The EV Revolution, Stage One

[matthew1]

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As we move into the end of the first stage of the EV revolution, note that in the next 12 or so years the rate of change in EV adoption will grow faster than it has before, and faster than it will ever again.

Stage One, 1-5% new cars sold (we are here)
Stage Two, 6-75% new cars sold (next year, and through the 2020s)
Stage Three, 76-99% new cars sold

This post discusses Stage One — why it has lasted over a decade — and predict the near-future of EVs in Stage 2. Please fasten your belt, because things are going to move very, very quickly in the world of EV cars, SUVs, and trucks.

Without further ado, here are the characteristics of the first phase of the EV revolution.

THE TIPPING POINT IS NOW
I don’t know if you’re ready for this but here it is: the 120-year era of internal combustion engines in cars and trucks is coming to a conclusion. You’re living in one of the great turning points of the Information Age. The great move to internal combustion was so long ago it didn’t even happen in the Information Age, it happened in the Machine Age. I was in my 20s during the Internet revolution, and the move to the EV future feels a lot like that.

Internal combustion engine development at major car manufacturers is dropping off or altogether dead, while all major manufacturers are selling EVs today, and planning fantastic new EVs for the future. You may want to be sitting when you read this statistic: Norway leads the world in percent of new EVs sold of their automobile market, at an astounding 83.5%.

The US in 2022 passed an EV tipping point: 5% of new car sales powered only by electricity. Likewise, model year 2022 is the last year you can buy a Volvo powered only by an internal combustion engine. From there on out, it’s full EV or hybrid for Volvos. Polestar has been EV-only for years.

To start, I think it’s important to answer the question “Why aren’t there more EVs on the roads today?”

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[matthew1]

It's now published here https://www.matthewsvolvosite.com/the-e ... -of-three/. Your opinions are welcome!

[BlackBart]

That's really well done, Matt! I learned a lot, especially that the current grid can handle a home charging load. I thought that was a major issue. Is that still true as adoption expands to EVs becoming normal?

You might change 3035 - that's 1000 years of hotrods!! WOOT!!

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I rolled across a bridge yesterday next to a black VW ID.4, with new stickers and local plates. I didn't know they were available yet. It's funny that I know of a handful of the first gen electric Fiat 500e's here in our small city. I think they probably migrated over from Portland. They were sold new I think only in OR and CA.



I for one have a chip on my shoulder about self-driving, which I think is a separate issue from EV's. It's of course generational, and what we're accustomed to as "normal." But it has SO many issues, and is not a system you can trust as currently designed. And what about snow, and rural roads with no stripes, and fog, etc etc? Recently a self-driving car mowed someone down just because the sensors were confused by a very ordinary occurrence. Random things like kids darting out from the curb are something it needs to be able to avoid 100% of the time.

It seems self-driving is also being marketed as a congestion and urban transportation solution, and I think it solves nothing. There is zero reduction in the number of cars on the road or number of new freeway lanes built for congestion ("If you build lanes, they will drive") They need to be farther apart and move slower because of their randomly cautious software. If planners want cars to become just horizontal elevators for transportation, we have that - they're called cabs, carpools, buses, and trains. Quiet, efficient. electric busses and trains. My little city now has 75% electric buses with wifi and no fares (federal grants, yes).

Flying cars, Elon's underground tubes, self-driving cars.....none of those help with commuting and congestion. Elon's tubes could be used for...trains, hey, there's an idea! Fewer cars, pleasant efficient mass transit, and maybe not commuting at all are the things that will help that problem. That and Star Trek transporters. Those would be neat.

And people are under the impression that their self-driver will drop them off and go park in some efficient high-rise garage. You summon it with your phone and it picks you up in front of your skyscraper. Can you imagine all those robot cars and big pickups negotiating their way out of the garages and to the office building entrance all at the same time?? It's a wishful thinking utopian idea that isn't going to work in a real world.


That's another related issue - planning for mass transit. My only personal experience was Seattle, a quiet little NW town full of lumberjacks and plaid and people who built great airplanes. "We don't need that big city stuff, that's silly!" Nobody imagined a future need, nobody set aside right-of-ways, nobody proposed a bond issue. We just kept building more floating bridges across the lake, cramming more lanes onto freeways, carving up neighborhoods to build express lanes, building tall concrete sound barriers because the freeway was ruining neighborhoods. They built a convention center downtown over 10 lanes of I-5, making it into a tunnel.

Some smart planners and engineers finally snuck in a bond issue for a "bus tunnel" through downtown. It seemed odd to do all that disruption and expense for a few dozen express busses to avoid street traffic, BUT...it just happened to be the right size and route to fit commuter trains perfectly! Surprise! When they finally started paying for a commuter train system, it zipped right into downtown in the existing tunnel.

But they've spent billions trying to buy up rights-of-way and corridors for trains, and it only goes from the airport to downtown, NE through Capitol Hill to the University of Washington, and north up I-5 to an old regional shopping center.

One man's opinion.

[abscate]

Self driving doesn’t have to be 100% safe effective, it needs to be safer than driven cars. It already is, as we drive so crappy already…too fast, distracted, drunk.

On the autonomous parking, if you get to work by 8, do you care if your car doesn’t park until 10? Not really. It isn’t going to congest, because software will hold it rather than have it drive into a road jammed with traffic. We will have to plan more staging areas but a car that can drop you off and then go get the kids or partner has huge advantages

An autonomous car isn’t the whole solution, it’s part of a whole engineered solution of tech, urban planning, consumer behaviour modification.

Those of us with 50 years of non-autonomous driving will have the hardest time adapting. I still turn around on a backup camera car.

[abscate]

Confession

I still have a deep, internal, gutteral, visceral feeling of wanting to bash every Tesla in with a shovel when I see one drive by.

[BlackBart]

On the autonomous parking, if you get to work by 8, do you care if your car doesn’t park until 10? Not really. It isn’t going to congest, because software will hold it rather than have it drive into a road jammed with traffic. We will have to plan more staging areas

This is the definition of congestion. Too many objects competing for limited real estate.

[BlackBart]

Maserati takes a swing...

[abscate]

On the autonomous parking, if you get to work by 8, do you care if your car doesn’t park until 10? Not really. It isn’t going to congest, because software will hold it rather than have it drive into a road jammed with traffic. We will have to plan more staging areas

This is the definition of congestion. Too many objects competing for limited real estate.

But when it’s just car congestion, and not car plus driver, it’s game changing

Cars are stupid. We have a $ 50,000 depreciating, money grubbing asset that we need for 40 minutes a day plus weekends

[BlackBart]

Isn’t that true! With all our recent auto failures Mrs BB has returned to her tone of “would it be smart to get something newer and more reliable?”

Of course BlackBart the Pirate answers that a 122 only has 10 fuses!!

[matthew1]

Hey BB, thanks for writing your initial post. I've been meaning to get back on a granular scale, but here's a few thoughts.

You might change 3035 - that's 1000 years of hotrods!! WOOT!!

D'oh! Fixed. Thank you.

EVs and urban congestion...

I think it's important to note that in a very unfair (to you) way, any objections you have I can just throw back at you a long-enough timescale, where technology will solve it. But since that's no satisfying way to debate, I'll constrain myself to stage 2 and 3 in my completely arbitrary and self-made 3 stage Tech Map of the EV Future™. (I'm not joking when I said I made it up and the begin/end years it's got. It made sense so I went with it.)

For one thing, vacant EVs waiting for humans can simply park underground, in vertical lifts, or very close to each other (centimeters on sides/front/back) in deep rows where they can figure out how to un-Jenga themselves when a certain EV needs to leave. How much 2D (and 3D) space is wasted in parking lots because we humans need to be able to get in/out of the spot and open/close doors? Half? Two-thirds? More?

Or maybe even they can be tilted 90 degrees nose-up and slide into car lockers. Why not?

Or they can just drive into the suburbs to wait for peak times when humans need them.

Or they can run inanimate cargo/documents/packages in B2B or B2C situations while they wait, day or night. Think of all the business cargo that gets shuttled around cities, like auto parts, Amazon deliveries, legal documents, small inventory items, and the ten thousand other business transport things that typically require a 9-5 driver operating in the daytime.

These things are all available in Stage 3, where self-driving is Level 5, so not for 10 years+.

I thought that was a major issue. Is that still true as adoption expands to EVs becoming normal?

It's expected to scale. Like I mentioned in our nuclear thread, the green energy products are coming online and adding huge capacity all the time now.

But it has SO many issues, and is not a system you can trust as currently designed. And what about snow, and rural roads with no stripes, and fog, etc etc?

I'll break my promise and throw a little tech timescale at this... as more EVs drive more, they'll map streets down to the mm. So say a thousand, or a half-million or whatever number runs through a no-stripe stretch of road will inform all EVs forever of where the invisible center is, where potholes are, and where the sides are.

Snow and fog is a different game, since historic data about that stretch will not help avoid live obstacles (except where crosswalks are [it'll slow down] or spots with high numbers of accidents [slow down]). That's where lidar and radar need to be used, something that Elon Musk swears is NOT to be part of his cars. Oh well, there are a dozen other manufacturers out there who will and are using those methods of pathfinding. Strange but true hill he plans to die on.

I'll write Stage 2 soon, which by definition will be speculation on my part. Then I'll write Stage 3, which I fully invite tomato-throwing at me, because that will be Super Speculation, being 10+ years out and all...