Featured Volvo predicts optimum battery size

it made some sense when i read it (power of persuasion?) but after reading all the comments, i'm unsure again.
i hate stopping on long trips. just pulling off and back on are irritating when you're trying to get somewhere.

all bio breaks are not created equal.

 

I was of the opinion that since you guys have higher speeds and all that stuff, then vehicles in Europe should pretty much wear and tear much faster, than their counterparts in the USA.

 

Mehn, that would be cool, if I could do that too!
I bet you must stuff in the cat, all your necessities before embarking on such a long distance trip

 

Now I'm suddenly seeing Tesla's all over the place. I pulled into Starbucks to get my $9 coffee and a big sleek Model S was in front of me. $100G??? He (or she) paid for my order. They must've felt sorry for the old man in the cheap Prius.

 

$9.00 coffee, what you get, a venti triple shot, double soy and extra whip!

 

Telsa model 3 today is requiring the long range (80.5 kwh) pack. Next year they will have the standard (50 kwh) pack. Seems volvo and tesla think alike

+1

yep my experience is western europe has faster speeds and better highways than most of the US.

 

I don't know why so many people are convinced that mass EV adoption means that every EV has to be a 100% replacement for an ICE car. If we just got 90% of the 2nd cars in a family to be 100-200 mile EVs that do not go on long road trips; and a few 1st cars that rarely go on long road trips, and plug-in hybrids for a big part of the remainder we could reduce gas usage by maybe 50% for personal vehicles.
50% is mass adoption in my opinion.
Long roads trips might still be 95% gas.
We don't need that much infrastructure to support that 5%.
That would be OK for a decade or so while the technology and infrastructure gets built out.
Too many people want to run before walking...we are still crawling.

Mike

 

If I needed another car which I don't and electric car would meet my needs. I just told my wife we don't drive more than 50 miles from where we live and if we did we would just take the ICE car.

If I just owned an commercial electric zero turn mower I would cut my gas consumption down quite a bit in the summer, they do make them now but they are very expensive.

 

I made a similar point in another thread recently- it's silly to think that expensive new cars are going to be the path to mass adoption. Honda is working on perfecting their EV-Cub, an electrified version of their classic Super Cub motorcycle. Given that small gasoline engines produce much more pollution than larger automobile counterparts, they are the ideal target for electrification efforts.

Somebody else added that there are even smaller "razor style" electric scooters to be had. Mass change comes from the bottom up.

 

I haven't seen many electric cars here in the Dallas area, but the Prime is starting to appear at dealers.

I saw a really tiny Smart All-Electric yesterday. It looked like a bump on roller skates.

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

I pass by 3 Smarts on my commute every day. I'll have to take a closer look and see if any are EVs, but I wouldn't bet on it.

 

Hey pilotgrrl, we have smart bevs as part of car2go in austin. Car2go have special parking spaces down town, so I often grab one (gas or electric) if I'm headed downtown and might drink too much, then take a lyft back home if I'm tipsy. They are fine on city streets but take a long time to merge on the highway. Definitely not a bev I would ever buy, but these tiny short range cars seem to do better in Europe.

I think tesla has it right, the expensive cars will prove the technology, then it will trickle down to other cars. Tesla may get costs down to $100/kwh at the pack level in the next 5 years according to bloomberg. At that price a 50 kwh pack + controller + motor + charger will be down to about $10K. That's when $25K, 200 mile, plug-ins and $30K 100 mile electric range phevs become possible. It takes time.

I agree that commuting motorcycles and vespa type scooters, and even electric razor scooters become more of the short run landscape. That is never going to be a big part of transportation though, but will push the low end air cooled packs to drop in price.

 

I beg to differ. It may not make much difference in Texas, the surrounding USA or other wealthy countries. But there is a heck of a lot of transportation occurring elsewhere on this planet which is already being done with scooters, mopeds, autoricks etc. Usually with carbureted engines and no pollution control. Electrifying those will make a huge difference in air quality and public health globally, even if none of it is visible in Austin.

 

Ok, sorry, was thinking you were talking about the light vehicle market. Definitely agree that scooters, mopeds, small engined motorcycles make up a lot of transportation in some markets.

I have also seen a fair number of grad students in austin on electric scooters. I've got a friend in my neighborhood that bought himself and his wife electric bicycles, but they were $3K each, and he mainly drives his volt. Our traffic jams though have cars, suvs, and trucks.