Mercedes-Benz Backs Off Plan To Only Sell EVs By 2030 (theverge.com) 203
In its fourth quarter earnings statement on Thursday, Mercedes-Benz said it is backing off its plan to only sell electric vehicles after 2030. Instead, the company said it "only expects 50 percent of its sales to be all-electric -- a significant drop from the once rosier outlook," reports The Verge. "Gas and hybrid vehicles will remain a part of the company's future for years to come." From the report: "Customers and market conditions will set the pace of the transformation," Mercedes said in its report. "The company plans to be in a position to cater to different customer needs, whether it's an all-electric drivetrain or an electrified combustion engine, until well into the 2030s."
Not even in Europe, where EV sales growth outpaces North America's, does Mercedes expect to transition to EV-only sales anytime soon, the company's CEO Ola Kallenius told Reuters. "It's not going to be 100% in 2030, obviously... from the whole European market, but probably from the Mercedes side as well," he said. In 2021, Mercedes was a lot more bullish about plug-in powertrains, saying that by 2030 it would only sell EVs and completely phase out gas-powered vehicles.
Not even in Europe, where EV sales growth outpaces North America's, does Mercedes expect to transition to EV-only sales anytime soon, the company's CEO Ola Kallenius told Reuters. "It's not going to be 100% in 2030, obviously... from the whole European market, but probably from the Mercedes side as well," he said. In 2021, Mercedes was a lot more bullish about plug-in powertrains, saying that by 2030 it would only sell EVs and completely phase out gas-powered vehicles.
TOD (Score:5, Interesting)
EVs have passed through the PIE and are now heading into the TOD.
By 2030, they will reach the SOE, and will get to the POP by 2035.
PIE = Peak of Inflated Expectation
TOD = Trough Of Disillusionment
SOE = Slope Of Enlightenment
POP = Plateau Of Productivity
Gartner Hype Cycle [wikipedia.org]
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I work in sustainability. I facilitate EV adoption. This is 100% the case. Most interestingly, though, electric vehicle mandates and solar rooftops pushed the PIE much higher than would have happened naturally which will make the TOD fall feel pretty extreme. In the process, the EV PIE crowded out the easier-to-implement HFC tech which is in the shadows getting better and greener every month. I wouldn't be surprised if HFC is outright more cost effective in every sector (ownership, fueling, lifecycle, etc.)
E-fuel will be unaffordable (Score:2)
Unless they are planning on EU to change its mind or collapse (both not unlikely) they've got till 2035. E-fuel will be expensive and distribution a problem (if the EU doesn't change its mind, it will probably be done through electronic surveillance of efuel cars and blending).
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Power production is ramping up quickly in the EU. So quickly, actually, that the grid doesn't keep pace. Everyone and their dog is putting solar panels on their roofs because the EU subsidizes this pretty heavily. Now everyone tries to pump that extra power into the grid during Summer and the grid goes into overload. We have arrived at the point where base load power plants had to be shut down during days in Summer because there simply was too much power humming in the grid.
So getting enough electricity wil
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With efuel I mean Fischer Tropf converted hydrogen (crop based fuel isn't allowed except for waste streams, which is a drop in the bucket). The Germans made that an option for post 2035 cars, but I suspect it will be far more expensive than 2x fossil fuel even then.
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The Germans made that an option for post 2035 cars, but I suspect it will be far more expensive than 2x fossil fuel even then.
The more people who use it, the better the economies of scale and the more affordable it will be, so it should be encouraged. This is offensive to BEV fanbois, but it also illustrates how it is more about ideology than climate.
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Mercedes EVs (Score:2)
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I found a listing for a used plug-in Toyota Prius at a Mercedes dealership. It was right next to a Tesla showroom.
I drove out there to testdrive the Toyota. Its battery wasn't charged (meaning I could only test-drive "gas burning mode"), despite the fact that it was literally parked twenty feet away from their Level 2 charger. (After my testdrive I had to ask the guy -- "so, can I charge it?") If they can't even bother plugging the thing in (knowing that I was coming!), they clearly don't want to (or know h
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I dunnow...test drove the EQS, and sure the interior is nicer than a Tesla, but honestly I was wildly underwhelmed for a $100k+ vehicle. I decided against the vehicle out of hand, and I wonder if it would be a complete bomb if it didn't have a Mercedes nameplate on the back of the car.
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I just got an EQA. I wanted a car with a great interior finish in a smaller footprint than an M3. I'm upgrading from a Renault Zoe, live in London with narrow streets and lots of traffic and tight squeezes, and the length and width of the M3 was too much. The EQA is a touch smaller. It has a pretty decent range post-facelift, and I don't care about the acceleration. We looked at the new Mini Countryman E but that felt cheap and cramped inside yet massive on the outside, and the iX3 but it's pig-ugly on the
In summary (Score:4, Funny)
"We're too fucking incompetent and non agile to make electric vehicles vs our rivals and we'll die a slow and painful death as a result"
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OR.....
It could be they're finding that the market that really wants an EV....already has one and is saturated.
That the rest of the general populace, at the moment, just really doesn't want an EV at this time for a number of reasons.
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The problem is charging. If your house doesn't have an enclosed garage, or if the builder wired up the garage inadequately, or if you rent; then you are cut out of the EV market at present. If you live somewhere with high supercharger density like the Bay Area of LA you might be able to get a Tesla and make do. But if you don't live in one of those areas or if you no longer want to give the muskrat your money, or if you just prefer the retro-futuristic look of the Ioniq 5 and have had nothing but good ex
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Definitely needs some joined up thinking. Every car park (of which America has copious amounts) could have chargers in it - offices, stadiums, cinemas, supermarkets, apartment complexes etc. On street charging too. State law could mandate it on new builds, or offer tax incentives to businesses to retrofit them. Doesn't even have to be rapid charging because people tend to park their car for extended periods of time. Rapid chargers could develop along major transit routes where people are most likely to want
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lol (Score:2)
Looks like the naysayers were right?
We don't really need to all drive only EVs. A reduction in emissions is good, but we also have practical needs that gas and diesel are better at.
Particularly, heavy trucks are just not efficient as EV except for short routes. Off road and extreme temperature also make EVs suffer. There's always going to be some use cases and environments where the dinosaur fuel is just better. And hybrid can help nicely to reduce fuel costs while still being flexible.
Six Years (Score:2)
Only the gullible greentards believed the Mercedes greenwashing in the first place.
Many here said, "no they won't," because: reality.
It's easier to clap like seals than it is to take cold showers, isn' t it?
pivot (Score:2)
Look for even more of the word "pivot" in the news.
California? (Score:2)
As a California resident, I'm excited to hear my state back off the "zero emissions-only sales" requirement expected to commence in 2035. The law permits battery electric vehicles, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and fuel cell electric vehicles. Fuel Cells are, so far, DOA considering companies backing out of H production and sales; plugins mean carrying around two propulsion systems (albeit, good for long distance drivers), and BEVs haven't solved every problem yet.
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As a California resident, I'm excited to hear my state back off the "zero emissions-only sales" requirement expected to commence in 2035.
Where did you hear that? Unless I missed something, California is still on track for a 2035 end date. The EPA backed off on some of its targets, not California.
If anything, California is doing slightly better than expected. Their new rules require 35% BEV, PHEV, or FCV by 2026, 68% by 2030, and 100% by 2035. They apparently allow up to 20% of them to be plug-in hybrids for use cases where EVs genuinely aren't feasible. California passed the 35% BEV/PHEV/FCV mark last year, three full years ahead of sch
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Companies do things that earn a profit for their shareholders. The large legacy auto companies are having quite some difficulty figuring out how to make EVs AND make a profit. Trying to tax/penalize them into submission isn't likely to be a successful strategy.
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The UK will be a good experiment if their ZEV laws stand. For all the grumbling about the 2030 to 2035 shift for zero emission vehicles, their fines for not meeting targets getting there are huge.
Either companies meet their targets, or they can hand over billions a year to Tesla.
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Not just Tesla, but BYD and the other Chinese EV makers.
I'm starting to expect to see all the known traditional car makers to disappear much like so many of our old TV makers - RCA, Zenith, Magnavox, etc... Living on only as brand names bought by other companies.
Keep in mind that if they pull out, it's possible that England suffers a "carpocolypse", ending up having to maintain cars in extremis like Cuba for so many years. It depends on Tesla and others being able to ramp up enough. Consumers might also s
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Keep in mind that if they pull out, it's possible that England suffers a "carpocolypse", ending up having to maintain cars in extremis like Cuba for so many years.
Maybe, but the difference is that they will be able to get parts.
They could also be converted to another powertrain.
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When I've looked at what it would take to convert most cars to "another powertrain", like converting an ICE car to EV, the end answer is that it's drastically cheaper with a better result to just buy an EV.
Converting would also require access to sufficient numbers of oddly sized batteries as with retrofits you need to fit the battery to the car, you can't design the car to take the battery, as well as motors, controllers, and adapters.
If things look bad enough, I think they'll just do what Mercedes is doing
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We already had our own carpocalypse, with 50 years of relentlessly pro car legislation which have eviscerated public transport, polluted city centres and marginalised people unable to use cars. Largely driven by repeated gerrymandered conservative governments.
Fortunately some areas area finally pushing back on this, but of course the idea that drivers on through traffic should stick to major roads, and that they might have to pay a tiny fee to spew carcinogenic pollution is met with howls and gales of whing
Re:Reality is setting in (Score:5, Interesting)
The reality is that many (most?) countries cannot afford the massive investments required to enable the use of electric vehicles in remote areas
So, building out gas stations all over the country and regularly shipping fuel to each one of them was doable, but connecting chargers to the existing electrical grid is too difficult?
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Re:Reality is setting in (Score:5, Insightful)
chamfers?
In your county in GA, you have plenty of EV plugs. Every house. After two years of plug in ownership, I have only ever plugged into residential or work chargers, never had to explicitly stop for a charge. I will have to on some road trip or another at some point, probably, but I used to have to stop at a gas station every week, now I might need the equivalent once or twice in an entire year.
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It's amazing how people just don't get this. I used a public charger fewer than 5 times in the whole of last year. Obviously, there's lots of people who can't charge at home, but that doesn't in reality cancel out the fact that there's even more people who can.
Re:Reality is setting in (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, and in fact it's backwards with respect to who can realistically charge. People keep saying "oh, those rural folk can't charge", the rural folk have the *easiest* time charging, no ordinances or HOAs telling you where you can and can not park your car. Your gravel driveway probably already runs right up to the main service panel for the house. It's the people in apartments or housing with street side parking only that will have the biggest challenge.
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I broadly agree -- but apartment blocks will often have three-phase power. So if you can actually get the chargers into the garage, then you should be able to charge at 22kW instead of 7kW (here in the UK), which is pretty good. It's rare at the moment, though.
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Maybe apartments mean something different in the UK than the US.
Here it means apartment complexes....mass of buildings with many units to rent out. These are generally surrounded by massive parking lots, not assigned and uncovered.
To work with EVs,
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*laughs in Alaskan*
I'm used to seeing electrical outlets all over in parking lots already. It'd be a lot less tearing up and expensive than you'd think. They have machines that can push wire and pipe under 4 lane roads, driveways, and all that. So they only need to dig smallish holes, not great big trenches.
So Alaska might actually be pretty easy on an EV - there's plugs you can charge from, even if it is only cripple charging, all over the place.
No off-street parking? That's fine, there's proposals to
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Well, that's not the norm in the lower 48.
The big question is...who is going to pay for all of this?
Hardly anyone has an EV, so there's nothing really driving a landlord to go to all this trouble and expense....
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Well, that's not the norm in the lower 48.
You need to knock ~8 states off that. They're present in North Dakota as well(I lived there too) as well as other states similarly high up.
Hardly anyone has an EV, so there's nothing really driving a landlord to go to all this trouble and expense....
Yet, basically. You can already search apartments with limits for only ones with charging available.
I figure that EV tenents will be slightly premium, so as apartment owners and businesses start seeing limited applications due to them not having chargers, they'll upgrade. It'll be a gradual process, of course.
Federal, state, and city subsidies is a real possibility.
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You don't need charging at every parking spot and it's not as expensive as you think. (As others have pointed out, many parking lots have electric outlets in the cold Northern parts of the US already.)
Just need to have some L1 or L2 EV charging spots for the few tenants who have EVs. These can be reserved/paid for by people who need to charge. Once your tenants acquire more EVs, expand the charging spots as needed.
As far as street parking goes, street lights and utility cabinets already have electricity. Si
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Yes, apartment blocks in the UK don't look like this. They are typically tower blocks with underground parking
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eh... that is not a universal experience.
On this end of the country, most apartment buildings have much less parking. There is generally one space per unit -assigned and usually covered (carport style), with a small amount of unassigned & un-covered "guest parking" spaces as well.
This does make it much easier to add chargers for residents as demand increases. So far I haven't seen any with dedicated chargers for each resident, but many with a 2 or 4 car charger (pay per use) setup in what was previous
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Yeah, just the matter of how empowered the residents are. In rural scenario, the resident is supremely empowered, for dense living, well, someone else has to sign off and/or actually do the change. Maybe with some regulatory help from city governments this can grease the wheels to make it more possible (just like how where I live homeowners associations are legally required to allow solar).
And sure, while even faster 'l2' charging is nice, even 7kw is sufficient for 160 miles of range in 8 hours overnight,
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Yes to all of that. I'm just saying that one day, apartments will have 22kW charging as standard and that will be part of what makes them attractive vs houses
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For the US, with the Tesla plug being adopted it will be easier for apartment blocks to put in (relatively) small 480/277V services. One 400A service can support 24-30 cars at 277V/48A charging. That gives you 50 miles range per hour, and across 10+ chargers it would only be $3k each. The landlord would only need to recover ~$3 per day each which even allows for some excess capacity for growth.
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Yes. Mostly because the markup in gas is pretty stunning. People have no idea what a gallon of gas would really cost if they didn't look at a de facto cartel.
Unfortunately, they do know what a kW/h of electricity costs. You can't suddenly charge them 2 bucks a kW/h because it comes from your electricity-station. Because, and that's the second part of the problem, people can simply ignore your electrostation and power their cars at home. Something they, in generally, cannot really do with gas. Depending on c
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Unfortunately, you are up against 'good enough'.
Back when gasoline vehicles entered the scene, there was nothing even vaguely comparable. So we did all sorts of things to accomodate them. They need access to gasoline fuel from wherever? Build out massive extraction, refining, distribution and dispensing infrastructure. They are rather picky about the surface they travel over? Pave the hell out of everything, it's worth it!
Now you have EVs, which from an endgame perspective accomplish largely the same tasks
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The reality is that many (most?) countries cannot afford the massive investments required to enable the use of electric vehicles in remote areas
So, building out gas stations all over the country and regularly shipping fuel to each one of them was doable, but connecting chargers to the existing electrical grid is too difficult?
Different market dynamic. The ICE powered vehicle started as novelty for the rich in a society that was a lot less mobile than today; and the rich didn't drive long distances they took a train or ship. There wasn't a large segment of the population used to driving a similar vehicle and simply looking to replace one with the other. Until Ford, in the US, cars were a luxury item. Even as they became popular they weren't necessarily long distance vehicles and infrastructure could build out as more cars, cap
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Gas is energy dense. Before those gas stations got built up you could take a few cans of fuel home with you and have several fillups available before you needed to go back to the gas station. When there were sufficient cars out there in the boonies then the gas stations followed, but there are still issues there (eg my parents live 14 miles from the nearest gas station).
Now, the same will eventually happen with EV's. People in the city will adopt them, they'll have charging infrastructure. That will slo
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This also brings to mind, what happens to an area that experiences a catastrophe?
Example:
Hurricane Ida hit the greater New Orleans area.
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Rural are the people MOST likely to have access to enough power to run a home charging station, and the most relative ease in installing one though.
It's looking like suburbs have the easiest time, with there being issues with space and density for the infrastructure in the central parts of cities.
I'm semi-rural, the answer there could easily be "one EV, one hybrid, one ICE".
Re: Reality is setting in (Score:2)
Rural are the people MOST likely to have access to enough power to run a home charging station
This.
Rural residents tend to include a lot of farms and the electric irrigation pumps they require. Also drinking water wells and all-electric loads due to no natural gas distribution. As an old electric utility person here, guess who got the upgraded distribution systems first? Rural communities.
Now I live in a suburban community. Which is all gas. Because that is about 25% of the fuel cost of electricity. We can't charge more than a few EVs per block without blowing transformer fuses. And now the HOA is
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> you could take a few cans of fuel home with you and
> have several fillups available
A few cans? Only if your idea of a "can" is a 55-gallon drum. When most people think of gas in a can, it's a jerrycan or similar. At 20 liters each, it would take three of them just to fill up my car once. So to get several fillups, I'd be looking at at least 18, or more. That, in my book, is significantly more than a few.
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A jerrycan over here is 5 gallons of gas (and there are lots of other 5 gallon options). The car that was most common during the early days of automobiles was the Model T Ford which had a 10 gallon gas tank - so 2 cans is going to get you full.
6 cans of gas = 3 fill-ups. That's not that many to keep around.
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> but connecting chargers to the existing electrical grid is too difficult?
Yes, because unlike Alice's Wonderland, the electrical grid in reality has a finite capacity.
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The reality is that many (most?) countries cannot afford the massive investments required to enable the use of electric vehicles in remote areas
So, building out gas stations all over the country and regularly shipping fuel to each one of them was doable, but connecting chargers to the existing electrical grid is too difficult?
Because "connecting chargers" summarizes the entirety of that change, and how metric fucktons of lithium buried in an Earth zit somewhere is going to be magically transported into the ass end of an EV at everyone's doorstep a continent or two away, along with a few metric fucktons of other raw material we never thought we would be mining by the metric fuckton?
We're gonna do all that, in order to force millions to finance 2xPrice-EVmobile and drive back to a job they were not wasting either electricity or ga
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When the grid is barely adequate for the existing load? Yes, building out infrastructure for a fleet of battery-powered devices is pointless, unless you want to also build out a shit-ton of generating capacity to back it up.
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When is the last time that you saw a NEW gas station built? Be honest now ... I know that can be difficult.
In my particular part of suburban [blank] I have seen EXACTLY ONE NEW gas station built in 30+ years, out by the multi-lane major highway.
It was one of those super-sized things with a bazillion pumps and an over-sized mini-mart where you can find everything you could want and much more that you probably don't need, and that's before you enter the restroom areas.
Re: Reality is setting in (Score:2)
And petroleum distribution is flexible. Before dedicated pipelines, it was railroad tanker cars. Or fuel barges along the coasts. Feeding a network of tanker trucks delivering to local stations anywhere there was a road. And rail/road delivery of an energy dense fuel barely makes a blip on the transportation infrastructure usage. With a large switch to EVs, it will be like having half of that infrastructure clogged up with tanker trucks.
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many (most?) countries cannot afford the massive investments required to enable the use of electric vehicles in remote areas
Too busy funding genocide huh?
Oh wait, that's just us
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Are you russian?
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If the remote areas have houses with electricity, then they are actually among the better situated for real-world EV use.
Real-world EV use is most challenging for dense living, where apartments don't have access to home charging. If you have your own house with driveway, whether paved or gravel, then poof, you have the most convenient method of replenishing vehicle range possible. After your daily drive (even if you are rural, your daily drive is unlikely to be over 200 miles), plug in overnight at home a
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I agree with you again, and once again, people seem determined not to understand this point: if you live in the countryside, you can have a home charger as you have off-street parking (and you can probably easily put up solar too). The vast majority of your driving will then be much *more* convenient than using an ICE car.
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Part of the problem is even the attempts to 'help' EV adoption keep thinking "charging == gas station", so all the investment and attention goes into making electric 'gas stations' rather than trying to promote residential and workplace charging, which will comprise a vast majority of range replenishment for EV owners. Sure those long road trips need them, but that's overly fixated on a use case that for most drivers is like 4 times a year max.
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I agree that the solutions being pushed don't properly account for the different experience. For example, I'm convinced that in the UK, there's really very little need for fast chargers for "long" trips, because most people aren't travelling more than say 250 miles to a destination, which an increasing proportion of EVs can now do. What *is* needed, though, are set-ups that suit the actual use case:
- I drive somewhere 200 miles away for a day trip
- I park the car and do whatever I came to do
- I go back to t
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Hell yes on the solar canopy, I'd be all for that.
I'll note that for your described scenario, 22-50kW actually seems very high. Either one should be able to completely fill the ~100kWh EV batteries most vehicles have (Searching, the biggest is the EV Hummer@200kWh), in well under 5 hours, even if nearly empty.
10kW should actually be "plenty".
Or a system where, say, if only 10% of the chargers are active, they can do 50kW, but if 100% is active, they can only do 10kW.
The idea is that if you plug in with you
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Agree with all of that. 7kW per charger and 100 chargers is much better, to my mind, than 20 chargers at 50kW for this use case
There's a holiday company called Centre Parcs in the UK that has done something like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Or a system where, say, if only 10% of the chargers are active, they can do 50kW, but if 100% is active, they can only do 10kW.
The key is you need two kinds of chargers - fast chargers for people who are in a hurry, and slow chargers for people who want to park their car there all day and not have to move because there is a lineup. You can rig the chargers so they can be either, but you still need enough of them to accommodate both types of users.
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Please DO consider the possibility that a LOT of us out here do
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Hence why I said some of the investment and regulatory help can go a long way, but the fixation on the stations may be misplaced. Limitations for urban living may be better addressed in other ways than awkward charging stations. 90% of the complaints about can't charge are fixated on rural, and that's what I mentioned. I even said EV is most challenging for dense living. In terms of how one might imagine incentives and regulations addressing your scenarios:
Dense living arrangements also come with dense par
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Most countries, huh? OK, here's a little challenge: name a single country in the EU27 that "has one or two big cities, surrounded by vast areas of nothing". As a reminder, 450m people live in the EU.
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You think there’s “vast areas of nothing” in *Luxembourg*??
This is a country no more than 35 miles wide and 51 miles long!! I could literally drive from one end to the other five times in my Renault Zoe before I ran out of power.
Do you want to try that again with a less laughable answer?
What a puppet thinking that I woudn’t notice that you’d focused on “one or two big cities” and not the “vast amounts of nothing”. Even Finland is only 720 miles north-sou
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In Germany? Good luck with that! You'd rather get a die hard conservative to ask to repeal the 2nd.
As a German comedian famously put it, a few lives saved is one thing, but the jobs, THE JOBS lost! No speed limit means more jobs. And they also become available a lot faster again, too.
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Rich people don't give a fuck about sustainability. Gimme shiny. Here's how to fix this: Maximum speed limit of 100km/h (60mph) for all combustion engine vehicles, but not electric vehicles, even on private tracks.
That's just plain stupid, regardless of whether you actually believe it or whether you meant that comment as an anti-EV troll.
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Rich people don't give a fuck about sustainability. Gimme shiny.
Right. Tesla only sells EVs to poor people. They really should upscale their product to appeal to the $50 cigar crowd.
Give me a break. Rich people can afford to worry about sustainability. Poor people need the cheapest way to get to work and back. If anyone was going to sell nothing but EVs it would be BMW and Mercedes. That even they can't find enough rich fools to overlook the tradeoffs inherent in EVs says something.
Re: They know their customers (Score:2)
Maximum speed limit of 100km/h (60mph) for all combustion engine vehicles
Suits me just fine. A Mercedes Unimog really can't go much faster anyway. That'll be me over in the left lane that you can't squeeze past with your Tesla.
BMW and Porsche know their customers too (Score:2)
https://www.autoblog.com/2023/... [autoblog.com]
MB obviously does not want to surrender that part of the market to their competitors. The EU has exempted ICE cars that run on e-fuels from the BEV mandates going forward;
https://www.euronews.com/my-eu... [euronews.com]
So there will always be new ICE cars for people willing and able to pay the premium for clean fuel, like typical BMW and MB owners, indeed Pors
Re: Know the reality already. Damn. (Score:3)
Even though personal vehicles are a minority, they are still about 16 to 20%, and that is still a huge chunk. To ignore that and say it all needs to come out of power plants and other transportation is short sighted.
Also, a lot of pressure is on the power plants now. Probably the biggest emissions with the least pressure is trucking, but it's easier to do personal vehicles than freight.
Re: Know the reality already. Damn. (Score:4, Interesting)
Electrifying transport will probably require the construction of new power plants (or residential solar). This is a good thing, since those sources can be made zero-emissions.
Trucking is absolutely an issue and is a huge opportunity for electrification. It's something of an ideal use case: batteries are heavy, especially the cheaper but more durable LFP ones. But semis really don't care about a few thousand extra pounds of battery. Meanwhile diesel semis are severely limited by engine power going up hills. But it is easy to make a very high power electric drivetrain. Likewise, trucks have problems sustaining braking force in long downhills, which is not a problem if it can all be absorbed by regen.
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How? Like I get the basic premise of your idea, but when you get into the actual detail of thinking about how to engineer such a system - how? This works for trains because the train follows, pretty much exactly the same path all the time, and the space above the train track (where the gantry and wire goes) can be reserved for the train.
How does a truck with such an arrangement change lanes? What height do we want the wire at so that it suits all vehicles that might want to use it? How do we make sure the
Re: Know the reality already. Damn. (Score:3)
In order for long haul trucking to really take off standardized, tough, replaceable battery packs will have to be designed and put into use.
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It's not about improving their morale, it's about saving their stupid lives, and the rest of the poor bastards who have to share this planet with them.
I do not want to live in the NANNY STATE that you are proposing for the rest of us.
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Usually not, and less so over time. Coal sucks and is a huge liability what with their insanely toxic ash to manage. If a power company is going to build out fossil fuel based power, then it's going to be natural gas. Also not great, but low on particulate emissions and most flexibility to maximize efficient energy extraction and do any exhaust management we might imagine. Of course, in my area, the blend is about 15% renewable, 40% Nuclear, 40% natural gas, and 5% Coal (Coal used to be much higher, but
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The complete elimination of internal combustion engines and 100% adoption of electric vehicles is not going to happen. Not ever.
Probably right. In any case, at the moment we are far from it.
...
-- Electric vehicles are too expensive
You need to add one more word in that sentence:
-Electric vehicles are too expensive now.
In principle, electric vehicles could be significantly cheaper than IC vehicles. They are much simpler. Despite apprehension over shortages of raw materials, the raw materials for electric vehicles aren't actually scarce, the ramp up in demand just temporarily outstripped the supply.
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-- Even for people who can afford EVs, a large percentage of the population lives in situations where charging is literally impossible.
Yep, this is a problem, and we can't get to 100 until it is solved. But we a
Re: (Score:2)
In principle, electric vehicles could be significantly cheaper than IC vehicles.
That's not even close to true. We MIGHT be able to get to cost parity with a lot of improvements to battery manufacturing, but no way will they be 'significantly cheaper' with current battery technology.
Re: (Score:2)
Funny that you think all apartment renters have parking spaces. NYC would be a good example of that not being true.
And for those that have assigned parking spaces, do you get the money back when you leave or do you rip it out and take it with you?
If I'm going to 'give' my landlord 1k I would expect my rent to drop accordingly.
Re: (Score:2)
Funny that you think all apartment renters have parking spaces. NYC would be a good example of that not being true.
But if you don't have a parking space, you also probably don't have a car. The overwhelming majority of the people who don't have a parking space are, therefore, completely irrelevant.
No, most of the apartment renters who are a problem are in the suburbs, where lax zoning laws, in a failed attempt to encourage people to use public transit where it isn't really practical, have allowed apartment complexes to build more housing than parking places, with everyone else overflowing and filling up all the adjacen
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah - Rich people don't care about the planet they live on and are leaving to their kids and grand-kids. Once you get rich you become stupid and pure evil.
It's true. Ever since I got a good job, worked really hard, and saved like crazy, I grew to love kicking a few puppies each morning. It gets the day off to a great start. Then I wax my handlebar moustache and have a set of cripples pull my carriage to the factory where I make sure it's dark, dank, and filled with noxious fumes. Bwa-ha-ha!
Re: (Score:3)
I"m far from rich...and I don't really give a fuck myself.
I mean, I'm not wanting to actively hurt the earth, but I've lived a good part of my adult life enjoying a certain level of convenience and lifestyle and I don't see any reason to curtail or
Re: They know their customers (Score:2)
I used to care.
What did you personally do about it? Did you regularly pick up trash in public areas? Did you ensure all your clothing was made of non-oil based materials? Did you volunteer to sort recycling from tash at recycling centers? Or did you think about it and utter meaningless platitudes and demands for others to do things?
Re: (Score:2)
I travel some months 2-3 times where the logistics of charging an electric vehicle versus driving a gasoline powered vehicle would be detrimental.
You drive more than 300-ish miles in a single day 2 to 3 times per month?
Remember that as more people drive electric vehicles, you'll see more and more hotels offering EV charging. In places with a large enough number of EVs, most hotels already have EV charging. So when you're on the road, more often than not, the "drive home and plug in" pattern just becomes "park at the hotel and plug in".
But if you really do frequently spent more than four or five hours on the highway in a single day, then you're seve
Re: (Score:2)
Well paying the premium allows you to drive like a knob. At least I assume that's the case based on observing drivers.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, people -- including me -- will pay a lot for the fancier interior and the brand. (And the interior truly is much nicer than a Honda or Toyota, there's no question about it)
But price sensitivity exists at this end of the market -- in the UK, EQ sales have spiked dramatically thanks to the introduction of a 0% finance deal for PCPs
Re: (Score:2)
Merc seem to be making a few proper ugly mingers these days - I mean, right down to Peugeot or Daihatsu level of horrible. I sure hope the interior and the gadgets make up for looking so terrible!?
But ultimately, Merc, like all the others will do what the market wants. That they've come down from 100% to 50% by 2030 is more a reflection of us than some sort of 'big environmental climbdown'.