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Power Hardware Technology

Electric Vehicles Have Another Record Year, Reaching 2 Million Cars In 2016 (iea.org) 332

An anonymous reader shares a report from the International Energy Agency: The number of electric cars on the roads around the world rose to 2 million in 2016, following a year of strong growth in 2015, according to the latest edition of the International Energy Agency's Global EV Outlook. China remained the largest market in 2016, accounting for more than 40% of the electric cars sold in the world. With more than 200 million electric two-wheelers and more than 300,000 electric buses, China is by far the global leader in the electrification of transport. China, the US and Europe made up the three main markets, totaling over 90% of all EVs sold around the world. Electric car deployment in some markets is swift. In Norway, electric cars had a 29% market share last year, the highest globally, followed by the Netherlands with 6.4%, and Sweden with 3.4%. The electric car market is set to transition from early deployment to mass market adoption over the next decade or so. Between 9 and 20 million electric car could be deployed by 2020, and between 40 and 70 million by 2025, according to estimates based on recent statement from carmakers.
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Electric Vehicles Have Another Record Year, Reaching 2 Million Cars In 2016

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  • by turkeydance ( 1266624 ) on Wednesday June 07, 2017 @09:07PM (#54573833)
    made up the three main markets....of just about everything
  • by mykepredko ( 40154 ) on Wednesday June 07, 2017 @09:13PM (#54573871) Homepage

    I feel like I'm the only person in the world that doesn't get a stiffy when looking at a Tesla. The Model S reminds me too much of a Jag with a dashboard that is overwhelmed with the 17" display and the Model 3 is just plain ugly.

    Just like the Bolt and the Leaf. The i3 is about the best of a bad lot.

    How about putting the front line designers on the vehicles and get the concepts evaluated by real people (not tree huggers that want drivers to be tortured even if they're burning electrons and not dinosaur sludge)?

    I don't need to scream out at the world I have an electric car, I want something that looks nice, drives well and I can smile smugly to myself when I pass the pumps.

    • I feel like I'm the only person in the world that doesn't get a stiffy when looking at a Tesla.

      If you want a car that will give you an erection when you look at it then you need therapy, not a new car.

      I want something that looks nice, drives well and I can smile smugly to myself when I pass the pumps.

      Have you considered a Prius?

      • by amiga3D ( 567632 )

        Prius? Japanese for "turd on wheels."

      • by _merlin ( 160982 )

        Suspension in the Prius is horrible. If you want a Toyota hybrid, you're better off with the Camry or one of the Lexus hybrids.

        • That brings up another point. I like sports cars. I would not consider any of the BEVs out there a sports car. The Model S is a luxury sedan. I'm hoping that the Model 3 will handle well. If not, perhaps BMW will come out with a good handling BEV.

    • by MightyMartian ( 840721 ) on Wednesday June 07, 2017 @09:28PM (#54573945) Journal

      Technology has to go through stages. First you have the early adopters, who will buy the initial market offerings, which are inevitably too large, too expensive, and too inadequate, but they get to go around and say things "Have you seen my awesome cellular phone? And it only ways 10 lbs!"

      Then you get the hipsters. They're the ones that buy the next generation of a technology, which has been greatly improved, but it still very damned expensive, but they're proud to announce over a cafe latte "I can buy my Pendleton scarves on Ebay with this!"

      Then you get the executives. They want rugged and yet screams "I'm outrageously wealthy with a wife, a mistress and $200,000 sports car!" Again, the tech is still expensive, but at least it's now within the realm of an ordinary middle class grunt getting one.

      The final stage is basically here everyone from a 12 year old to your gramma can get one. That's pretty much peak evolution for a technology. After that it's just steady refinement until one day, a successor product, after having gone through the early adopter, hipster and executive stages knocks it off its mantle and it ends up in a box somewhere and when you finally kick the bucket, your kids can go "Oh yeah, remember when we used to play Candy Crush and look up porn on that?"

    • by DontBeAMoran ( 4843879 ) on Wednesday June 07, 2017 @09:36PM (#54573987)

      The i3 isn't bad, but the i5 and i7 are better. Oh and there's the new upcoming i9 too, that thing is seriously badass.

      • You are 100% correct the i3 is not bad it's awful. BMW should recall every i3 and remove all the W's on its badging.
    • I never liked how the other Tesla cars looked, or at least I thought they were kind of bland - the Model 3 however I really like the look of. Have not seen the interior though.

    • by Jeremi ( 14640 ) on Thursday June 08, 2017 @12:34AM (#54574659) Homepage

      I don't need to scream out at the world I have an electric car, I want something that looks nice, drives well and I can smile smugly to myself when I pass the pumps.

      How about a Volt? It's pretty understated, it works well, is emissions free for the first 38 miles each day and you don't ever have to worry about getting stranded by a depleted battery.

      • by DirkDaring ( 91233 ) on Thursday June 08, 2017 @06:36AM (#54575643)

        FYI it's up to 53 miles now in the new version.

      • I don't need to scream out at the world I have an electric car, I want something that looks nice, drives well and I can smile smugly to myself when I pass the pumps.

        How about a Volt? It's pretty understated, it works well, is emissions free for the first 38 miles each day and you don't ever have to worry about getting stranded by a depleted battery.

        The Volt is okay. I dislike the idea of carrying around an extra motor, though. All that complexity and weight, for something that you really would prefer never to use.

    • i3 looks like it was designed by Mattel or Fischer-Price for two year olds. Ghastly thing.

      I dont pay much attention to styling, and I almost bought i3 purely on the specs. 120 mile range and a limp home ic engine for emergencies. Enough, I said. Eagerly waited for it. BMW released a truly God awful car with 2000 lb carbon frame and the ugliest BMW ever made. They also released a Tesla competitor i8 or i9. That thing is cool. But priced at 90K to 120K I will only gawk at it.

      • The i3 was really a design study that BMW tricked people into funding for them. In spite of the fancy pants materials they don't lose money on i3s because they are much cheaper to build per vehicle than almost any other low-volume vehicle. There's a cool video on Youtube where they take you through the plant and show you most of the build process. The biggest difference in cost is in the tooling for the carbon fiber body panels versus the cost in tooling for stamping metal ones. Since the pressures involved

    • I do actually care about automobile design and I like the looks of the Tesla, Bolt and Leaf. I had a Leaf for 3 years. I'm somewhat fussy about car looks and it satisfied me. Nissan has a proposed re-design of the Leaf that I think is amazing looking, but nobody knows if it will ever see the light of day. You should be able to find it by searching for "Nissan Leaf next generation" (without the quote marks) but again, taste is subjective so I'd venture a guess that you're not going to like that one eith
    • by Nidi62 ( 1525137 )
      I'm still waiting on a pickup. The bed of a pickup would be a perfect place for battery packs and should still leave a decent amount of space for hauling (most owners of electric pickups would not be doing any heavy hauling, but it's always nice to have room for bulky or large items).
    • I don't need to scream out at the world I have an electric car, I want something that looks nice, drives well and I can smile smugly to myself when I pass the pumps.

      I totally agree with this. I had a Honda Fit EV which was almost indistinguishable from the regular Fit. We now have a Volt which looks just like a Cruze, i.e. nobody realizes these are electric cars.

      On the other hand, the Leaf is too fugly for me to want to own one (we'll see what they do with V2), and the i3 is also pretty darn ugly.

      Early adopters (which I guess I am) typically want to make a statement, so you end up with something like a Prius that screams "I'm so green!!!".

      I think we're past early adopt

    • The Model S reminds me too much of a Jag with a dashboard that is overwhelmed with the 17" display and the Model 3 is just plain ugly.
      Just like the Bolt and the Leaf. The i3 is about the best of a bad lot.

      Everything you say is true, or at least the automotive press generally agrees with you. But what they have to say about the situation is that you can see that the vehicles are becoming less and less aggressively styled. The enthusiast early adopters want to be noticed. The best way to attract these people is with bold styling. Most other people just want something that looks like a car, and the automakers are beginning to serve those markets now. The Volt is relatively mainstream in appearance, Kia's Soul E

    • Thank you for the comments back.

      Interesting to see the comments back about different vehicles and it's interesting to see the wide range of tastes in vehicles. I can respect that electric vehicles need to be "slippery" as well as visually different but for the most part they seem to miss their mark in terms of coming up with something that can be simply driven around town.

      For what's available right now, I really don't find any appealing, maybe the b-class when it becomes available will change my mind.

  • Unless I want to spend 10 hours at Kohls. So I'll stick with my gas guzzler.
    • You have zero outlets in your home? Is it a tent?

    • And even a convenient circuit run into the carport.

      My problem is that I live in the sticks and the range won't do, because most of my trips are out of town.

      Maybe my next car purchase will be a hybrid or something but I'm only about 4k into my highly safe and comfortable German luxobarge and the difference buys a lot of fuel. If I drove more, it would make no sense. I just hope I can hang on until EVs get cheap so that I don't have to work on cars any more, at least not really. Not like now.

  • by CohibaVancouver ( 864662 ) on Wednesday June 07, 2017 @10:08PM (#54574127)
    - Insert obligatory Slashdot 'electric vehicle' responses here -

    [Response 1: My commute is 300 miles! As a result this electric vehicle is useless for everyone!]

    [Response 2: Some electricity is coal-generated! As a result, in all jurisdictions, this car is more polluting than a 1973 VW Microbus!]
    • by mark-t ( 151149 ) <markt AT nerdflat DOT com> on Wednesday June 07, 2017 @11:07PM (#54574357) Journal

      [Response 3: I do not have a private garage and have no place to charge it at home]. While there are an ever growing number of public charging facilities, given that charging times are rarely less than 20 minutes, the time you spend just waiting in a line to charge you car at a public charging station can sometimes be an hour or more. Compared to waiting perhaps 5 to 10 minutes in a line up at a gas station where your car can be ready to go in about another 2 or 3 minutes.

      This is actually my own sole objection to electric vehicles, really... and I doubt I'm alone.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by blindseer ( 891256 )

        It's worse than you think, if you do some math.

        Look up how much energy is in a gallon of gasoline. Next time you fill your tank note how long it takes to fill and how many gallons were pumped. Now figure out how many watts that gasoline pump just transferred. Do some tinkering with that math and compute how many amps that would be with a typical household electrical service voltage. With an atypical household service voltage. With an industrial electrical service. Go look up some electric service code

        • by Smidge204 ( 605297 ) on Thursday June 08, 2017 @07:44AM (#54575893) Journal

          Do some tinkering with that math and compute how many amps that would be with a typical household electrical service voltage.

          Counterpoint 1: Consider how many hours a day is your vehicle is sitting unused, and that virtually every moment of that could potentially be used for charging.

          Counterpoint 2: The basic "level 2" charging rate available at virtually all private homes and businesses charges at a rate of about 25 miles per hour, and completes a full charge in 4 hours or less.

          but electricity does not work for things like powering trains

          Counterpoint 1: Virtually all light rail in my area is "3rd rail" electric, and pretty much every subway is as well. There is also older, overhead electric type.

          Counterpoint 2: Trains are about the easiest to electrify, adding "battery cars" strikes me as quite feasible.

          long haul trucking, aircraft, watercraft, and so much more

          Counterpoint 1: The vast majority of trucking is not long-haul.

          Counterpoint 2: Why would it be necessary to replace *every* mode of transportation with a single technology? How does it affect the benefits of electrifying personal vehicles if it's currently not practical to make battery electric aircraft?

          Well, for one it might be helpful if idiot tree huggers stop protesting oil pipelines. We need that oil.

          Counterpoint 1: Basically none of the oil in the recently contested Keystone XL pipeline would end up being used in the US. The pipeline is bullshit.

          Counterpoint 2: Yes, we will need petroleum for lots of things for the foreseeable future... all the more reason to try and NOT burn it unless we absolutely have to.

          These idiot tree huggers are destroying the environment.

          Counterpoint: Your derogatory characterization and pigeonholing of people who can see the forest for the trees (if you'll allow the expression) is both inaccurate and childish.
          =Smidge=

        • It's worse than you think, if you do some math.

          You can always make a situation look dire if you start doing math with bad assumptions. I'm shit at math, and even I understand that if you're working with the wrong numbers, you're going to get the wrong answer. People's behavior changed when we went from the horse and buggy to the train, and when we went from the train to the car, and it will change again when our cars change from rapid refill to a longer charge time, even if that time is not that much longer. Perhaps the gasoline filling stations that do

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        In 3 years o Leaf ownership, doing regular 150 mile round trips, I've spent maybe 10 minutes waiting for charging. Less than I spent queuing for petrol in the 3 years prior.

        You don't charge an EV like you fuel a combustion car. You park it, plug it in and go do something else you were going to do anyway. 99% of the time it's much, much more convenient than having to go out of your way just to get fuel and dedicate time to nothing but pumping dirty, smelly liquid.

        • In my city people are complaining about people who leave their cars at an EV charging station and go off and do something, because other people are usually waiting for that station.
          • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            There are two types of charging station: Normal and rapid.

            The normal ones take 4-8 hours to completely charge a car, but of course no-one rolls up with 0% so it's almost always much less than that. It's generally acceptable to leave your car plugged in to those while you are parked, and the solution to waiting it just to install more of them. They are cheap and some places just have one per parking space now.

            With rapid chargers you are looking at 40-50 minutes for a full charge, but 30 minutes is more typic

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by blindseer ( 891256 )

      My first thought about this was about these vehicles being coal powered as you predicted. My second thought was that with billions of people without reliable electric service this development is quite meaningless to them.

      How do we bring electricity to one or two billion more people and not add to the carbon output of humanity? If this plan to replace petroleum powered vehicles with electric ones does not include a plan to develop carbon free energy then we will have a problem.

      Wind power is great until you

      • by amiga3D ( 567632 )

        Forget Nuclear power. It's not going to happen because when you break ground for a new plant thousands of crazy people will descend on you and picket and sue you into oblivion. Chernobyl and Fukishima failures have brought that hysteria to a crescendo. Forget it.

        • by Maritz ( 1829006 )
          This boils down to "we can't have nuclear because we are fucking stupid". I think I probably agree. It's the answer to our problems, but we're fucking dumbasses.
      • by swb ( 14022 )

        To the extent that my exposure to electric vehicles is riding in a friend's Model S, I think electric car are great. My concern is where all the extra electricity will come from with mass adoption.

        The best figure I've seen is a study by Xcel energy that says with 75% penetration, demand grows by 14%. I don't know if this is a big number or a small number relative to available capacity or if it takes into account peak effects like everybody wanting to charge in a 10 hour window, especially the loading on r

        • I think when I've seen this it's been "no problem" because of lower overall nighttime loads or some hand-waving with "more rooftop residential solar" and the like, although I don't know how solar helps with nighttime charging without some extra batteries for storage.

          Well, we are getting extra batteries for storage. Right now the primary option seems to be Powerwall, which is not especially affordable; the primary customer for that product seems to be the Model S owner, who has already demonstrated themselves to be possessed of some significant disposable income. However, as such products become more common, we can expect to see the prices fall.

          Another aspect is non-residential solar helping to pick up the slack there. covering commercial parking lots with solar panels

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        How do we bring electricity to one or two billion more people and not add to the carbon output of humanity?

        Batteries. They fix the intermittency issues of renewables. You could even put them on wheels and transport that stored energy around!

        This is from a Morgan Stanley director at the 2016 Platts nuclear conference.

        Hmm, I'm sure he was being completely unbiased and straight with you when he claimed that wind was so much worse than the industry whose conference he was at.

        Wind is much cleaner than nuclear any way you slice it. Fewer bird kills, less CO2 emitted over its lifetime, much cheaper...

  • Look Identical or indistinguishable to a Gasoline powered model. Just like there is a market for Android Phones that cosmetically resemble iPhones because of community shunning for the use of Android Phones as inferior to avoid the social stigma.

    There seems to be a Social Stigma against people driving electric cars in the US, So, can they be camouflaged to look like their counterparts except for the label.

    • by Jeremi ( 14640 ) on Thursday June 08, 2017 @12:43AM (#54574701) Homepage

      Why do Electric Car makers not make EVs that look Identical or indistinguishable to a Gasoline powered model.

      They do. You just never notice them because, well, they look indistinguishable from the gasoline-powered model.

      Here are some examples of electric cars you probably wouldn't be able pick out of a crowd:

            2017 FIAT 500e
            2017 Ford Fusion Energi
            2017 Mercedes Benz E-Class
            2017 Ford Focus Electric
            2017 Kia Soul EV
            2017 Volkswagen e-Golf

  • by Terje Mathisen ( 128806 ) on Thursday June 08, 2017 @04:34AM (#54575313)

    EVs are simply inevitable, the only ting that have held them back (i.e."only" 29% of all new cars in 2016) here is the fact that most people prefers 4x4 station wagons for carrying stuff up to their winter cabins, and so far only Tesla have been able to provide more or less that, and at a price point which is more or less the same as a Volvo or BMW 4x4.

    As soon as you can buy a dual-motor (4x4) EV with reasonable range for under $50K, no more ICE cars will be sold here.

    My father was the Chairman of the largest EV importer in Norway for a number of years, so my family had various EVs as second cars, and I got intimately familiar with range anxiety from those. Based on that and the need for 4x4 I believed I had to wait for the Tesla Model X to be able to use an EV as our only car, but when they announced dual-motor versions of Model S I immediately decided to order one.

    In hindsight my only regret is that at least some of the extra perks EVs get here have to go away over the next few years, the tax people have to get their revenue some way which means that the toll roads will start charging us, parking won't be free any more and we'll probably lose general access to bus & taxi lanes.

    Terje
    PS. Since Norway is a net exporter of hydro-electric power, all EVs are really 100% pollution free here, in countries with lots of coal-fired power plants in the grid mix the case isn't quite so obvious but still better than the very best ICE cars.

  • DISCLAIMER: You are about to read a satirical joke, don't take it serious and get butt hurt. Also read this in Norm Macdonald's voice.

    What we can learn from this using demographics correlation is that: Liberals are worse drivers than Conservatives.

  • Personally I wouldn't buy an EV because I'd feel trapped in my city. The capability to take a long road trip whenever I want means a lot to me. I don't care that I could rent an ICE, it's not the same as having your own because you have to baby it or get charged for damage.

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