I’m curious: I know that iPhones have a finite battery life (eventually the batteries need to be replaced and can no longer take a charge).
Is this a problem with electric cars as well? If so, what is the projected lifespan, and what is the replacement cost?
All batteries, regardless of what type, eventually will wear down. A lot depends upon how they are charged (trickle, slow, fast) and how low they allowed to get between charges. As to lifespan and replacement costs, a lot depends upon the type of batteries used, the number of batteries in a vehicle, and the driving and charging history. It will probably vary a lot. Hopefully, replacement cost will go down as battery technology improves, so by the time one would need new batteries they can be replaced with “improved” ones. So yes, battery replacement will be a concern for electric cars also.
It’s that same thing with solar panels. After so many years (5+), they start to deteriorate and put out less power than when new. I believe the current ones lose about 25% capacity after 5-7 years, but they still work. Eventually they will have to be replaced. Even a house roof has to be replaced eventually. 
Now the problem with solar panels built into a car’s surface. What will they have to do once they deteriorate to the point they have to be replaced. Will they have to replace the “shell” on the car? 
It’ll happen slowly enough that I think we’ll have several decades to make the necessary infrastructure adjustments. Gas stations aren’t exactly going to disappear completely within the next 4 years…
I expect peak demand charges to increase, so people are incentivized to put their heavy chargers on later at night, when demand is lower. They already do this in California.
Same advice applies, get a plug in hybrid. That way you can charge with gasoline any time you need to.
The use case is quite different, for one thing, car batteries are EN-OR-MOUS. See the video I linked in the post, starting at 4 minutes in. I’ve cued up the video to start at that point here:
Not really, watch the above video please ↑ ↑ ↑
It’ll happen slowly enough that I think we’ll have several decades to make the necessary infrastructure adjustments. Gas stations aren’t exactly going to disappear completely within the next 4 years…
Understood. I realize that it may be practical to get there if the planning is done; however, my main concern was whether or not governments take EV projections seriously to the extent that they would plan both grid and generation improvements to support them in order to make the gradual progress necessary to get there.
Once you cross a certain threshold of EV ownership, night-time may well become the new peak demand period for electricity use. In some climates this then makes home heating a lot more expensive during the winter. I am getting off track, but I think the point is made.
The use case is quite different, for one thing, car batteries are EN-OR-MOUS. See the video I linked in the post, starting at 4 minutes in. I’ve cued up the video to start at that point here:
Essentially, I think this suggests that overly-paranoid people are wrong, but it doesn’t mean there’s not a concern.
Your geographic location plays a part. If you are in Canada, for example, where you can regularly wake up to winter temperatures below -4F and be out in unexpected snowstorms that bring traffic to a standstill to turn a 30 min commute into 3 hours, your range is already severely compromised by the cold temperatures and having to heat your car (at the expense of range) whether you are moving or not. In an equal situation at two different vehicle ages, chopping 15% off your battery capacity could mean the difference between making it home in year 1 but not in year 4. That’s not going to happen every day but it’s another one in the “anxiety” bucket. This would be mitigated by better access to charging.
If you lease your cars in 4-year increments, you probably have no concern. If you buy and hold cars for 10 years, it’s more of an issue. I have never leased a car in my life, but if I was going to try an EV, I would probably lease the first one.
The main point: there are legitimate concerns for some people.
But maybe it just means EVs are not yet ready for certain parts of the world. We shouldn’t view EVs are a great fit for everyone - for the people they work for, it’s one less gasoline-powered car on the road. Whether that’s a good or a bad thing depends on how well we “green” our power grid and manage the battery manufacturing and recycling process, I guess.
On your original point that they are a cool piece of technology, I fully agree 
@codinghorror, Thanks for the video. I hadn’t realized the extent of the improvements they’ve made in the batteries for the electric cars. While some people have eked 8 to 10 years out of a regular car battery, these lithium-ion batteries have them whipped! Food for thought… how much will it cost the person who buys a used electric car 10+ years down the road when the batteries start to wear out? Hopefully they’ll get a good credit for the old set. But by that time, battery technology will (hopefully) have improved to bring the cost down considerably.
Hopefully, by the time we’re ready for a new vehicle, the LightYear One’s price will have come down - a lot! 
Yeah cold weather is a variable, for sure. Heating takes energy.
It’d also be mitigated by larger, cheaper batteries, which is already happening and will continue to happen. It’s likely you would require a model with a larger battery in a very cold climate versus a warm climate.
And longer term global warming is going to “solve” this for all of us if we’re not careful 
Yes this is cool! I was curious about how much charge you’d get…
https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/26/business/lightyear-one-solar-powered-car/index.html
On a long drive, help from the sun could add as much as 50 miles to a fully charged battery.
+50 mile range at … let’s call it generic house wall plug level … is not bad, at an observed charge rate of 3-5 miles of range per hour, that means the equivalent of ~10 hours of AC wall time.
It isn’t just the solar angle! Several interesting things here:
Cost is $127k though… not cheap, production in 2021.
Here’s the company’s website. I actually spent the time to go through the entire site on night. 
Of note, the Volt gas engine was directly coupled to the wheels through the transmission at highway speeds, which makes sense because in that kind of sustained output situation there is no sense in the loss of going from rotation to electricity then back to rotation. Quote from it’s wiki article:
While in this series mode at higher speeds and loads, (typically above 30 miles per hour (48 km/h) at light to moderate loads) the gasoline engine can engage mechanically to the output from the transmission and assist both electric motors in driving the wheels, in which case the Volt operates as a [power-split or series-parallel hybrid]. After its all-electric range has been depleted, at speeds between 30 to 70 miles per hour (48 to 113 km/h), the Volt is programmed to select the most efficient drive mode, which improves performance and boosts high-speed efficiency by 10 to 15 percent.
I initially bought the wrong charger (limited to 15 amps) and I had to re-do some things! Here’s what we ended up with, a 32 amp charger attached to a NEMA 14-50P plug.
This is the plug, to be clear, and you will need this one (or one like it) to get more than 20 amps.
Here’s the charger in action, pulling ~30A per the built in display… I guess that’s 7Kw?
The breaker is 40 amp. A bit blurry here, but it’s a 40 / 30 / 30 / 40 block, with the car charger on the two outside circuits.
Here are overall panel temps while the car is charging in the late afternoon.
You should not be driving anything for 14 hours a day anyways…
Lease/rent as technology evolves and change to a new model if they are more efficient and battery life is extended.
SpiralGray you are not alone, and this response is so typical of someone who doesn’t understand sports cars. It comes across as the “I bought an electric car and it works for me, so therefore it should be awesome for everyone”. There is no electric Miata. A sports car is so much more than a 0-60 time. Exceptionally powerful (and therefore expensive) cars are mostly penile compensation devices for people with money and are almost no interest in driving. They are one in the same with the bro-dozer trucks.
On the road tripping thing, this is very much something my wife and I like to do in the same way. I race cars and we drive a truck with trailer with a stop only every 400 miles or so and can do 1000mi/day. I don’t think this is as odd as you think it is, you just live in a bubble of friends who have different priorities. I know dozens of people who do this (not just race car friends).
I will be on-board for an electric truck when I can do a 400 mi charge (on a truck that can tow a 10k lb trailer) in under 20 min for < $150 (and the truck can be bought used for $10k).
The electric sports car will be real when they are < $30k new, have hot swappable batteries, and weigh less than 3000lbs. That is when they will actually be more than just a appliance car or a rolling tech demo.
Electric purpose built race-cars will be real for the club level racer when they have hot swapable batteries, weigh ~1500lbs, can go 40mi (20 laps on 2mi road coarse) at full tilt on a battery, and are < $70k. This actually seems like the easiest to achieve but with the smallest possible market will probably be the last thing we actually see.
All this being said, the electric scooter is where it is at. Those things are awesome for their use-case. The electric car/truck is still lame or too-expensive for my use-case.
Why not? Road-tripping with a like-minded person and a good audio-book in a reasonably comfortable truck or car this isn’t as unreasonable as you’d think. There are use-cases where flying or paying for transport of whatever you are traveling with is just not economical or feasible. This becomes especially true if what you are traveling for requires a trailer’s worth of stuff. I race cars and know people who do this for other similar activities (mountain biking, motorcycle racing, etc). The cost to tow a race-car with a transport company cross country can easily cost $5k and be more time consuming if you count the hassle of rental cars and planning around airports especially if where you are going is no where near a major airport. If you tow yourself it can cost a similar amount of time and considerably less money.
Also, hard core road-tripping is not as unpleasant as you probably think it is. I write software and it is not uncommon for me to spend similar amounts of time in an office chair. It is amazingly refreshing to spend a whole day in a car especially if you do it with someone who is similarly comfortable road-tripping. And if both of you are capable (and you have a car well prepped for it) it is not difficult to switch at 12 hours and drive cross country without stopping to sleep.
I mean for his example (@Tyler_Weaver). In your case you are moving a motor home and driving car from track to track using a truck and multiple drivers, and your “extreme” transportation requirements won’t benefit from an electric car in the short term.
I think the real point is that unless your primary use for a car/truck is commuting and grocery getting the electric car is just not there yet.
I hate commuting so I write software from home (wherever that happens to be). If more people could figure out how to go to work without using a car it would be much better for the environment than electric cars. It would also be awesome for reducing congestion. Using the bus for commuting is much less sexy than buying an electric car but in the end will be much better for all of us.
If more people loved cars they could be so much more than a refrigerator on wheels.
That’s like … 97% of the world though. You realize this… right?
The Kia Nero has got to be up there with Chevy Nova for unintentionally worst named vehicle. Especially with the novelty of electric cars people might be more worried about battery fires.
Also the manufacturing of enormous batteries is not great for the environment or people that build them/mine them, I think it might be more practical to consider a gas powered vehicle and then a bicycle to use for half of your trips if you can. Especially with everyone staying near home lately unfortunately…
Yes, we’ve had a few EVs/hybrids and still own one. In Cali we had solar in the Mojave desert where the summer temperatures were around 100 -110 degrees F. Charging the car and keeping the AC running cost us about $30 per month. The daily commute was 2 days of 50 miles and 3 days of 95 miles.
I’ll never go back to gas vehicles but I must say the sound a Dodge HellCat engine makes is sweet!!!
Well if it isn’t Geoff, my old coworker from GSK! 
Good to hear from you my friend! I often recall that neon yellow Honda electric car you had wayyyy back in the day, talk about being an early adopter! (I also remember it was destroyed in an unfortunate car accident that was not your fault.)
Hi Jeff,
Really great to hear from you!!! Hope you are all well!
Yes, that Insight was way ahead of its time. Yes, it was totalled by 2 collisions within 10 days. The first, I was sitting at a red light and a 12 year old runaway that was driving her parent’s car (without them knowing) rear ended me. The several days later (it was still drivable), I was on the freeway during rush hour traffic when a deer decided to try and run across the 4 lanes of freeway, I braked hard but still hit it and a pickup truck rear-ended me. Game over!
We’re saving for a Tesla, but have owned 2 i3s, 1 Fiat 500e, and a Chevy Volt, all have different personalities.
Are you still in SF? Love your blog!
Geoff.
