Modern Vespa

You cut out the part where I said Germany is reactivating coal plants. That's not good from a clean air perspective.

They did so due to the same reason I liked having a wood burning fireplace in my prior home. Or folks in more rural areas often have backup generators. Or people who have a full solar array on their roof are also connected to the grid.

Had nothing unexpected happened in, say, early 2022, those coal plants would have remained cold. And it's just a matter of time before there is an alternate backup.

Based on the evidence so far, I don't think you care about Germany's air quality at all. Not even a little bit.

Just my opinion.

TrouBum,

Thanks for the link - a good read. A well balanced article that
weighs and acknowledges the economic pain and displacement
of moving toward an environmental ideal before infrastructure
is in place to replace fossil fuels.

Acknowledging practical functional steps toward a better environment
does not mean slowing it down supports that you are against
eliminating pollution. This California article acknowledges the
goal and the dream - but recognizes that it will take regional
authorities with common sense to practically implement real change.

I also liked the tidbit from the article when they pointed out
they had nowhere to go for energy when the sun went down and
the wind was not blowing. This local energy authority also
stated we need to increase energy use for the future saying
we are not there yet.

My honorable mention for an article coming from La La Land.
I just had to get that little dig in at the end. Sorry, I love
you good folks in California.

Bob Copeland

The infrastructure is largely in place. True, we don't have enough outlets, yet. But if your house has electricity and can support a washer/dryer or electric stove, you are definitely good to go for powering an EV. Charging cars will be most efficiently done at night, a time when networks have ample capacity to do so.

There are plenty of studies that show that electrical grid capacity isn't as bad as you seem to think it is. For example it has been estimated that the UK would only have to add 10% of generating capacity to go all electric. That seems hardly an insurmountable problem. See: https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-switch-to-electric-vehicles-would-add-just-10-per-cent-to-uk-power-demand/

When even Forbes has headlines such as EVs Are Not A Problem For The Electric Grid, They Are The Solution https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesmorris/2020/08/01/evs-are-not-a-problem-for-the-electric-grid-they-are-the-solution/ it appears that we collectively have a lot of reading to do to get better informed.

I acknowledge that change isn't easy and I understand that very well. But then getting out of carbon fuels certainly has all the makings of a life and death decision for future generations if not already our own.

I didn't "cut it out". I simply didn't understand the connection to the discussion about EVs and the power grid. Germany's current problem is a combination of two serious errors in their national energy strategy. The first was overcommitting to the purchase of Russian natural gas without answering the question of what would happen in the event of supply problems. The second was a political decision to early shutdown of their nuclear generation stations in response to political objections from the German Green Party without any immediate strategy to replace this major source of clean energy.

I am learning a lot. Not necessarily about the topic at hand.

Replacing 500 hp ICE, with 500 hp electrics isn't going to slow climate change
There is no legitimate reason to go two or three times the speed limit or zero to sixty in less than ten seconds
It's just boy fun

We're not going to grow our way out of environmental situation caused by excess growth

I would just like to announce I am completely offended by all opposing views and believe the answer I give forth is the only correct answer. I will therefore report and/or mock any other views not in agreement with my own.

With that said, non-ICE are a lie.

What if you're getting chased by an angry blizzard and need to outrun it? Hmmm? What about that?

A pack of angry internet* trolls is scarier


* Need this qualifier so znomit doesn't think of creatures that inhabit Middle Earth

We definitely speed up when we ride over bridges down here in Middle Earth.

Some up-to-date stats for electricity generation in America

Fossil fuels 61.0%
Renewables 19.8%
Nuclea 18.9%

Ref: https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3

Looks at my stats above,

500 from ice ain't the same as 500 from electricity

The mix from state to state and region to region within the US varies wildly.

True true but most posts here are so generalised in the first place that a generalised stat is reasonable plus it hints at the direction of the energy market. eg Where California leads many will follow (eventually)

Agreed. I'm going to be 60 this year and the car and scooter I have now will likely be my last so I'm not sweating it. Plus in older condo and apartment communities there are no electric charging stations. And I don't have a garage to store a private one. So there's that.

as soon as they make them affordable and give us proper amenities across the country to support EVs... im down. until then nope, unless i win the lottery, lol

Indeed. And because renewable energy isn't just clean but also priced right, it will help us to move in the direction of other than ICE powered two wheelers.

Hard to imagine that many will want to pay a premium for a non-renewable fuel that very likely won't be as easily available in the future. That is not how economics usually works.

As Jess observed, the situation in various regions of the US varies greatly and is likely to remain that way. I live in the Northwest where the majority of electricity is generated by hydropower with wind power and solar expanding quickly. All coal-fired generation in Oregon and Washington has been shut down. Natural gas-fired power is used only for peaking. Both hydropower and windpower are in surplus at some times so our future lies in ways to store power for use at night, when the wind doesn't blow, and at periods of low runoff. Pumped storage appears to be one likely answer to bridge such gaps. Remember that the transmission loss in moving electricity over long distances is substantial so simply relying on large scale energy grids does not make regional issues go away.

Our nearest relatives live an average of a thousand miles away in opposite worlds. Texas and California. Over the next 60 days, we will have at least one round trip to each and possibly two to Nor-Cal. One of those will be towing a loaded trailer. Sadly, the scoots won't be coming with us.

When trips like these are possible with an EV, I'll be all in!

Here's a breakdown by US state of the energy mix for electricity generation:

https://www.chooseenergy.com/data-center/electricity-sources-by-state/

South Korea fines Tesla for exaggerating driving range of its EVs in cold temperatures

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-01-04/south-korea-fines-tesla-for-exaggerating-driving-range-of-evs/101825198

"The driving range of most EVs drop by up to 40 per cent in cold temperatures
Tesla's suffer even more, plunging by up to 50.5 per cent"

Oh man... A $3.28 million fine. Elon will have to set up a GoFundMe to pay that hefty fine.

It's not the size of the fine that matters to me (although it's interesting to see a country do so). It's the size of the drop in range that is interesting

All this wheel spinning....Right now, (right now!) the electric MC/scooter market is basically aimed at commuting. Some can do more than that, ( Zero, Energica) - and more are coming out every day. Cars, of course are a different story, basically led by Tesla. I guess my point is that honestly most of what we need from these machines is already there. Yes, many will want their scooter to be able to travel 300+ miles in any direction at a moments notice, but 90% of us would be happy with 50 miles or so. New battery technologies will continue to come along, and some lower prices with that.
One last thought : the fear of battery life expectancy. My youngest has a 2007 Prius we bought with 180,000 miles on it 7 years ago. it had been sitting for a while (bad for the battery) but was used mainly on the highway between here and Nashville. About six months in, we got the dreaded "red triangle of death" icon showing on the dash. Did some research and found a guy who rebuilt the batteries. He came to my house from Charleston in his 2005 Prius with then had 350,000 miles on it. Took out and install a rebuilt battery, checked the whole system and was on his way in about an hour. 5 years and 50,000 miles later, it is still going strong.

As things stand now, the BMW CE04 is the ideal electric scooter for my needs - it has an 80 mile range and 75 mph top speed - but the price is outrageous. I'm sure the naysayers will tell me that, in the winter, the range drops down to 1/2 mile.

EV scooter technology will improve and their prices will drop to make them competitive with ICE scooters. In 20 years, I'll be 66 and hopefully still alive. I'll be riding my EV scooter thousands of miles per year, on highways and through podunk towns, and I'll have no concern about range (or when I need to do the next oil change). Hopefully in 20 years this forum will still be around so that I can quote this post and say "I told you so" or someone else can quote it and say, "theschuman was a dumbass 20 years ago, and he hasn't changed in 20 years!" Most of my longtime friends would agree with the latter statement.

Just out of curiosity, if you owned a gas station franchise now... Would you actually install a charging station??

I used to work in a big data company that did predictive analytics for retail chains. I also worked in automotive. Keep in mind a gas station really is just a very niche retail store, and the physical retail model is all about dollars per sq. ft and turnover rate.

Charging stations = much less turnover rate, selling to a much smaller demographic, with a much longer transaction time, for the same physical space, effectively lowering your dollars/square foot, making your retail business less profitable.

In most North American urban environments, the price of land per square foot is astronomical (ask any avocadotoast-eating millennial who didn't think to save up for a house sooner), and charging stations in gas stations lose money. That's why we aren't seeing them in gas stations in major cities in any noteworthy numbers.

People in forums shout "the infrastructure is coming!" while the people who actually own the infrastructure are like "lol, we do not want this and are going to fight it tooth and nail as long as we can or until the government gives us so many hundreds of millions in tax payers money that you're going to end up paying us the same money anyway."

20 years from now there will probably be far fewer gas stations around.
In part due to that mentality, but in large part due to home-owners installing solar panels and charging their car at home.
What to do about folks without a garage or other convenient home-based charging availability will be an issue, certainly.

In my own case, I currently own two ICE vehicles and my own home, and don't plan on buying a new car for at least 4 years. Between now and then, I fully intend on installing solar, more than I need for current electrical usage. So, when I do eventually buy a new car, it will likely be an EV, yet my overall electrical consumption may well be lower then, than it is now. At that point, I will have little use for gas stations (fill my wife's car about once per month probably), and I will have at the same time reduced the overall load on the electric grid. Exactly when all of this happens for me personally is the main variable.

Probably not. But if I owned a world-class brewery, I'd put some in. https://twitter.com/treehousebrewco/status/1120764051791982592?

I think the "gas station model" isn't necessarily going to carry through for EVs. Perhaps, charging will be a "destination" model. The shopping mall near me built a bank of chargers. The mall is right off the highway, so now it picks up additional foot traffic when EVs need to charge. While the EVs charge, their owners get a bite to eat at Panera or a new hat at Lids. Let's face it, not too many want to go shopping (or spend time) at a typical gas station. Urban driving is foreign to me, but I imagine city-dwellers don't drive all that much compared to suburban folks. I'm not sure what they do in the city for fun… Maybe the urbanists would go see The Tempest instead of The Lion King if they could charge their EV at the Shakespearean theater, but not at the Lion King's venue? Or maybe they would choose to work on their laptops at Awesome Urban Coffee Place instead of Starbucks if the latter offered EV chargers and Starbucks did not?

One of the history lessons I've been taught along the way -- and by history, I mean specifically the history of industry, progress, and disruption -- is that almost none of the major players in the history of industry ever managed to transition from the business model that they were in to the business model that wholesale replaced it.

There are a few cases where you can clearly see that a business was able to transition through many phases of the same general idea and end up completely transformed, but still in the same business (IBM is a good example). But for every IBM, there are hundreds or even thousands of companies that just couldn't make the transition. They either lacked the know-how, or they saw that transitioning would cannibalize their own business.

What you're describing -- the retail square footage calculation -- is an example of the latter. It doesn't make economic sense, on paper, for these stores to install chargers, when they can make much more money per square foot with the model they already have.

Until their business disappears. That's the trap.

This is exactly the scenario that the new players in the industry are working towards. Gas stations are a relic, and only exist because the world needed that specific piece of infrastructure at that specific moment in time. It's unlikely they will pivot to the new model.

In North Carolina, charging stations are appearing in a variety of places. There's a few at the more popular parking lots for greenway path access, some shopping areas have put them in by the half dozen, and yes: several gas stations have a few. Gas stations here are leaning more and more towards the "convenience store" angle where food & a break from driving is forefront than a "gas/service station" model where refueling and maintenance were the focus.

For the gas stations...they have unleaded, but most places also have diesel and kerosene pumps, even though they're only a small fraction of sales. Why not add a charging station?

adri wrote: The number of public charging ports is rapidly increasing and not just in North America. People will charge their EVs in many places, as others above have pointed out, at destinations and at home is likely to be heavy in that mix.

Why make a stop just to refuel? That's very old fashioned and not how EVs work best. Most EVs will charge while their owners do other things, like sleep, work or eat. It makes very much sense to offer charging ports as public amenities and that is a current trend in several countries. Since at home charging is dirt cheap compared to filling up ICE cars with gasoline, we will see much more of that as well.

Going back to the "What happens when it's cold, or you're stuck in a snow drift" theme, there's a good article in the Washington Post this morning:

And here's an article calculating how long you can idle in a gasoline-engine car. Obviously it varies by engine size and tank capacity, but the calculations are pretty straightforward.

The answer? About 33 hours, on a full tank, in a Ford Explorer.

https://www.autotrader.ca/editorial/20190201/how-long-can-you-stay-warm-on-a-tank-of-gas/

Well, assuming you don't die of carbon monoxide poisoning first.

Agree with everyone who replied above. Will be interesting to see what happens next.

Farm tractors, big trucks and big ships ...

As the world moves to a low carbon economy, has diesel fuel run its course?
https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2023-01-08/experts-and-industry-contemplate-transition-away-from-diesel/101822916

Once you've resolved the issues with high volume manufacturing, distribution and storing Hydrogen I can see the "Gas Station" making a comeback as there won't have to be additional parking for EV's.

I'm wondering if they are just a clever stepping stone while we're en route to something else.