out, maybe with purposeful permanent damage to the wiring to make it unusable, and another mildly more honest provider comes in and does something slightly better but not by much.
Or, an enterprising landchad could realize they can charge 10% more kWh than people actually pull (blaming efficiency losses), along with a healthy margin for "maintenance".
Heck I can't plug my car in at home and it's still fine. I simply plan for the fact that I might spend 20 minutes here or there at the charger, at most once a week. Best case I do some grocery shopping, worst case I just sit in the car watching YouTube, either way is fine.
>It’s not so much of a problem due to the average daily drive being a fraction of range
Most people who own a car in cities in Europe also use it for long commutes to visit family in weekends or on holidays, often crossing borders. Range is then a problem since most families can afford only one car so edge cases matter. Maybe the wealthy Benelux and Scandinavia have top EV charring infrastructure but a lot of central, eastern and southern Europe is lacking.
We're thinking of switching to an EV, and we're basically one of the anti-examples that people like to use. Central Europe (Prague), we live in an apartment, we park our one and only car on the street, no street charging options anywhere. I don't commute to work daily and my neither my nor my wife's workplace has chargers.
But it turns out that the Lidl that we go to has a charger, there are like 10 chargers on the 110 km trip to our families (and they both live in houses with driveways, so "granny charging" is available). Our last two holiday stays were in hotels that had chargers.
Just looking at the options, it doesn't seem like range will be a factor at all. And we're actually looking at cheap cars with 50 kWh batteries, not even the current high end.
It is the 1% or 10% case. Like for me going to bigger airport. Renting a car would be complete waste for it to sit a week there. And for range I would want something that can get me there in one go and back also in one go, with week of sitting idle. As adding extra 30 minutes to 1h travel time on top of all time it takes is less than ideal living. And public transport would add even more time or less flexibility those types of trips.
Also there is some possibility that there is no power at for example summer home...
For me it is only the visiting family use case, where rental doesn't make sense. We have car sharing in the city (Miles) which fixes almost all use cases. Driving to the airport only when without kids, as they both still need car seats, that I can't leave. Otherwise car sharing rental is perfect to get to the airport.
Not based on where I live. Many people I know routinely drive hundreds of KM on a weekly basis to their families and renting a car for that doesn't makes sense.
The Hyundai Ioniq 6 has a range of over 500 km, and typical 20-80% charging times are around 20 minutes. Where in Europe can you drive 350 km and not pass a single charger?
Where did I say there are no chargers? Charging on long trips increases the time of the journey by a lot. And many EU drivers don't have money for a new Ioniq 6.
Or get rid of parking lots and build other infrastructure. Solar roofing is quite expensive and it is also much easier to do on an existing building which requires less investment.(Thus is done first). I've seen some happen but only as trail-by-subsidization or because the owner didn't care about the cost.
As anecdotal example: My diy ebike will do about 80km unassisted (aka peddling for show) with .85kwh. Looking at what scooter should be able to do when not going too fast is a big order of magnitude (but not two) in kwh/100k. Though headwind is going to matter more on a bike/scooter than a car. I guess with a more efficient motor you could get up to two.
This is also a big problem for multi-modal commuting. Do I really want to lock up my bike in a location that screams 'the owner won't be back for 9 hours', knowing police won't investigate bike theft?
I know this is not a very helpful w.r.t. protection, however there is https://bikeindex.org/ - recently I was listening to a Darknet diaries podcast https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/153/ which has a nice story about stolen bikes and what to do about it.
If all those e-scooter rental startups can have remote GPS tracking and theft alarms then it really shouldn't take much to implement that into personal ones too. I mean people leave those things absolutely everywhere and they never get rightfully stolen.
A 4G modem would probably be overkill, but one might be able to do it for free with lorawan. Or alternatively a big label saying "this bike is GPS tracked" with absolutely no extra hardware at all and hope that bike thieves are dumb fucks.
It doesn’t have to be drunks. I know plenty of people who, if they’re forced to move hire bikes left blocking the pavement, will do so carelessly as a matter of principle.
I got a cargo e-bike (Aventon Abound) and I have a cafe lock and a chain lock. Luckily the bike doesn't look "cool" so I am less worried about thieves. It's also quite heavy so the cafe lock is almost always enough. If I am leaving it downtown for hours then I also use the heavy duty chain.
I get around on an acoustic bike, but have a lot of friends with e-bikes. I believe this is extremely locale-dependent. For instance there's relatively little bike theft in my locale, except around the university where it's just really easy pickings.
I think you can learn a lot by looking at how bikes -- acoustic and electric -- are already being parked and locked in your district. For instance my daughter is attending grad school in a big city, and while we were walking around, I noticed that the most decrepit old bikes were secured with giant U-locks plus chains. Hmmm. So my daughter rides a bike of similar ilk, and secures it in a similar fashion.
And I noticed the most beastly of chains and locks in New York City.
Plus, people generally seem to prefer e-bikes where they can take the battery pack with them.
Not even an insider joke, everyone knows what an acoustic and electric guitar is. and funny is subjective, I had a good chuckle and will use the terminology now
I've been getting around on acoustic bikes for 35 years. 7 of them have been stolen in that time, yet still I've saved tens of thousands of dollars relative to the cost of relying on public transit, and hundreds of thousands of dollars relative to the cost of buying and operating a motor vehicle.
I typically use a heavy cargo bike. I only use its built in front wheel lock, it's so heavy, it can't be easily stolen, so I never lock it against posts and such.
I always lock and secure my road bike against street furniture, though.
I don't. Theft risk and storage is definitely a challenge. A lot of commuters find somewhere to stash them at work. The problem might get better as ebikes become more common and lower in price.
Yes, but 10-15 kg is still comparable to a regular bike or a heavy bag of groceries. I rode a 19 kg one (50 km range, street legal), carrying it up to the third floor at work wasn't a problem.
Consider an electric unicycle (EUC). It's much more compact, so you can easily bring it into shops and other buildings, as well as it's much less troublesome when you use public transport (most models can be easily kept between your legs).
From the safety point of view it's not as bad as it seems on the first glance, especially if you don't plan riding on it faster than 20-30 km/h.
Note that electric bikes/scooters get approximately zero consideration from cars. I was traveling in a bike lane last year and a truck just turned right into me. I easily could have died if not for my helmet. (Which received a glowing 5-star review for that performance, btw.)
The tech itself is sound but there appears to be some unresolved issues around sound ridership practices that could be addressed. E-scooters were introduced locally a few years ago by a couple of rental ap companies and attitudes of local drivers have shifted to naked hostility in response to users flagrant disregard for both traffic laws and common sense. Understand I make no effort to excuse the behavior of motorists which varies on a spectrum from negligent to actively homicidal depending on how badly traffic is being impeded. The reality of the situation is pretty resistant to high-minded ideals however and choosing these modes of transportation in many metro areas is intentionally putting yourself at risk.
Nope. Is as horrible as it gets. They silently swing by the pedestrians with over 20mph, many drive drunk or don't know/avoid traffic rules and there is 0 enforcement. And if you get hit by them good luck getting compensated for your hospital bills.
Scooters should ride on the road. There is huge backlash in the Netherlands on the growing amount of scooters and especially fat bikes [1] riding on the bicycle paths, often ignoring speed limits and increasing risks by 10x.
The conversation really should be centered on “normal” e-bikes with light pedal assist, but these monsters are imported at extremely cheap prices and becomes first choice for teenagers and anyone on a budget.
[1] low-rider bikes with very wide tires, basically an electric motorcycle where you barely have to pedal
The damages caused by small electric vehicle users is not material when put into the context of all vehicular violence, where cars overwhelmingly dominate.
Exactly. They are a scourge. My best friend’s son had facial reconstructive surgery due to a scooter crash and a coworker’s son broke his arm, quite a bad break.
I've ridden many thousands of kilometers on all kinds of regular bikes, e-bikes, e-scooters (of the small-wheels kind), electrified kickbikes (of the big-front-wheel kind) and actual scooters (of the vespa kind) and it all feels roughly the same to me. If you're an idiot who couldn't be bothered to learn how to ride $vehicle, you will likely crash $vehicle.
The issue is that e-scooters (of the small-wheels kind) are nowadays the weapon of choice of idiots who don't take riding seriously — because they're the cheapest and most portable solution that doesn't require any energy expenditure (unlike a bike) or special skill (unlike a onewheel or similar).
I think that combustion engines will make a come back, and we're at a false peak. I believe that due to a poor economic outlook, we see more people purchasing from the used-car market than new vehicles. I personally have seen a recent boom in the UK for road-worthy vehicles under £5k. On the other hand, I have seen used EVs completely unsellable, to the point where forecourts refuse to accept them as part-exchange.
If you see the breakdown graph [1], the likes of Norway is about to peak at 100%. The UK, US and EU are already becoming saturated, and China have saturated their internal markets and now face export tariffs to other significant markets to prevent dumping. The largest driving forces for this trend are essentially saturated.
Just in the EU for example we see that energy prices continue to increase per kWh [2], further reducing the "low cost benefit" of electricity that EVs previously enjoyed. We also see governments beginning to realise that they miss out on vehicle tax for EVs due to incentives, and such benefits begin to be withheld [3].
As the global economy continues to slow, I expect to see EVs and any green agenda items decrease in popularity, and a return to combustion engines and other policies with higher economic growth.
It is very strange to see a grayed out comment on top of a thread that has about 160 non-grayed out comments. I thought that highest rated comments go to the top and grayed out comments are rated below zero.
Regarding your points. First the thing about used evs not selling has more to do with the rapid pace of innovation of evs rather than lack of demand. In the 90s it was very difficult to sell a used PC because PCs improved so quickly. That did not mean that PCs were not doing well, in fact PC sales were growing exponentially. And evs do improve fast.
Your second point is silly. Basically you are saying that EVs are doomed because EVs are already selling too much. Thats like the old joke that nobody goes to this restaurant anymore because it is too crowded.
Your third point is about rising electricity costs. That sucks for sure, but electricity costs tend to rise together with gasoline costs. It will be very difficult for those two to diverge so that a gas car all of a sudden becomes more economical. The fact that one can make electricity out of oil and oil products tends to mean that electricity costs will not rise very much in comparison to gasoline costs in a short period of time.
In the long run, society goes to 100% electric transportation due to global warming. Any analysis that treats this as a simple matter of consumer choice is going to miss the biggest driver of adoption.
Maybe some alternate carbon-neutral fuel for combustion is possible, but all the ones we’ve tried so far have lost out to electric.
As the sibling comment says: Ability to resell EVs is a problem. But that's mostly because you can get a new car today (i.e. deliverable and everything) for the same price as an older EV and likely the new car is even better (larger battery, faster charging). That's unfortunate for first adopters and is a significant problem for adaption in lower-income circles (those typically buying second hand), but not a reason for going back to gasoline cars.
At least here in Germany we are rapidly approaching the point where we will require power sinks in order to absorb solar around noon. And EVs are extremely well-positioned for that. Typically the charging time can be shifted around a bit and charging stations will come with their own buffer stage. That means that most people won't pay anywhere near the normal sticker price for electricity for their cars.
All that being said: I agree that "green agenda items" will decrease in popularity (or really: they weren't that popular to begin with). But EVs in particular are just straight up cheaper. If not by construction, then definitely by the air pollution reduction interest of the Chinese government. I'd be highly surprised if incentive reduction has more than a delaying effect, if even that
If this graph is the evidence for "Global sales of combustion engine cars have peaked" isn't it also the evidence proving "global car sales have peaked"?
It does not get into the "why", but I realize that is hard to determine.
My question is, are these sales for brand new cars or does it include used cars also ?
I know my days of buying brand new ended years ago due to how expensive new cars are. My current car (bought used) is from 2007 and if I have to buy another, it will be used.
So I have to wonder, are people avoiding buying new due to the expense. That could point to a reason. Would be interesting to see charts based upon Country or group of countries.
When those people get richer they'll want to drive. We see this all over the developing world. The growth might be less than the growth in mass transit but as populations become richer they become more mobile so the absolute demand will likely increase.
Certainly not all estimates, right? We can certainly suppose different scenarios, with a large specter from humanity total disappearance to discovery of star gates technology opening plenty of inhabitable world without any actual alien threat existing in the outerspace. Also there can be wide gap in evolution from one government influence zone to an other, even at very small region scale — think Haiti and The Dominican Republic.
Yes. And it works (well enough) because at speed the chunk of air it forces up mixes with the air above the bike (that the rider would otherwise hit with their face) and disturbs it so the rider experiences something more a akin to riding in a pickup bed than to sticking their head out a sunroof.
Looks good for belting about a city on, where I am (rural Australian town) I'm happy with walking or a scooter for local travel .. an 80 mile range just gets me to the nearest town and back with little reserve.
A 150 mile range would be better .. that'll come I guess.
FWiW I rode the BMW R650 (light road bike) for a decade and had a GS 1250 with long range tanks for road|off road trips.
The phone snatchers at least in the UK prefer souped up e-bikes rather than e-motorcycles. That thing the police would stop you if you didn't have a number plate.
Downhill = good, momentum is unstoppable, nothing stops the electrification transition, we’re simply arguing time horizon now; China will be the clean energy and mobility manufacturer to the world.
(50% of car sales in China in 2024 were battery electric or plug in hybrid)
I feel most people still don't realize that China is facing a demographic crisis. If their demographics matched the United States sure, but its unlikely china will be leading many of these future technological situations. Don't take me the wrong way, they have a great opportunity in front of them but just the resources required to take care of their elderly is going to suck up a pretty hefty amount of resources.
More industrial robots are built and sold in China than anywhere else in the world. This is an intentional choice, the government knows their working age population is shrinking. They will race to automation before their demographic dividend is finished paying out.
To note, the US has no robotics foundries, and already is experiencing labor shortages today.
Unfortunately, the US would rather subject its consumers to legacy auto and Tesla prices and lack of competition vs enabling imports to drive down domestic prices to improve affordability. Poor policy is unfortunate.
And with the rest of the world covering to electric, we can expect negative economies of scale alongside the financial problems of economic contraction for combustion car makers.
The coal companies started going bankrupt long before the end of coal. (hell it's still not over...) Simply because investors could see that it's a shrinking industry, making it impossible to get financing for new plants, mines, etc.
I terminated my in process application to import the vehicle from my property outside of the US for two reasons: I no longer intend to maintain majority residency in the US for the foreseeable future (obvious reasons), and the US government is effectively banning Chinese EVs in the US [1].
Was fun to make the attempt, but sometimes city hall wins. It turns out it is easier to expat than to import a Chinese car.
As of tomorrow morning the US has declared war on its legacy domestic auto industry, too. Take a look at GM's stock. Trump was warned there would be plant closures if tariffs were enacted but he went ahead anyways. Doesn't show much of a preference or concern for those industries at all.
But sure, maybe Tesla. Though I suspect they use parts from Magna etc on this side of the border, too.
Can I just ask - forgive the potential ignorance - if EVs have been proven to be less net carbon emitting with their manufacturing and expected disposal emissions factored in?
Yes. There are many myths spread around by the fossil lobby and, as always, there is a grain of truth in every myth, that's why they are so hard to debunk.
EVs have an initial higher carbon footprint after production than ICE vehicles due to their battery.
However, the initial CO2 footprint is dwarfed when compared to the operational footprint of ICE vehicles. Takes a few years for the scale to tip in EVs favour, to which then there's a substantial difference.
> BNEF studied the US, Chinese, Germany, UK and Japanese markets. It determined the lifecycle CO2 emissions of a medium-size BEV manufactured in 2023 and driven for 250,000km would be 27-71 per cent lower than those of equivalent ICE vehicles.
Another important factor is that emissions are highly dependent on what you're burning to power the grid. As electrification intensifies those effects become even more pronounced. In 15 years or so I imagine most countries with sane leadership will be mostly running on renewables & nuclear.
> In 15 years or so I imagine most countries with sane leadership will be mostly running on renewables & nuclear.
I think it's good to mention that in Europe, 40% of all the electrical energy usage was renewable in 2024 [1]. This number is higher than it was in 2023, and will increase again in 2025 due to many new solar, wind, and battery installations.
In the US, 19% of all the electrical energy was produced by renewables and 20% by nuclear [2].
> BEV manufactured in 2023 and driven for 250,000km would be 27-71 per cent lower than those of equivalent ICE vehicles.
(Disclaimer: I know little about cars ...)
My country, New Zealand, is awash with new BEV brands, some also offering ICE, from China and South East Asia. Compared with traditional SEA manufacturers (Japan, Korea) that supply most of our new cars, the prices are apparently ridiculously competitive and packed full of premium features.
It feels like I see a new brand advertised every couple of months. Four new brands were introduced late last year [1] One of whose SSL cert expired a couple of weeks ago and still has not been renewed.
The question is will these low cost EVs last 250,000km? I don't think the batteries will.
Are there well known SEA car manufacturers, or exporters? Proton of Malaysia is (or was?) probably the biggest, they owned the legendary Lotus brand at one point.
> The question is will these low cost EVs last 250,000km? I don't think the batteries will.
> Why do you think the batteries won’t?
I was commenting on low-cost EV. I don't know but I think its likely that given the following (maybe incorrect) assumption:
1. Cheap EVs use cheaper lower-quality cells to keep costs down.
2. Cheap EVs use battery tech that maximises range and performance at the expense of longevity, which would be cheaper than both maximising range and performance AND longevity.
3. Cheap EVs save money with worse cooling of the batteries.
I could be wrong on both points.
There are plenty of stories of EV batteries having low deterioration despite high KMs. But I am not sure these are usually old EVs, just EVs driven a lot.
Lithium batteries experience cyclic degradation (degradation when charged) and degradation over time (calendar degradation). We have yet to see how multiple decades effects them.
This NZ govt. report is an excellent resource [1]. It cites this paper [2] where they charted Nissan Leaf battery deterioration over time under various conditions.
Here in NZ, I looked at our post popular used-car website and 9 year old Leafs (2015 model) which had done 90-100,000km had lost 25-32% of battery capacity. There is not much data for earlier leafs.
Yeah, that’s a bad assumption. Cheap EVs tend to use chemistries with a poor energy to weight ratio, but those chemistries are relatively long lasting (in particular see LFP). I’d bet on a cheap electric car made today lasting longer than a high end one 5 years ago for this reason.
Some brands (in particular Tesla has done this) even use LFP in low-end versions of a single model, and NMC in high end.
It's also worth considering that EVs & battery technology are evolving and over time the impacts from build, use and disposal will most probably lessen. If you start with the industrial revolution, the fossil fuel industry had a couple of centuries and the ICE vehicle industry had about 100 years before they even had to think about the environmental effects of their actions and come up with solutions. The battery industry is really only just getting started and already environmental impact of the full life cycle is a significant consideration and a budding industry in itself.
Of course it is. The campaigning for fossil fuels is very sneaky and uses great talking points. There is always a grain of truth to every such talking point, so they are very difficult to debunk and discuss.
Some of it’s probably genuine. The oil industry has been pushing this particular lie in various forms for about half a century (comically, it’s a claim that they would sometimes make about _nuclear power plants_), and it has sunk deep into the culture.
Even that's a pretty conservative estimate these days. It's typically less, ~11,000m (18,000km) and the balance keeps shifting in EVs favour over time as the grid becomes more renewables based...
https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-21-misleading-myths-ab...
In my city you cannot charge your car inside the underground garage. No one will build the required facility to ease electric car fire extinguishing. Therefore the buildings will default to deny.
That's incredibly short-sighted, not least because the number of fires per vehicle is orders of magnitude higher for combustion vehicles. I'd be astonished if that made actuarial sense if actually investigated.
I've seen and used underground car chargers in multiple European cities. They're definitely viable.
Also, with time, we can make effort to decarbonize the production chain of EVs. With ICE vehicles, they reject carbon and there are only so many micro-adjustments we can do.
EVs have heavier batteries and ICEs have heavier engines and drivetrains. Go compare two similar models at most brands and the curb weight will be within 50-100kg. Add in a full tank of gas to the ICE and the will likely weigh about the same.
"Mandate" how? Unless they're doing expensive mandatory periodic inspections nothing is stopping me from plugging my EVSE into an outlet meant for a welder, dryer, pool pump, etc.
And can always charge L1 120v, even if it's unbearably slow.
Most people will have an electrician install a charging station. Sure, some people will dodge it, as they already dodge other building code requirements.
Or, they can just tax the car based on some average mileage statistics. That's what my state does. Registering an EV is substantially more expensive than an ICE vehicle.
We bought a used EV, and I ran the numbers vs. a 20mpg car.
The EV will pay for itself in saved gasoline after about 53K miles.
That’s not breakeven time; that’s “the car is free” time.
Breakeven was less than half that long because the old ICE car would have had non-zero depreciation.
Apples-to-apples break even would have been 10-20K miles (ignoring free charging at work), but it ended up being closer to 300 miles. Thanks to a fuel crisis, the price of the EV increased by $5K shortly after I bought it. (It’s back down now.)
Hertz forced me to take a Kia Niro EV as my rental. "We have no other vehicles left, it is a higher class vehicle than the compact you reserved". Like hell it was! Never again!
I had plans that involved driving 8 hours each way. Electrify America chargers were all broken. Luckily, CircleK chargers "worked", slowly. An hour and 30 min to go from 10% to 90%. Had to charge twice each way. Time I will never get back.
After this experience, I talked to Hertz. There is evidently no way to note "no EV ever" on a reservation. I am avoiding hertz from now on (and dollar/thrifty that they own). Enterprise allows you to note "NO EV" on a rental reservation, and honors it.
Until EVs can charge at every corner and in 3 minutes, no thanks! I have places to be, and those places are not "90 minutes on a deserted CircleK parking lot"
EVs should definitely not be rentals, especially in countries with poor charging infrastructure. The use cases between renting and daily ownership are vastly different and EVs simply don't suit most rental use cases. I see quite a lot of understandable anti-EV comments due to rentals but it's rare to find an EV owner who goes back to ICE. EVs don't need to charge in 3 minutes, they need to charge where you park them, which is easy for owners but very difficult for a short term renter.
Yeap, EVs are great when you can charge at home and your journeys are all short enough to return home each night to recharge.
This is what I do. Love it. Never ever going back to ICE.
Those very few times I have to make longer journeys and need to charge? Have found a few fast chargers on routes I take that I try and use, but its majorly inconvenient and stressful compared to ICE. A big downside.
So great for being our personal car for local journeys. Bad for long journeys.
I deliberately rented a Kia Niro EV on my last work trip for the novelty of driving an electric car since probably 2016. I even insisted when they tried to switch me to another vehicle.
Boy, it sucked. Even with a Type 2 charger at work, and maybe 2 miles between the office and my hotel, charging was a huge hassle. And with an ICE vehicle I can refuel before dropping it back off at the airport in about 5 minutes. It's just not practical to recharge my EV after driving 1.5 hours to catch my flight.
The only other noteworthy experience was making an adjustment in a parking space and having 2 or 3 alarms going off concurrently without any indication of what they meant. (Excluding the proximity sensor, if memory serves.)
I think you don't want to see it, but if you were willing to do so, here's the point: each usage is different! Each way a person uses a car has different consequences and implications.
My charging takes less than 1 minute, really. I arrive at home at 4:30, it takes 20 seconds to plug the car and then 20 more seconds to unplug it the next morning.
And what about all the 12 hours between that? Well, I am living my life, I am not charging a car! The car is doing the whole work of charging itself, alone.
That's several orders of magnitude better than going to a gas station.
This is great news. Of course new car purchases are a leading indicator of the overall makeup of cars. And people might be buying fewer cars if their old ones last longer.
I am also very hesitant on buying an EV. Next to spyware - which is also a problem on my phone, I struggle more with the problem of having a built-in obsolescence.
Any device with a dependence on an App, iOS is sooner or later going to force you to buy something new.
I love working and riding 20-30year old bicycles, sailboats, or even an old Toyota Jeep. Less dependency on software compatibility.
"ice car engines peaked?" likely wrong
there is no charging infrastructur, and no way to retrofit into housing on a mass scale that will deal with the threat of a whole apartment building
parking garage going up in flames, resulting in mass casualties.
So until there are non flamable solid state batteries at the right price point, electrificationof the transport grid will stall, while demand for mobility will continue to increase, and ICE cars may very well keep or gain market share still.
How long, until it becomes illegal to come up with these feel-good mood-affiliation "reports" that paint Plug-In Hybrids (i.e. combustion-engines equipped with a supportive battery) as Electric Vehicles?
Many of those plugins will almost never use their combustion engine. Particularly in western Europe where most of these are selling, the average person doesn’t drive far enough per day to exhaust the battery.
So it’s not just feel-good, it’s a real impact.
That said, I don’t think that’s what this report is doing?
Those are massive SUV-type things with apparently rather weak engines (ie almost light hybrids, but with a plug); the typical plugin hybrid is a fair bit smaller. And has a bigger battery; the Mitsubishi Outlander mentioned had a 12kWh battery, vs, say, a plug-in Prius, a much smaller car with a 14kWh battery,
Many plugin hybrids only need to use their petrol engine when they actually run out of power. I would wonder if whoever came up with the above study was deliberately looking for a worst case scenario, tbh; they didn't include any small/normal-sized cars at all (everything they mention is over two tonnes), even though the _average_/most typical plugin hybrid car is probably some sort of smallish hatchback.
(Even then, though, I'm curious what conditions they're testing under. I know someone who has a BMW 5-series plugin hybrid saloon, which is a close relative of the X5 mentioned, albeit a bit lighter and more aerodynamic, and it operates pretty much entirely on battery when charged.)
It's all because of the crazy regulations and insane taxes that normal people have to pay in order to own a car, and not a refrigerator on wheels, that's the gist of it.
Basically the laptop classes (all actual or wannabe EV-owners) have started revolting against the fact that they have to inhale cancer-igneous fumes on their way to their yoga classes, and this is the result of that.
Probably looking at total vehicles on the road would be more useful. Maybe cars got a lot more reliable 20 years ago, and so there are a lot more cars still kicking from the early 2000s which would have been scrapped in the past.
that's another problem - inequality in the global value chain,
China is the most important growth market for passenger vehicles for last 20+ years, this is because of China's continuous industrial upgrading, which has gradually shifted from manufacturing low value-added products (such as jeans) to producing high value-added products (such as passenger vehicles).
this brings '10s of millions of newly middle class consumers', same thing happened in Japan/Korea/Taiwan too
but now, china produced 30 million cars (12m evs) in 2024, which means China's passenger vehicle market will quickly approach saturation, even if all Chinese families purchase or replace new vehicles
btw, '10s of millions newly consumers' is a relatively small number
and there will be no other markets with '10s of millions of newly middle class consumers' unless other countries can accompolish industrial upgrading like China's did
and if these countries(India/indonesia/Vietnam) manage to do so, their industrial upgrading will intensify this competition just like what happened in China now
Maybe that's true, but maybe the average cost of a new car in Asia is quite a bit lower, so the overall effect is still declining total overall sales (measured in USD)?
Here's a fascinating video about a city in China that's full of cute electric cars that cost less than $5000 USD each:
Seems unlikely that we'll ever totally move away from combustion engines, simply due to sunk costs plus the advantages of energy density and quick refilling. I expect we'll see net-zero carbon emission gasoline and other hydrocarbons sold at the pump within the next few decades, produced with either solar or nuclear energy:
Compressed natural gas (methane) is even easier to synthesize from the raw ingredients than gasoline or diesel fuels. It's used today in many city buses, fleet vehicles, and private cars in certain parts of the world:
Such fuels could become less attractive if we invent lighter, cheaper, and much faster-charging batteries than the current state of the art, but I'm not holding my breath.
CNG/LNG have been around for a while and are yesterday's future. Synthetic zero carbon fuel simply loses too much in conversion to be economic, compared to direct EV. I think China is in the process of demonstrating what the transition looks like.
There will probably be a rump of difficult to convert use cases and long lives specialty vehicles. I imagine tractors will be the last holdout. And military uses.
The "electric" share here includes plug-in hybrids which, if we're nitpicking, have an internal combustion engine.
Doesn't affect the overall conclusion as even if they were all hybrids the number of cars with internal combustion would still be lower.
I'm very, very bullish on EVs, they're going to take over the world rapidly but this graph isn't great support as you can't see the exponential rise very well and it's swamped by other data inluences.
Even in cities that are pretty hostile to bikes, electric bikes/scooters are an amazing middle point between walking and all the expense of a car (purchase, loans, fuel, maintenance, insurance, registration, tickets, etc.).
Yup, order of magnitude more electric micromobility vehicles than electric cars:
https://theconversation.com/the-worlds-280-million-electric-...
The problem with electric cars is charging infrastructure in cites. An electric bike or scooter can be brought indoors to charge.
The problem with electric cars is that you're still taking a heavy metal box, a large storage chest, a couch, and two recliners with you whether you need them or not. That's always going to be a problem, no matter how well charging works.
That's part of it. I had a look in central London and I could sort of charge but the costs are very different too - something like £20k for a car whereas I got a used ebike for £180 and it's much quicker to get around on and you don't have the parking issues.
It’s not so much of a problem due to the average daily drive being a fraction of range. So long as you can charge at home, city life is fine for electric cars.
Most countries still do not mandate that new apartments include charging ports for parking spots. So densely-populated areas will still be plagued with non-EC compatible buildings for decades to come. That's what "city life" mean in several countries.
Cities shouldn't have to mandate carparks, let alone charging in them. Having no car at all should be viable and we should build toward that.
Pre-empting, obviously many places still require cars, but we shouldn't codify cars into the building code. It makes everything that bit more expensive, and it's a waste of valuable city real estate.
At the moment the cost per square meter in Melbourne and my city means a single carspace is worth more than my salary. That's ridiculous.
Electric self-driving taxis are going to be big in the medium-term. Or some other personal transportation method. Static routes and stations are not really up to the job.
(Edit: not that these necessarily need car parks, but they'll need to wait somewhere when they're not carrying passengers)
"Having no car at all should be viable and we should build toward that."
Yeah its sounds great until you need mass transport system to support this idea which means only mega cities can benefit the most when tier 2 and tier 3 cities is having a hard time investment
see: japan
Densely populated areas shouldn't have surface-area-inefficient cars as a main mode of transportation at all! Good public transport and the other 2-wheel modes should do just fine, but of course those aren't as profitable.
Good public transport is the key part and I can tell that in most European cities, not the capitals that everyone visits when they say they have been on country XYZ only hanging on the city center without even venturing into the suburbs, that is quite far from where they were supposed to be.
Agreed, but they're not that complex to retrofit to a parking space. I can foresee a future where each space has a port and an account card reader - they'd make the buildings more valuable, the supplier to that space has a basically guaranteed income stream, and the government has an easy emissions reduction. Wins all round, so why wouldn't it happen?
The operator could demand an exclusivity contract from the landlord, provide faulty equipment, then charge high fees to repair it, eventually leading to many stalls non-functional until the contract is invalidated in court or the two parties settle, the chargers are ripped out, maybe with purposeful permanent damage to the wiring to make it unusable, and another mildly more honest provider comes in and does something slightly better but not by much.
Or, an enterprising landchad could realize they can charge 10% more kWh than people actually pull (blaming efficiency losses), along with a healthy margin for "maintenance".
Lots can go wrong.
Heck I can't plug my car in at home and it's still fine. I simply plan for the fact that I might spend 20 minutes here or there at the charger, at most once a week. Best case I do some grocery shopping, worst case I just sit in the car watching YouTube, either way is fine.
Maybe if you live in suburban single family house, but not if you live “in cities”.
>It’s not so much of a problem due to the average daily drive being a fraction of range
Most people who own a car in cities in Europe also use it for long commutes to visit family in weekends or on holidays, often crossing borders. Range is then a problem since most families can afford only one car so edge cases matter. Maybe the wealthy Benelux and Scandinavia have top EV charring infrastructure but a lot of central, eastern and southern Europe is lacking.
We're thinking of switching to an EV, and we're basically one of the anti-examples that people like to use. Central Europe (Prague), we live in an apartment, we park our one and only car on the street, no street charging options anywhere. I don't commute to work daily and my neither my nor my wife's workplace has chargers.
But it turns out that the Lidl that we go to has a charger, there are like 10 chargers on the 110 km trip to our families (and they both live in houses with driveways, so "granny charging" is available). Our last two holiday stays were in hotels that had chargers.
Just looking at the options, it doesn't seem like range will be a factor at all. And we're actually looking at cheap cars with 50 kWh batteries, not even the current high end.
It is the 1% or 10% case. Like for me going to bigger airport. Renting a car would be complete waste for it to sit a week there. And for range I would want something that can get me there in one go and back also in one go, with week of sitting idle. As adding extra 30 minutes to 1h travel time on top of all time it takes is less than ideal living. And public transport would add even more time or less flexibility those types of trips.
Also there is some possibility that there is no power at for example summer home...
For me it is only the visiting family use case, where rental doesn't make sense. We have car sharing in the city (Miles) which fixes almost all use cases. Driving to the airport only when without kids, as they both still need car seats, that I can't leave. Otherwise car sharing rental is perfect to get to the airport.
>It is the 1% or 10% case.
Not based on where I live. Many people I know routinely drive hundreds of KM on a weekly basis to their families and renting a car for that doesn't makes sense.
The Hyundai Ioniq 6 has a range of over 500 km, and typical 20-80% charging times are around 20 minutes. Where in Europe can you drive 350 km and not pass a single charger?
Where did I say there are no chargers? Charging on long trips increases the time of the journey by a lot. And many EU drivers don't have money for a new Ioniq 6.
Solar freakin' parking lot roofs.
Or get rid of parking lots and build other infrastructure. Solar roofing is quite expensive and it is also much easier to do on an existing building which requires less investment.(Thus is done first). I've seen some happen but only as trail-by-subsidization or because the owner didn't care about the cost.
Also an order of magnitude or two better for the climate than an electric car.
As anecdotal example: My diy ebike will do about 80km unassisted (aka peddling for show) with .85kwh. Looking at what scooter should be able to do when not going too fast is a big order of magnitude (but not two) in kwh/100k. Though headwind is going to matter more on a bike/scooter than a car. I guess with a more efficient motor you could get up to two.
I want an electric bike but I want to go places with it and I’m worried about it getting stolen when I lock it up outside a shop. Do you have one?
This is also a big problem for multi-modal commuting. Do I really want to lock up my bike in a location that screams 'the owner won't be back for 9 hours', knowing police won't investigate bike theft?
I know this is not a very helpful w.r.t. protection, however there is https://bikeindex.org/ - recently I was listening to a Darknet diaries podcast https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/153/ which has a nice story about stolen bikes and what to do about it.
If all those e-scooter rental startups can have remote GPS tracking and theft alarms then it really shouldn't take much to implement that into personal ones too. I mean people leave those things absolutely everywhere and they never get rightfully stolen.
A 4G modem would probably be overkill, but one might be able to do it for free with lorawan. Or alternatively a big label saying "this bike is GPS tracked" with absolutely no extra hardware at all and hope that bike thieves are dumb fucks.
Rental bikes use heavy, incompatible components so it’s pointless to steal them for resale, or to strip for parts. And they have a tracker.
My bike, on the other hand? A thief could just find and remove the tracker - or strip the bike for parts.
That advice might not travel well: until recently I lived in a city where the bike rental service pulled out because too many were thrown in canals.
Let me guess ... probably drunks so guess drinking culture. Maybe UK. Big city with enough canals for this to be an issue ... probably Birmingham?
It doesn’t have to be drunks. I know plenty of people who, if they’re forced to move hire bikes left blocking the pavement, will do so carelessly as a matter of principle.
Close, think more northern.
I got and old rusty one and put some paint on it so it's not very nickable. I leave it out at night but remove the battery.
I use normal D locks but are tempted to get an angle grinder resistant one although they are expensive - £150+.
I got a cargo e-bike (Aventon Abound) and I have a cafe lock and a chain lock. Luckily the bike doesn't look "cool" so I am less worried about thieves. It's also quite heavy so the cafe lock is almost always enough. If I am leaving it downtown for hours then I also use the heavy duty chain.
I have the same model, it’s so much fun to ride. Love the abound.
I get around on an acoustic bike, but have a lot of friends with e-bikes. I believe this is extremely locale-dependent. For instance there's relatively little bike theft in my locale, except around the university where it's just really easy pickings.
I think you can learn a lot by looking at how bikes -- acoustic and electric -- are already being parked and locked in your district. For instance my daughter is attending grad school in a big city, and while we were walking around, I noticed that the most decrepit old bikes were secured with giant U-locks plus chains. Hmmm. So my daughter rides a bike of similar ilk, and secures it in a similar fashion.
And I noticed the most beastly of chains and locks in New York City.
Plus, people generally seem to prefer e-bikes where they can take the battery pack with them.
TIL "acoustic bike" is a phrase
I like “analog bike” but it doesn’t make any sense either
It's not. It's an unfunny insider joke.
Not even an insider joke, everyone knows what an acoustic and electric guitar is. and funny is subjective, I had a good chuckle and will use the terminology now
Until you posted this I was non the wiser what an acoustic bike would be.
Same here, despite spending a decade of my life playing both acoustic and electric guitars.
Get with the program, hippie!
I do prefer acoustic versions of Route 66, On the Road Again, and King of the Road.
which are better listened to, in an acoustic transmission car
Its a completely hilarious distinguisher.
I find it charming and enjoy seeing it in the wild.
It is now!
oh come on, it made me chuckle
I've been getting around on acoustic bikes for 35 years. 7 of them have been stolen in that time, yet still I've saved tens of thousands of dollars relative to the cost of relying on public transit, and hundreds of thousands of dollars relative to the cost of buying and operating a motor vehicle.
Insurance on a 2000 EUR bike runs 10 bucks a month at the most.
I typically use a heavy cargo bike. I only use its built in front wheel lock, it's so heavy, it can't be easily stolen, so I never lock it against posts and such.
I always lock and secure my road bike against street furniture, though.
Consider a Hiplock D1000 (not affiliated)
I bought one for my expensive gravel and have been happy with it so far.
If it’s a short stop a “cafe lock” for back wheel is super convenient
Lean to buying/doing a conversion vs "polished" ebike.
Buy the best lock you can afford - it should be a grinder resistant one such as hiplok or litelok.
Note that while the lock may be resistant, the thing it's locked to may be easier to cut if the thief gets frustrated and has time to steal it.
Nothing will stop someone who has the time and batteries/discs from stealing your bike.
Motorcycle
I don't. Theft risk and storage is definitely a challenge. A lot of commuters find somewhere to stash them at work. The problem might get better as ebikes become more common and lower in price.
Unfortunately, I doubt that. Where in live, bike theft has been rampant for ages, even before electric models were a thing.
Insurance
I'm lookimg at a folding e scooter
I wish they were half as heavy with 1/4 the range. Lightest ones are still like 10kg+?
Yes, but 10-15 kg is still comparable to a regular bike or a heavy bag of groceries. I rode a 19 kg one (50 km range, street legal), carrying it up to the third floor at work wasn't a problem.
Consider an electric unicycle (EUC). It's much more compact, so you can easily bring it into shops and other buildings, as well as it's much less troublesome when you use public transport (most models can be easily kept between your legs).
From the safety point of view it's not as bad as it seems on the first glance, especially if you don't plan riding on it faster than 20-30 km/h.
Those must not be used on public roads in some countries though.
Note that electric bikes/scooters get approximately zero consideration from cars. I was traveling in a bike lane last year and a truck just turned right into me. I easily could have died if not for my helmet. (Which received a glowing 5-star review for that performance, btw.)
The tech itself is sound but there appears to be some unresolved issues around sound ridership practices that could be addressed. E-scooters were introduced locally a few years ago by a couple of rental ap companies and attitudes of local drivers have shifted to naked hostility in response to users flagrant disregard for both traffic laws and common sense. Understand I make no effort to excuse the behavior of motorists which varies on a spectrum from negligent to actively homicidal depending on how badly traffic is being impeded. The reality of the situation is pretty resistant to high-minded ideals however and choosing these modes of transportation in many metro areas is intentionally putting yourself at risk.
Nope. Is as horrible as it gets. They silently swing by the pedestrians with over 20mph, many drive drunk or don't know/avoid traffic rules and there is 0 enforcement. And if you get hit by them good luck getting compensated for your hospital bills.
Scooters should ride on the road. There is huge backlash in the Netherlands on the growing amount of scooters and especially fat bikes [1] riding on the bicycle paths, often ignoring speed limits and increasing risks by 10x.
The conversation really should be centered on “normal” e-bikes with light pedal assist, but these monsters are imported at extremely cheap prices and becomes first choice for teenagers and anyone on a budget.
[1] low-rider bikes with very wide tires, basically an electric motorcycle where you barely have to pedal
As horrible as the 41’000 that die year from cars in the US? Even after billions and billions are spent on their infrastructure?
How safe would cities with micro mobility be if we spent the same on them?
> As horrible as the 41’000 that die year from cars in the US?
and almost zero percent of that happens in cities.
59% in urban areas:
https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/Publication/8135...
The damages caused by small electric vehicle users is not material when put into the context of all vehicular violence, where cars overwhelmingly dominate.
Exactly. They are a scourge. My best friend’s son had facial reconstructive surgery due to a scooter crash and a coworker’s son broke his arm, quite a bad break.
Been there. It’s a hazard of biking in general. I love riding though.
There are fatal car crashes all the time.
But.. it wasn't the scooter's fault, was it?
Most motorbike deaths are human error, not the motorbike’s fault.
But nonetheless, many people fear motorbikes as they’re particularly human error prone.
e-scooters seem incredibly unsafe to me and I think the figures back that up. e-bikes are much more stable.
I've ridden many thousands of kilometers on all kinds of regular bikes, e-bikes, e-scooters (of the small-wheels kind), electrified kickbikes (of the big-front-wheel kind) and actual scooters (of the vespa kind) and it all feels roughly the same to me. If you're an idiot who couldn't be bothered to learn how to ride $vehicle, you will likely crash $vehicle.
The issue is that e-scooters (of the small-wheels kind) are nowadays the weapon of choice of idiots who don't take riding seriously — because they're the cheapest and most portable solution that doesn't require any energy expenditure (unlike a bike) or special skill (unlike a onewheel or similar).
I think that combustion engines will make a come back, and we're at a false peak. I believe that due to a poor economic outlook, we see more people purchasing from the used-car market than new vehicles. I personally have seen a recent boom in the UK for road-worthy vehicles under £5k. On the other hand, I have seen used EVs completely unsellable, to the point where forecourts refuse to accept them as part-exchange.
If you see the breakdown graph [1], the likes of Norway is about to peak at 100%. The UK, US and EU are already becoming saturated, and China have saturated their internal markets and now face export tariffs to other significant markets to prevent dumping. The largest driving forces for this trend are essentially saturated.
Just in the EU for example we see that energy prices continue to increase per kWh [2], further reducing the "low cost benefit" of electricity that EVs previously enjoyed. We also see governments beginning to realise that they miss out on vehicle tax for EVs due to incentives, and such benefits begin to be withheld [3].
As the global economy continues to slow, I expect to see EVs and any green agenda items decrease in popularity, and a return to combustion engines and other policies with higher economic growth.
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electric-car-sales-share
[2] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
[3] https://www.gov.uk/guidance/vehicle-tax-for-electric-and-low...
It is very strange to see a grayed out comment on top of a thread that has about 160 non-grayed out comments. I thought that highest rated comments go to the top and grayed out comments are rated below zero.
Regarding your points. First the thing about used evs not selling has more to do with the rapid pace of innovation of evs rather than lack of demand. In the 90s it was very difficult to sell a used PC because PCs improved so quickly. That did not mean that PCs were not doing well, in fact PC sales were growing exponentially. And evs do improve fast.
Your second point is silly. Basically you are saying that EVs are doomed because EVs are already selling too much. Thats like the old joke that nobody goes to this restaurant anymore because it is too crowded.
Your third point is about rising electricity costs. That sucks for sure, but electricity costs tend to rise together with gasoline costs. It will be very difficult for those two to diverge so that a gas car all of a sudden becomes more economical. The fact that one can make electricity out of oil and oil products tends to mean that electricity costs will not rise very much in comparison to gasoline costs in a short period of time.
In the long run, society goes to 100% electric transportation due to global warming. Any analysis that treats this as a simple matter of consumer choice is going to miss the biggest driver of adoption.
Maybe some alternate carbon-neutral fuel for combustion is possible, but all the ones we’ve tried so far have lost out to electric.
As the sibling comment says: Ability to resell EVs is a problem. But that's mostly because you can get a new car today (i.e. deliverable and everything) for the same price as an older EV and likely the new car is even better (larger battery, faster charging). That's unfortunate for first adopters and is a significant problem for adaption in lower-income circles (those typically buying second hand), but not a reason for going back to gasoline cars.
At least here in Germany we are rapidly approaching the point where we will require power sinks in order to absorb solar around noon. And EVs are extremely well-positioned for that. Typically the charging time can be shifted around a bit and charging stations will come with their own buffer stage. That means that most people won't pay anywhere near the normal sticker price for electricity for their cars.
All that being said: I agree that "green agenda items" will decrease in popularity (or really: they weren't that popular to begin with). But EVs in particular are just straight up cheaper. If not by construction, then definitely by the air pollution reduction interest of the Chinese government. I'd be highly surprised if incentive reduction has more than a delaying effect, if even that
If this graph is the evidence for "Global sales of combustion engine cars have peaked" isn't it also the evidence proving "global car sales have peaked"?
Maybe. Less clear evidence of that.
Total cars down by 5-6%, and lower than 6 of the previous 13 years.
Combustion cars down by 24%, and lower than 12 of the previous 13 years.
It does not get into the "why", but I realize that is hard to determine.
My question is, are these sales for brand new cars or does it include used cars also ?
I know my days of buying brand new ended years ago due to how expensive new cars are. My current car (bought used) is from 2007 and if I have to buy another, it will be used.
So I have to wonder, are people avoiding buying new due to the expense. That could point to a reason. Would be interesting to see charts based upon Country or group of countries.
Every used car was a new car at one point
Every scrapped car is a used car
I doubt total sales have peaked. Economic growth and population growth will likely keep that going up.
But EVs are eating enough market share that combustion cars are likely never climbing past their peak again.
Not everyone drives. If population growth is mostly in places where people bike/ebike/walk/train, then your assumption doesn’t hold.
When those people get richer they'll want to drive. We see this all over the developing world. The growth might be less than the growth in mass transit but as populations become richer they become more mobile so the absolute demand will likely increase.
> Economic growth and population growth will likely keep that going up.
What population growth?
About 70 million per year at the moment. Current estimates have world population peaking in 2080.
Certainly not all estimates, right? We can certainly suppose different scenarios, with a large specter from humanity total disappearance to discovery of star gates technology opening plenty of inhabitable world without any actual alien threat existing in the outerspace. Also there can be wide gap in evolution from one government influence zone to an other, even at very small region scale — think Haiti and The Dominican Republic.
https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/07/1151971
not necessarily, people in dense urban areas rely on other transportations at least in EU
EU is a tiny portion of the global population (as is America)
But you’re right, increasing urbanisation globally leads to more public transport which offsets countries getting richer.
Maybe, but not as strong. Combustion is down or flat every year since '16. Aggregate numbers haven't regained their peak, but are up and down.
This graph shows 2023 only.
Even in 2024 there were still some production issues coming out of the covid years. 2023 had lots of issues.
So it's unclear what's actually going to happen, if normal markets resume.
(At least in North America, the car manufacturing market will go bananas soon with new tariffs)
Presumably 2024 will also be bad due to interest rates. But, of course, that doesn't say anything about "real" demand.
This things is amazing.
https://www.bmwmotorcycles.com/en/models/urban_mobility/ce04...
It looks huge! How the hell do you commute on that thing? Can't imagine lane filtering on it.
Edit: 855mm wide, 1675mm wheelbase, weighs like a 1000cc adventure bike (clearly bottom-heavy, though). That's one Goldwing of a scooter.
The caption says:
European Model Shown. U.S. model only available with clear windscreen.
Is that the piece of orange plastic in front of the handlebar base, that they are calling a "windscreen"?
Yes. And it works (well enough) because at speed the chunk of air it forces up mixes with the air above the bike (that the rider would otherwise hit with their face) and disturbs it so the rider experiences something more a akin to riding in a pickup bed than to sticking their head out a sunroof.
Shows promise, yes.
Looks good for belting about a city on, where I am (rural Australian town) I'm happy with walking or a scooter for local travel .. an 80 mile range just gets me to the nearest town and back with little reserve.
A 150 mile range would be better .. that'll come I guess.
FWiW I rode the BMW R650 (light road bike) for a decade and had a GS 1250 with long range tanks for road|off road trips.
That looks perfect for phone snatchers.
The phone snatchers at least in the UK prefer souped up e-bikes rather than e-motorcycles. That thing the police would stop you if you didn't have a number plate.
Also cycling on the pavement where the snatching occurs is more acceptable on an e-bike, even though it's illegal even for a pedal bike.
The police should still be stopping those bikes as they don't meet the legal definition of EAPC and so require a licence plate. Not that they do.
$12K for a very limited use vehicle that has an 80 mile range. Good luck with that.
Its zero-sixty time is 2.6 seconds. That ties the fastest thing here:
https://www.zeroto60times.com/body-style/motorcycle/fast-slo...?
Which has an MSRP of $20K.
I suspect the BMW will sell extremely well.
The BMW links says zero to 30 mph in 2.6
Not bad but it's not zero to 60 mph in 2.6
Historical event. It’s all downhill from here.
Related:
Tracking global data on electric vehicles - https://ourworldindata.org/electric-car-sales
Great data, I wish it was updated for 2024. I think that article will come soon given that current data was from February of 2024 (for 2023 data).
I follow this. Might not be entirely correct for some countries but is as up to date as possible:
https://robbieandrew.github.io/carsales/
Nonsense, China's future is looking brighter by the day!
But I repeat myself, apologies to Twain
Downhill = good, momentum is unstoppable, nothing stops the electrification transition, we’re simply arguing time horizon now; China will be the clean energy and mobility manufacturer to the world.
(50% of car sales in China in 2024 were battery electric or plug in hybrid)
I feel most people still don't realize that China is facing a demographic crisis. If their demographics matched the United States sure, but its unlikely china will be leading many of these future technological situations. Don't take me the wrong way, they have a great opportunity in front of them but just the resources required to take care of their elderly is going to suck up a pretty hefty amount of resources.
The whole developed world is facing a demographic crisis. The US brith rate is expected to fall below replacement levels in 2033.
https://apnews.com/article/population-projections-congressio...
More industrial robots are built and sold in China than anywhere else in the world. This is an intentional choice, the government knows their working age population is shrinking. They will race to automation before their demographic dividend is finished paying out.
To note, the US has no robotics foundries, and already is experiencing labor shortages today.
https://itif.org/publications/2024/03/11/how-innovative-is-c...
China is also authoritarian, has central planning, and deliberately had a one-child policy for a while to prevent the opposite problem.
I'm not saying this would be a pleasant or fun experience for those involved, but I am saying I wouldn't bet against China even on demographics.
If US allows these cheap electric cars for at least 2-3 years, I would say it would be great for everybody except car companies and Elon.
Unfortunately, the US would rather subject its consumers to legacy auto and Tesla prices and lack of competition vs enabling imports to drive down domestic prices to improve affordability. Poor policy is unfortunate.
And with the rest of the world covering to electric, we can expect negative economies of scale alongside the financial problems of economic contraction for combustion car makers.
The coal companies started going bankrupt long before the end of coal. (hell it's still not over...) Simply because investors could see that it's a shrinking industry, making it impossible to get financing for new plants, mines, etc.
Did you figure out importing BYD vehicles?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39992428
I terminated my in process application to import the vehicle from my property outside of the US for two reasons: I no longer intend to maintain majority residency in the US for the foreseeable future (obvious reasons), and the US government is effectively banning Chinese EVs in the US [1].
Was fun to make the attempt, but sometimes city hall wins. It turns out it is easier to expat than to import a Chinese car.
[1] https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/biden-administration-effect...
> I no longer intend to maintain majority residency in the US for the foreseeable future
I suddenly just became a proponent of in-person voting.
As of tomorrow morning the US has declared war on its legacy domestic auto industry, too. Take a look at GM's stock. Trump was warned there would be plant closures if tariffs were enacted but he went ahead anyways. Doesn't show much of a preference or concern for those industries at all.
But sure, maybe Tesla. Though I suspect they use parts from Magna etc on this side of the border, too.
UAW and their >500k members might disagree
This title is a clickbait since the sales peaked... In 2018? Since then it lowered consecutively
Can I just ask - forgive the potential ignorance - if EVs have been proven to be less net carbon emitting with their manufacturing and expected disposal emissions factored in?
Yes. There are many myths spread around by the fossil lobby and, as always, there is a grain of truth in every myth, that's why they are so hard to debunk.
See for example https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-21-misleading-myths-ab...
EVs have an initial higher carbon footprint after production than ICE vehicles due to their battery.
However, the initial CO2 footprint is dwarfed when compared to the operational footprint of ICE vehicles. Takes a few years for the scale to tip in EVs favour, to which then there's a substantial difference.
> BNEF studied the US, Chinese, Germany, UK and Japanese markets. It determined the lifecycle CO2 emissions of a medium-size BEV manufactured in 2023 and driven for 250,000km would be 27-71 per cent lower than those of equivalent ICE vehicles.
Another important factor is that emissions are highly dependent on what you're burning to power the grid. As electrification intensifies those effects become even more pronounced. In 15 years or so I imagine most countries with sane leadership will be mostly running on renewables & nuclear.
> In 15 years or so I imagine most countries with sane leadership will be mostly running on renewables & nuclear.
I think it's good to mention that in Europe, 40% of all the electrical energy usage was renewable in 2024 [1]. This number is higher than it was in 2023, and will increase again in 2025 due to many new solar, wind, and battery installations.
In the US, 19% of all the electrical energy was produced by renewables and 20% by nuclear [2].
[1]: https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/european-electricit...
[2]: https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3
> sane leadership
That's too much to ask
> BEV manufactured in 2023 and driven for 250,000km would be 27-71 per cent lower than those of equivalent ICE vehicles.
(Disclaimer: I know little about cars ...)
My country, New Zealand, is awash with new BEV brands, some also offering ICE, from China and South East Asia. Compared with traditional SEA manufacturers (Japan, Korea) that supply most of our new cars, the prices are apparently ridiculously competitive and packed full of premium features.
It feels like I see a new brand advertised every couple of months. Four new brands were introduced late last year [1] One of whose SSL cert expired a couple of weeks ago and still has not been renewed.
The question is will these low cost EVs last 250,000km? I don't think the batteries will.
[1] https://www.stuff.co.nz/motoring/350442392/four-new-chinese-...
[1] https://skyworth.co.nz/
Japan and Korea are not South East Asia [1]...
Are there well known SEA car manufacturers, or exporters? Proton of Malaysia is (or was?) probably the biggest, they owned the legendary Lotus brand at one point.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southeast_Asia
Probably just Proton and Perodua. Plenty of manufacturing plants in SEA for the Japanese brands.
Why do you think the batteries won’t?
> The question is will these low cost EVs last 250,000km? I don't think the batteries will.
> Why do you think the batteries won’t?
I was commenting on low-cost EV. I don't know but I think its likely that given the following (maybe incorrect) assumption:
1. Cheap EVs use cheaper lower-quality cells to keep costs down.
2. Cheap EVs use battery tech that maximises range and performance at the expense of longevity, which would be cheaper than both maximising range and performance AND longevity.
3. Cheap EVs save money with worse cooling of the batteries.
I could be wrong on both points.
There are plenty of stories of EV batteries having low deterioration despite high KMs. But I am not sure these are usually old EVs, just EVs driven a lot.
Lithium batteries experience cyclic degradation (degradation when charged) and degradation over time (calendar degradation). We have yet to see how multiple decades effects them.
This NZ govt. report is an excellent resource [1]. It cites this paper [2] where they charted Nissan Leaf battery deterioration over time under various conditions.
Here in NZ, I looked at our post popular used-car website and 9 year old Leafs (2015 model) which had done 90-100,000km had lost 25-32% of battery capacity. There is not much data for earlier leafs.
[1] https://www.genless.govt.nz/assets/Everyone-Resources/ev-bat...
https://www.genless.govt.nz/assets/Everyone-Resources/ev-bat...
Yeah, that’s a bad assumption. Cheap EVs tend to use chemistries with a poor energy to weight ratio, but those chemistries are relatively long lasting (in particular see LFP). I’d bet on a cheap electric car made today lasting longer than a high end one 5 years ago for this reason.
Some brands (in particular Tesla has done this) even use LFP in low-end versions of a single model, and NMC in high end.
Will that initial footprint come down as recycled batteries become more ubiquitous?
It's also worth considering that EVs & battery technology are evolving and over time the impacts from build, use and disposal will most probably lessen. If you start with the industrial revolution, the fossil fuel industry had a couple of centuries and the ICE vehicle industry had about 100 years before they even had to think about the environmental effects of their actions and come up with solutions. The battery industry is really only just getting started and already environmental impact of the full life cycle is a significant consideration and a budding industry in itself.
The question gets asked and answered so often that whenever I see it now I wonder if it is a deliberate attempt to sow doubt.
Of course it is. The campaigning for fossil fuels is very sneaky and uses great talking points. There is always a grain of truth to every such talking point, so they are very difficult to debunk and discuss.
Some of it’s probably genuine. The oil industry has been pushing this particular lie in various forms for about half a century (comically, it’s a claim that they would sometimes make about _nuclear power plants_), and it has sunk deep into the culture.
Yes. The break even is at around 15,000 to 20,000 miles driven for replacing an ICE. This obviously varies depending on electricity source.
Even that's a pretty conservative estimate these days. It's typically less, ~11,000m (18,000km) and the balance keeps shifting in EVs favour over time as the grid becomes more renewables based... https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-21-misleading-myths-ab...
https://youtu.be/6RhtiPefVzM?si=QBYX8y8ArPbZ_oii
In my city you cannot charge your car inside the underground garage. No one will build the required facility to ease electric car fire extinguishing. Therefore the buildings will default to deny.
That's incredibly short-sighted, not least because the number of fires per vehicle is orders of magnitude higher for combustion vehicles. I'd be astonished if that made actuarial sense if actually investigated.
I've seen and used underground car chargers in multiple European cities. They're definitely viable.
I really wish something like the lit motors c1/aev would hit the market. But it’s been in development for over a decade I believe
https://www.litmotors.com/preorder-aev
I have an EV (Kia Niro EV 2024). I don't want ever to go back to gas.
Reasons:
* the driving experience is just much, much better: punch & acceleration, stability, quietness, etc.
* if you charge at home it is a lot cheaper than gas
* it is so easy to "fuel": you plug it in when you arrive home and unplug the next morning
Edit: also, after I installed solar cells at home, I drive almost for free!
Also, if you get into an EV now, before everyone else does, you can still enjoy a cheap fueling experience for a little while longer
Also, with time, we can make effort to decarbonize the production chain of EVs. With ICE vehicles, they reject carbon and there are only so many micro-adjustments we can do.
I can't see how they can make at home charging more expensive without making all other electricity uses expensive and that will have severe backlash.
On the go DC fast charging is already not cheap. It costs as much or more than gas.
They can mandate separate metering for the charging circuit and tax it to make u p for the lost gasoline taxes.
those gasoline taxes currently pay for roads. and EVs put more strain on roads due to their increased weight.
EVs have heavier batteries and ICEs have heavier engines and drivetrains. Go compare two similar models at most brands and the curb weight will be within 50-100kg. Add in a full tank of gas to the ICE and the will likely weigh about the same.
ICE vs EV difference is negligible compared to 18 wheelers and alike on road strain.
And 18 wheelers pay a lot more road tax than passenger cars do.
It's hard to say, considering studies attribute 50% to 98% of road wear to them.
"Mandate" how? Unless they're doing expensive mandatory periodic inspections nothing is stopping me from plugging my EVSE into an outlet meant for a welder, dryer, pool pump, etc.
And can always charge L1 120v, even if it's unbearably slow.
Most people will have an electrician install a charging station. Sure, some people will dodge it, as they already dodge other building code requirements.
Or, they can just tax the car based on some average mileage statistics. That's what my state does. Registering an EV is substantially more expensive than an ICE vehicle.
Is it more expensive per mile though with all things considered?
Probably not.
We bought a used EV, and I ran the numbers vs. a 20mpg car.
The EV will pay for itself in saved gasoline after about 53K miles.
That’s not breakeven time; that’s “the car is free” time.
Breakeven was less than half that long because the old ICE car would have had non-zero depreciation.
Apples-to-apples break even would have been 10-20K miles (ignoring free charging at work), but it ended up being closer to 300 miles. Thanks to a fuel crisis, the price of the EV increased by $5K shortly after I bought it. (It’s back down now.)
Hertz forced me to take a Kia Niro EV as my rental. "We have no other vehicles left, it is a higher class vehicle than the compact you reserved". Like hell it was! Never again!
I had plans that involved driving 8 hours each way. Electrify America chargers were all broken. Luckily, CircleK chargers "worked", slowly. An hour and 30 min to go from 10% to 90%. Had to charge twice each way. Time I will never get back.
After this experience, I talked to Hertz. There is evidently no way to note "no EV ever" on a reservation. I am avoiding hertz from now on (and dollar/thrifty that they own). Enterprise allows you to note "NO EV" on a rental reservation, and honors it.
Until EVs can charge at every corner and in 3 minutes, no thanks! I have places to be, and those places are not "90 minutes on a deserted CircleK parking lot"
EVs should definitely not be rentals, especially in countries with poor charging infrastructure. The use cases between renting and daily ownership are vastly different and EVs simply don't suit most rental use cases. I see quite a lot of understandable anti-EV comments due to rentals but it's rare to find an EV owner who goes back to ICE. EVs don't need to charge in 3 minutes, they need to charge where you park them, which is easy for owners but very difficult for a short term renter.
Yeap, EVs are great when you can charge at home and your journeys are all short enough to return home each night to recharge.
This is what I do. Love it. Never ever going back to ICE.
Those very few times I have to make longer journeys and need to charge? Have found a few fast chargers on routes I take that I try and use, but its majorly inconvenient and stressful compared to ICE. A big downside.
So great for being our personal car for local journeys. Bad for long journeys.
I deliberately rented a Kia Niro EV on my last work trip for the novelty of driving an electric car since probably 2016. I even insisted when they tried to switch me to another vehicle.
Boy, it sucked. Even with a Type 2 charger at work, and maybe 2 miles between the office and my hotel, charging was a huge hassle. And with an ICE vehicle I can refuel before dropping it back off at the airport in about 5 minutes. It's just not practical to recharge my EV after driving 1.5 hours to catch my flight.
The only other noteworthy experience was making an adjustment in a parking space and having 2 or 3 alarms going off concurrently without any indication of what they meant. (Excluding the proximity sensor, if memory serves.)
I think you don't want to see it, but if you were willing to do so, here's the point: each usage is different! Each way a person uses a car has different consequences and implications.
My charging takes less than 1 minute, really. I arrive at home at 4:30, it takes 20 seconds to plug the car and then 20 more seconds to unplug it the next morning.
And what about all the 12 hours between that? Well, I am living my life, I am not charging a car! The car is doing the whole work of charging itself, alone.
That's several orders of magnitude better than going to a gas station.
This is great news. Of course new car purchases are a leading indicator of the overall makeup of cars. And people might be buying fewer cars if their old ones last longer.
I will never buy an EV, not because of its powertrain but because there is no way to avoid their spyware.
Granted, the same goes for modern gas cars, which is also why I stick to secondhand but premium pre-infotainment cars
I am also very hesitant on buying an EV. Next to spyware - which is also a problem on my phone, I struggle more with the problem of having a built-in obsolescence. Any device with a dependence on an App, iOS is sooner or later going to force you to buy something new.
I love working and riding 20-30year old bicycles, sailboats, or even an old Toyota Jeep. Less dependency on software compatibility.
Could you unplug the sim and keep driving?
"ice car engines peaked?" likely wrong there is no charging infrastructur, and no way to retrofit into housing on a mass scale that will deal with the threat of a whole apartment building parking garage going up in flames, resulting in mass casualties. So until there are non flamable solid state batteries at the right price point, electrificationof the transport grid will stall, while demand for mobility will continue to increase, and ICE cars may very well keep or gain market share still.
From the source, which more clearly states "we're biased", the massive change is because of EV cars in China.
https://www.iea.org/reports/global-ev-outlook-2024/executive...
How long, until it becomes illegal to come up with these feel-good mood-affiliation "reports" that paint Plug-In Hybrids (i.e. combustion-engines equipped with a supportive battery) as Electric Vehicles?
Many of those plugins will almost never use their combustion engine. Particularly in western Europe where most of these are selling, the average person doesn’t drive far enough per day to exhaust the battery.
So it’s not just feel-good, it’s a real impact.
That said, I don’t think that’s what this report is doing?
This contradicts your assertion: https://www.transportenvironment.org/articles/plug-hybrids-n...
Those are massive SUV-type things with apparently rather weak engines (ie almost light hybrids, but with a plug); the typical plugin hybrid is a fair bit smaller. And has a bigger battery; the Mitsubishi Outlander mentioned had a 12kWh battery, vs, say, a plug-in Prius, a much smaller car with a 14kWh battery,
Many plugin hybrids only need to use their petrol engine when they actually run out of power. I would wonder if whoever came up with the above study was deliberately looking for a worst case scenario, tbh; they didn't include any small/normal-sized cars at all (everything they mention is over two tonnes), even though the _average_/most typical plugin hybrid car is probably some sort of smallish hatchback.
(Even then, though, I'm curious what conditions they're testing under. I know someone who has a BMW 5-series plugin hybrid saloon, which is a close relative of the X5 mentioned, albeit a bit lighter and more aerodynamic, and it operates pretty much entirely on battery when charged.)
It's all because of the crazy regulations and insane taxes that normal people have to pay in order to own a car, and not a refrigerator on wheels, that's the gist of it.
Basically the laptop classes (all actual or wannabe EV-owners) have started revolting against the fact that they have to inhale cancer-igneous fumes on their way to their yoga classes, and this is the result of that.
What's strange to me is according to the graph it's not just combustion engine cars that peaked, cars overall more or less did too, in the graph.
Are trucks like the F150 not being captured by this data? How literal is "cars"?
Slowdown in the West. This started before covid but was not visible because Asia is still growing.
Cars are too expensive new, that's why sales are down, imo
This graph shows covid years, and it was hard to buy new due to shortages and shutdowns, and supply chain issues.
Probably looking at total vehicles on the road would be more useful. Maybe cars got a lot more reliable 20 years ago, and so there are a lot more cars still kicking from the early 2000s which would have been scrapped in the past.
This is exactly the problem. It's a game in the existing market without any additional growth.
it's not strange, jeff bezos can buy dozens of yachts, but most people will only buy 1 car for several years
That doesn't make any sense. There are 10s of millions of newly middle class consumers in Asia.
that's another problem - inequality in the global value chain,
China is the most important growth market for passenger vehicles for last 20+ years, this is because of China's continuous industrial upgrading, which has gradually shifted from manufacturing low value-added products (such as jeans) to producing high value-added products (such as passenger vehicles).
this brings '10s of millions of newly middle class consumers', same thing happened in Japan/Korea/Taiwan too
but now, china produced 30 million cars (12m evs) in 2024, which means China's passenger vehicle market will quickly approach saturation, even if all Chinese families purchase or replace new vehicles
btw, '10s of millions newly consumers' is a relatively small number
and there will be no other markets with '10s of millions of newly middle class consumers' unless other countries can accompolish industrial upgrading like China's did
and if these countries(India/indonesia/Vietnam) manage to do so, their industrial upgrading will intensify this competition just like what happened in China now
Maybe that's true, but maybe the average cost of a new car in Asia is quite a bit lower, so the overall effect is still declining total overall sales (measured in USD)?
Here's a fascinating video about a city in China that's full of cute electric cars that cost less than $5000 USD each:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AomxytSwrkY
Seems unlikely that we'll ever totally move away from combustion engines, simply due to sunk costs plus the advantages of energy density and quick refilling. I expect we'll see net-zero carbon emission gasoline and other hydrocarbons sold at the pump within the next few decades, produced with either solar or nuclear energy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_proces...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8zOHZINyG8
Compressed natural gas (methane) is even easier to synthesize from the raw ingredients than gasoline or diesel fuels. It's used today in many city buses, fleet vehicles, and private cars in certain parts of the world:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction
Such fuels could become less attractive if we invent lighter, cheaper, and much faster-charging batteries than the current state of the art, but I'm not holding my breath.
CNG/LNG have been around for a while and are yesterday's future. Synthetic zero carbon fuel simply loses too much in conversion to be economic, compared to direct EV. I think China is in the process of demonstrating what the transition looks like.
There will probably be a rump of difficult to convert use cases and long lives specialty vehicles. I imagine tractors will be the last holdout. And military uses.
Ill probably buy a petrol car for my lifetime. As long as there is a petrol station to fill her up.
Why do you hate your lungs?
You forgot the /s