If everyone drove EVs there would be less traffic because everyone will be able to accelerate to the speed limit instantly instead of waiting one mile to accomplish that seemingly impossible feat.
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What happens if everyone drove EV?
- Thread starter JetFalcon
- Start date
Hah, I think you overestimate how good people drives regardless of how fast the car is. Autonomous driving is the solution for less traffic, not faster acceleration.
yes! Imagine if everyone at a stoplight could simultaneously start moving like one big train when the light turns green. There'd be a lot more cars moving through each light (assuming you're not just stopping 100 yards up at the next light, of course).
Here in traffi-hella-fornia, I get to watch stop lights turn yellow before the car in front of me has even started moving yet. Once the light turns red, then I get to move forward halfway to the light. Where's my Stonecutters' secret tunnel? Elon's building those too, right?
I've seen studies that have shown gas prices spiking once EV's get to x% (or actually once gas demand drops by y%, can't remember the actual numbers). A drop in gas demand will reduce funding for new oil fields which will cause the price of oil to rise dramatically. This will help the cost equation for EV's hastening the demise of the ICE. I'm sure it will fluctuate for a while but oil prices should trend upwards as they have all the sunk costs and lower volume of product to try to recover it.
You clearly haven't driven around many Tesla drivers, then.
Way too many of us seam to have came from prior Prius/Civic/diesel VW owner base, and are afraid to apply pressure to the accelerator, or drive anywhere above the speed limit.
Neah, they will just be accidents at every stop light, since there is always someone picking his/her knows, reading a cell phone, applying make-up, or taking a nap.
Well, someone slept through his/her economics 101 class.
Higher EV adoption will reduce demand for gas, thus the price will go DOWN, not up.
Making remaining ICE cars slightly cheaper to drive.
There is a VERY long lag time before new oil field exploration funding, development, infrastructure investment, and oil from a new field hitting the market. Frequently, decades plus long.
In the short term, a much more likely response would be for OPEC to adjust output to keep oil prices relatively stable.
Economics 101 does not apply to all situations. Why there is a 201 and a 301 I suppose. The dynamics of the oil market are fairly complicated. But here is one. Once the EV adoption is above 50% of voters, there will be a selfish incentive to make gas taxes 500% of what they are now. Not saying that will happen at exactly 50% but there will be an incentive to do so - and a perfectly rational one.
There is also the issue that gas stations will close which will drop competition some. Propane for example, has a much higher margin than gasoline, because you can't buy it in as many places.
So simple conclusions are not always applicable. I suspect there will be wild swings in prices as revolution and economic meltdown happens from lower prices - Iran, Saudi Arabia and Russia.
I have to think that there will be some benefit eventually from better acceleration in regards to traffic. But hard to say. You have to wonder why so many people accelerate so slowly. I take it as my duty to show how fast traffic can move....
There is also the issue that gas stations will close which will drop competition some. Propane for example, has a much higher margin than gasoline, because you can't buy it in as many places.
So simple conclusions are not always applicable. I suspect there will be wild swings in prices as revolution and economic meltdown happens from lower prices - Iran, Saudi Arabia and Russia.
I have to think that there will be some benefit eventually from better acceleration in regards to traffic. But hard to say. You have to wonder why so many people accelerate so slowly. I take it as my duty to show how fast traffic can move....
And yet it is much easier to run new power lines to one or two DCFC sites than it is to truck in fuel, which is why after Fukishima Japan did that, and then used Leafs for a lot of the rescue efforts initially.
If the disaster is large enough in scope to take out the power grid entirely you might have more of a point - but even then, public buildings and emergency services keep emergency generators, and charging from them is again more practical for emergency services than trying to get gas from somewhere.
If magically there were enough BEVs for everybody who could afford a $35K car to buy one overnight, and if they all did so, It would probably overload the electric grid. There would be widespread power failures.
But that would require magic and magic does not exist. Instead, there are two companies (Tesla and Nissan) building significant numbers of BEVs, and some other companies building smaller numbers in order to greenwash their images. In addition, not everybody who can afford a new car will buy one. Most people wait until their old car no longer suits them before buying a new one.
Thus the introduction of BEVs is gradual, allowing electric generation capacity to match the increased demand. At the same time, more and more people are installing solar, which is now competitive in many markets. So the increase in BEVs and the increase in generation capacity compliment each other.
Furthermore, the decreasing cost of solar puts market pressure on public utilities to keep their prices down. Here in Maui, where electricity is about 35¢/kWh, it makes sense to install solar whether you have an EV or not. My home and my Model 3 are powered by solar. And the utility, recognizing that its aging diesel-powered electric plants are uneconomical, is planning to switch to sustainable energy when the old plants are retired. The falling cost of solar will make the cost of owning a BEV even more economical
BEVs are helping to "drive" the push for sustainable energy, and Tesla is a leader.
So, not to worry: BEVs will not break the grid. And we don't have to keep BEVs out of the reach of poor people (though they probably will be for some time to come, due to the cost of batteries.) Of course, the real issue is, Why can't the richest nation on Earth provide shelter, food, and health care to all its people? The real losers once everybody is driving electric will be the gas companies.
Only if a large portion of them choose to charge during the current peak usage hours.
As I pointed out up above, if all cars were EVs, EV charging would only be ~20% of our total power grid usage. There's plenty of excess capacity at night to charge all those EVs, so it's really just a matter of managing when the charging happens to fit the available power.
That might be a problem if someone could snap their fingers and deployed a couple hundred million EVs, but I imagine solutions will be firmly in place by the time large quantities of cars are on the road.
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The majority of US households have multiple vehicles. So, you could have a high percentage of EV sales, but still a majority of households with a mix of fuels who'd still have a stake in not having very high gas taxes.
With the rate at which smart chargers are going mainstream, I don't see it being a problem.
Tesla's a little late, but I think that with the new wall connectors, they're going smart as well.
Kilotango74
Active Member
You know some people who “have money” have it because they do things like wait in line for a few bucks cheaper tank of gas. Doesn't make them “cheap people”, just smarter with their money.
Time is what you can't get back though. I would rather spend $2 extra than wait in line for 20 minutes.
That's precisely my point: Add a hundred million EVs to the grid overnight and you've got problems. (Many of them would not use off-peak charging if they suddenly had an EV today.) But we're not going to have an additional hundred million EVs overnight. We're getting them gradually, and as the demand for electricity rises, so will generating capacity and load-leveling strategies.
My point is that even if you magically add a hundred million EVs, the grid stands a decent chance of surviving, and simple actions between the owners and electric companies could assure it would.
It’s not a great situation, but it isn’t the guaranteed disaster you painted it as before going on to point out the more likely reality.
Unless it doesn't survive...and then you have all those EV's unable to charge unless they have off-grid capable solar. haha. Back to my bunker...
To be clear, I am joking on all of the above, except needing off-grid capable solar if the grid went down.
The only significant change in energy production/demand is that we'll be getting it through electric companies instead of gasoline ones. EVs have a nice potential bonus to one day help balance out the electrical grid with V2G.
Mostly good things to come with this EV transition we're going through as a civilization. We still need to solve the whole traffic issue, though, and autonomous cars will make it worse. Governments will have to make it harder to commute in cities alone.
Mostly good things to come with this EV transition we're going through as a civilization. We still need to solve the whole traffic issue, though, and autonomous cars will make it worse. Governments will have to make it harder to commute in cities alone.
Soda Popinski
Member
In the US in 2019, 4e12 kWh of electricity was generated. The average American drives 13.5k miles / year, with 225 million licensed drivers, so make that 3e12 miles / year. OP mentioned 35K EVs, so let's assume best case scenario of SR+ efficiency of about 4 miles / kWh, means we'll need 7.6e11 kWh of additional energy. Assuming that's generated mostly off peak, I would guess we have the capacity for that.
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