Better Place built quite a few battery swap locations, but due to their limited market (~1000 cars, compared more than 23,000 cars for Tesla already) they obviously failed.
The Tesla battery swaps are listed at between $60 and $80 which for a similar sedan (size, engine power, etc) is about the same as a full tank of gas.
The cost and serviceability of electric motors vs internal combustion engines reeks of BS and until you provide actual sources most of your arguments will have lost all credibility in my eyes.
Battery packs for EVs are expensive and heavy. And more complicated than people realise. They're not just big batteries. Making an electric car with decent range at an affordable price* is not easy at all. Tesla is closer than anyone else.
* edit: an affordable price that isn't loss-making, I should say
If you can amortize the battery cost over the miles driven, electric cars ought to be cheaper than gas cars. Less maintenance (no spark plugs or oil changes), less consumables, and the purchase price is about the same (see my first phrase).
If Better Place had worked out, it would have let people shift the battery ownership elsewhere. But it didn't.
Build an inferior product (fueling takes 25x longer than a gas powered car) then charge you more to make it less inferior. I think electric vehicles are cool but when you push aside the eco/tesla fanboyism, the fact is that Tesla makes a car with one of the worst service records (next to last) of all the cars rated and when you take away all the government subsidies the car is hugely overpriced. A nice Audi A6 or A8 is a far better deal.
Such an interesting premise, such a flawed assumption...
An electric car shares most of its parts with a gas one, so you can't expect any savings from economies of scale there. Going back to the Model T for the cost curve is just laughable.
I’ve known a lot of people to say this, only to buy a gas powered vehicle when they realize that Teslas aren’t as cheap as they thought. The price gets even higher when they realize they need to hire an electrician to install a charging station for several thousand dollars.
A Tesla Model 3 base model in white with no options will cost $41K with destination charge and no self-driving. Upgrade to the long range model, any color other than white, and get the self-driving package and you're looking at $60K. That same $60K could buy two Honda Insight hybrids which get 40-50mpg, and you'd still thousands left over. There are cheaper electric cars out there, but it's still tough to compete with economy gasoline cars or even economy hybrids like the Honda Insight.
Road trips are also a hurdle for many. If a family drives 8 hours to visit grandma twice a year but an electric car would require a long charging stop at sparse charging infrastructure, suddenly that gas powered vehicle looks a lot more attractive.
Tesla has got to be sweating buckets. In theory, electric cars should be less expensive than gas cars. There's less materials and effort put into them.
Competition between manufacturers will bring the cost down in time. We are starting to see that. Eventually, the profit will be very small. Even Tesla will have trouble unless they find a different profit source other than the profit from selling cars.
This seems trite, but the reason EVs aren’t affordable now is that not enough are being produced to satisfy demand. The actual cell cost (not price) is crazy low, like under $80/kWh for the LFP type cells in the base Model 3. But the price goes higher because demand is so incredibly high, even though Tesla is making 1 million EVs per year and growing rapidly year on year.
Used EVs used to be pretty dang affordable already (I got a Leaf and a Volt for under $10k each) before all used cars became more expensive and the price of gasoline increased, increasing the demand for EVs.
The big problem the big auto manufacturers are having is the battery and cost. A mass-market electric car cannot cost as much as Tesla's offerings, and a huge part of that cost is the battery. Even with the most optimistic cost projections of battery costs in the near future, it's hard to see how to offer an electric car which is competitive on both cost and range with an ICE car.
This article has lots of false assumptions. To phrase it positively, the article ignores a lot of facts.
EVs are simpler devices than gasoline-powered vehicles. They have a smaller number of parts, making them easier to assemble. At similar scale to gas vehicles, electric vehicles should indeed be lower cost to built.
In addition, EVs have many fewer moving parts (in the engine and drivetrain in particular) than internal combustion vehicles. That further means lower construction cost for the most complex and costly part of a vehicle, and far lower maintenance cost.
While it is true, the engine and drive train has fewer parts, when I reduce it to motor and battery. But in fact every EV has a gear, including the Tesla. Yes, this gear is much simpler, but it is there and even runs with oil that has to be replaced every 100.000 miles like in every other car. The battery is as complex as an engine itself. Because you need to measure lots of sensors values and to control that it will not explode and not wear down to fast. Every battery, including the one in the Tesla, has a dedicated heating and cooling system just for the battery within the battery.
Then also lots of parts in car are the very same like brakes, steering, air condition, windows, and so. Remember that a current car is about 30% software and will be more in future. But there is only 1 engine control unit. The most of the parts are other things to control safety or personal comfort.
Electric vehicles, today, have lower total costs per mile than equivalent gasoline-powered vehicles, due to lower energy costs of electricity and the lower maintenance costs.
That neglects the fact, that most of the maintenance costs are not engine related. Like the brakes have to be regularly checked. It neglects the fact, that a battery will wear out sometimes between 3 to 6 years and has to be replaced, which is a huge cost related issue. The guarantee Tesla has, does not help, because you will pay for that guarantee otherwise.
The point is EVs cost more (sticker price) than gas cars and have less utility.
I'd consider an EV for my daily commute if I could buy a new one for $10K. I think that's a reasonable price for a small car that has maybe a 100 mile range.
But automakers are offering $50K cars and above that don't fully replace gas cars. No thanks.
If they are, they oughn't be. Batteries are like a really really expensive fuel tank. The fuel happens to be way cheaper. That's the trade-off. The article fails to mention this, which is odd.
ICE: powertrain + fuel tank ~$6,000 (or whatever your local currency) …
EV: powertrain + fuel tank ~$16,000 …
That makes more sense, but then you'd need – cost of fuel per mile/kilometre
ICE: 10¢ a mile
EV: 1¢ a mile (or sometimes free?)
That's why people are buying electric vehicles already. Okay, maybe it's partly environmental, but surely it is also because they figure that running costs are lower over the lifetime so they might break even overall. As battery prices drop, electric vehicles only become even more economical in the long run.
I don't entirely buy the author's depreciation argument, since that assumes you're trading in your car every 5 years as opposed to driving it for 15-20+ years until it ready to literally fall apart.
But even still, when you consider significantly reduced maintenance and fuel costs, it's not that far off.
An electric car has far fewer parts, simplifying the supply chain.
Also the battery in an EV is a massive amount of the cost, and will be dropping on its own curve.
I've been reading this guy for years, and complaints like yours are typical, but Naam has been far more right than his critics in the time I've been watching. If he feels this is a conservative estimate then I believe him. He didn't show his full work on why that's reasonable, but I believe it would stand up to scrutiny.
Better Place built quite a few battery swap locations, but due to their limited market (~1000 cars, compared more than 23,000 cars for Tesla already) they obviously failed.
The Tesla battery swaps are listed at between $60 and $80 which for a similar sedan (size, engine power, etc) is about the same as a full tank of gas.
The cost and serviceability of electric motors vs internal combustion engines reeks of BS and until you provide actual sources most of your arguments will have lost all credibility in my eyes.
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