Monday, January 15, 2018

EV

I am on a couple of Electric Vehicle forums. One I follow fairly closely, another in passing. I sometimes start a reply/response to a discussion and then realize a lot of people aren't going to be overly pleased with my ramblings taking up so much space and effort to go through. I then thought I know a better place to just ramble, but it likely would not reach any of those people in the discussion. Needless to say I may throw some of my miscellaneous ramblings out here as I did when I started blogging.

I have thoughts all over the place on some of this stuff. I guess I will just ramble some without any real data. Sorry. I would think it hard  to be a business trying to set up electric car charging infrastructure. You don't own the electricity and you don't dictate the technology and if infrastructure building costs go up are customers going to be willing to pay more for it or just say forget it I'll go back to ICE. So many variables. I know some can't get good charging at their residence for various reasons, but it appears many can and do.  How many of you have a form of charging at home. If ranges double,  triple, etc and time to charge lessen what does that do for demand for away from home network charging. And what if things are simply looked at differently and another strategy works out. I think a company was doing a swap process for batteries, swapped while running through a structure much like a car wash. What if we all  had standard modular batteries instead and you simply pulled up and batteries were swapped in minutes. What if breakthrough in solar would allow for on-car solar reliably able to charge fast enough to sustain charge. Or technology changes that let you do more with less energy. One of the biggest variables is the human factor. I admit I have some of the bad traits of an American me generation. I want my own stuff and I enjoy driving. If I were really green (not even close) I would probably support autonomous (electric of course) cars and not require that I have one sitting unused much of a day all to myself (as well as 2 ICEs). It may be the best form of public transportation and come directly to me (of courses I could do a cab, Uber, etc to do that now) or walk to public transportation stops. But how many of us really want is good for humanity versus what is good for me. Hard to say I am saving the planet with my very own BMW not to be shared with others.

Would  chargers everywhere simply end up being the new phonebooth. How many phonebooths do you see today?

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