You Will Own an Electric Car Soon

[SGOS]

Sooner still if you're not in the USA, but it's happening much faster than science anticipated.  Battery density (the ability to store power) is increasing faster that we thought and is actually getting cheaper.  Electric cars are approaching price parity with gas driven.  Electricity is cheaper than gas (at least for now), even while gas is at an all time low adjusted for inflation.  Some traditional car manufactures will catch up to Tesla, but not all.  I'm thinking Midas Muffler shops will become storage units.  Tesla is still leading the charge and has the advantage of experience, but the field is open for competition.  Charging stations are increasing in number (This was a big drawback for me, although a drive over 300 miles is rare for me anymore.  The biggest drawback for me was price, but that's almost solved).  Greater subsidies in Europe will mean a major transition there sooner.  But we are a couple years away now.  Unless the oil companies can buy congress, which is not entirely unlikely, it's going to happen.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/20/business/electric-cars-batteries-tesla-elon-musk.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20200922&instance_id=22405&nl=the-morning&regi_id=129705843&section_index=2&section_name=three_more_big_stories&segment_id=38696&te=1&user_id=33a2a6e6868fd65c48b0f219d16ed7c2

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The curse of the Interstates, services being few and far between, could be solved by building charging stations at regular intervals. They couldn't need attendants, but I'm sure the lure of selling overpriced drinks and candy would not be ignored.

[Baruch]

We have had these for years.  Golf carts.  A sign of upper level income.  Now we allow some larger golf carts on the streets.  But in the longer run, yes ... all the cars may be electric, but again, only upper level income people will be driving.  Fortunately for the 90%, there will be new jobs as chauffeurs and chauffeuses.  And caddies, don't forget the caddies.

In any case, using electric still creates global warming, is simply distributes the CO2 differently, from local to central sources (to be better controlled by the upper level income people).

[Baruch]

The curse of the Interstates, services being few and far between, could be solved by building charging stations at regular intervals. They couldn't need attendants, but I'm sure the lure of selling overpriced drinks and candy would not be ignored.

In my part of the world, don't forget the genuine Indian curios made in China ;-)

[Jason Harvestdancer]

The charging time issue would also need to be resolved, not just the distance per charge issue.

[Baruch]

The charging time issue would also need to be resolved, not just the distance per charge issue.

The battery charges as a result of a chemical reaction, that only goes so fast, though you can increase surface area and add catalysis.  But eventually if you consider dumping enough energy into a small space fast enough, that will simply result in meltdown (because of waste heat).

[Blackleaf]

The charging time issue would also need to be resolved, not just the distance per charge issue.

Yeah. Five minutes to fill up a gas tank, versus eight hours to fill a battery? Who's got time for that?

[Baruch]

Yeah. Five minutes to fill up a gas tank, versus eight hours to fill a battery? Who's got time for that?

Working in a part time gig economy?

[SGOS]

Actually, like all the rest of technology, charging times for car batteries are also coming down.  These sorts of rapid advancements happening in the industry is what that article was about.  Charging times are currently at 30 minutes for an 80% charge by the way.  It would be incorrect to say that gas cars do everything better than electric.  We are just used to one, but not the other.  I never thought the advancements would be happening this fast.  But then, when I was 40, I never thought there could be a computer in everyone's home, and the scope of what these computers might do was beyond my imagination.  Now, most everyone has a computer with a camera and a telephone in their pocket, and if you don't, you're considered a social dinosaur.  Nay saying is just a past time.  I remember when my principal where I taught was sending the secretaries to computer training.  They cried and rebelled. Try to get them to use a typewriter today, and they would scream bloody murder.  Progress in science and technology is happening today way faster than when those secretaries were forced to use computers.

[Baruch]

Science = Technology = magic wishing tree.  The very basis for Marxism (except Karl was thinking in terms of steam engines and perpetual motion machines).  I will wait for my George Jetson car, same as I have for 60 years.  All based on free lunch economics (socialism at top or bottom).

Microelectronics reaches as atomic level flaw limit/heat generation limit.  Moore's Law doesn't extend to infinite computing at no cost.  In fact, in silicon, the heat limit was reached some time ago, in terms of chip density.  That is why multiple cores are used in servers, rather than one big chip.  But then communication scaling limits cuts into what you can do, so 2 or 4 cores per mother board.  Then you go to a big rack of servers, with yet another scale of communication limits.  And why?  So the majority of traffic can be junk email and porn ;-)