On 26 May 2015 at 6:50, tomw via EV wrote: > Plus today with instant everything, putting up with inconvenience is > sooo yesterday.
I think you're on to something here. The things that we like about EVs - the smoothness, the silence, the instant torque, zero emissions, "refuel" at home - just don't seem to be all that important to most people. Besides, in the last 20-30 years, ICEVs have gotten better at a lot of these things. (Who would have thought it?) I think it's fair to say that consumers buy their vehicles for both rational and emotional reasons. The rational factors are easy - cost, utility, convenience. EVs are going to lose on utilty, mostly because of their limited range. They shouldn't lose on cost, but most buyers don't think long-term and see only the up-front cost. Without aggressive subsidies - and those are subject to political whim - EVs are in trouble. Convenience? At the moment, how EVs fare depends on which you consider more convenient, going to a gas station or remembering to plug it in. But something else might enter here. Consumers, especially wealthy ones, perceive themselves as busy busy busy even when they actually have lots of leisure. They embrace convenience and are willing to pay for it. I think you're right that EVs will succeed as a vehicle class at least partly on how universally convenient they are. One obvious way to increase EVs' convenience is for ICEVs convenience to fall hard and fast. Buying fuel was hugely inconvenient in some areas of the US in the mid- 1970s. In many areas, shortage-driven panic buying created blocks-long, hours-long waiting lines at filling stations. College students earned pocket money sitting in impatient and busy suits' cars, waiting for their 5 or 10 gallon gasoline allotment. For many reasons, I don't think that that particular scenario is likely to happen again. Fuel prices will eventually rise again, but that alone isn't enough to make large numbers of people desert ICEVs for EVs. Look what people are willing to pay for gasoline in Europe. So, let's think of some ways that EVs might become radically more convenient, ways that ICEVs simply can't match. Here's one: transparent inductive charging. Your garage has a standardized inductive charger in the floor; you park the car and it fuels itself without any active participation from you. (I know about the cost and efficiency issues. C'mon, dream with me for a minute. ;-) What if building codes required every new house or major renovation to include a universal, standards-defined inductive EV charger in the garage floor? Maybe you could include a square-area threshold at first, so that they'd mostly go into more expensive houses where the cost would be a trivial fraction. Mass production would eventually drive down the cost, and the square-area threshold could be lowered. Public parking lots might also be reqired to provide some minimum percentage of EV slots with this charging. Your EV could automatically sip electrons while you shopped. The EV would have a unique ID tag. Each month the cost would be billed to your credit card. You'd never touch a gas pump or a charger cord. Ads for compatible EVs could crow, "No more smelly gas stations ever, and you never have to plug it in!" Is this scheme really practical? Probably not. Passing legislation is a high bar in the US these days, so public money for this would be hard to get. Still, I've seen additions to building codes that add costs for builders go through. IMO there's a faint glimmer of hope for getting something like this into the codes - at least in some states. Something to think about. And anyway, we're dreaming here. ;-) Any more EV ultra-convenience ideas that ICEVs can't match? David Roden - Akron, Ohio, USA EVDL Administrator = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = EVDL Information: http://www.evdl.org/help/ = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Note: mail sent to "evpost" and "etpost" addresses will not reach me. To send a private message, please obtain my email address from the webpage http://www.evdl.org/help/ . = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
