achimha wrote:
If you do not subscribe to this lifestyle aspect of cars, you’re different from most people that have more income than they need to survive.
I consider it slightly vain and unattractive, and for myself prefer to make choices based on maximizing utility and fun.
Effective energy density, taking into account efficiency:
[my bold]
Yes, of course. But this misses the wider point which is generating the stuff in the first place. Well, one can move the goalposts and base the calculation on a vehicle which is charged from solar, wind or hydro.
What fraction of 1% regularly drive more than 200km a day?
True, but this misses the wider point is that most people still need some means of doing the longer trips – even if they do them rarely. Taxis are incredibly expensive and public transport is (to many) undesirable for many reasons.
Current developments (not yet commercially released)
I was talking to an electric car battery charging specialist some months ago who said there are batteries which are 5x denser (kWh per kg) than existing but they last only about 5 charge/discharge cycles.
It’s about design, desireability, social status, etc
Not to me.
I drive a German car with fraudulently developed software 
I have to admit that my BMW i3 does shape how people around me view me. It assigns attributes such as “modern”, “responsible”, “forward thinking” to me. People react a lot to the car and in a very positive way
Everyone likes champagne socialists
Volvo have just announced that they will stop making petrol or diesel cars and all new ones will be electric or hybrid. The statement, which is about as binding as Mike O’Leary saying he will have passengers standing up, is disingenuously written to enable them to continue making the current model range and all future derivatives and this obviously has to be so because they won’t be able to replace the lost revenue if they actually dropped the existing stuff.
However most of this is not relevant to aviation because of the constant high power requirement.
Porsche, BMW, Louis Vuitton, Veuve Clicquot, etc. are very lucky that you are not the prototype of a person with disposable income!
achimha wrote:
It assigns attributes such as “modern”, “responsible”, “forward thinking” to me.
Silvaire wrote:
I think people don’t typically select a car based on what they normally do, they buy on what they need to do occasionally.
That wasn’t the point – the point was the assertion that cars could not be charged normally overnight (when electricity demand is otherwise low and there is huge excess supply available, and to avoid having to have massive increases in grid capacity) because they didn’t have enough range to last a day, but the reality with most people’s driving patterns, 99% of car usage would be covered several times over by an overnight charge – is not correct and hasn’t been true for at least 10 years.
achimha wrote:
Porsche, BMW, Louis Vuitton, Veuve Clicquot, etc. are very lucky that you are not the prototype of a person with disposable income!
I don’t think the average person with disposable income buys any of those things, they instead limit their fashion purchases to lower cost forms of frivolity. I have a word however for people who are sucked in at the costly end of fashion, sold by manufacturers such as those you’ve described. The word is ‘victim’.
alioth wrote:
That wasn’t the point – the point was the assertion that cars could not be charged normally overnight (when electricity demand is otherwise low and there is huge excess supply available, and to avoid having to have massive increases in grid capacity) because they didn’t have enough range to last a day, but the reality with most people’s driving patterns, 99% of car usage would be covered several times over by an overnight charge – is not correct and hasn’t been true for at least 10 years
@alioth, thanks, I see your point and wasn’t actually disputing it. My point was that few people will spend their money to buy electric cars (or electric planes) until they and their infrastructure do almost everything that buyer wants to do, range for occasional trips (and back) included. The market for limited capability ‘shopping cars’ is not that great, regardless of how often the missing capability is needed. If my assertion is correct, the situation you describe does not come to being and your phrase “would be covered several times over” remains true indefinitely, except for niche markets (e.g. Scandinavia & hydropower) where the energy security issue may promote punitive tax policy on other options.
I think in the long term, let’s say within our lifetimes, electric cars will come to prominence in a competitive, free market. In most places they will be powered by natural gas fired power plants for a long time. But I don’t see that happening with aircraft.
Peter wrote:
However most of this is not relevant to aviation because of the constant high power requirement.
It is very relevant to aviation because aircraft will have electrical drive trains. Most likely they will not rely on (lithium) batteries as their main source of energy but the drive train will nevertheless become electric. While aircraft have high constant power requirements, they also have more than double takeoff/emergency power requirements (assuming 2 engine aircraft) which can be addressed well by a hybrid system (takeoff boost via battery, cruise power from fuel cell).
simon32 wrote:
Apparently 99.9% of goods we buy are transported in trucks. I wonder what he is going to do about them.
There are a lot of interesting projects around the electrification of road transport. Daimler have now announced the first large electric truck for the last miles (a huge win for cities, trucks pollute). There is an electrified autobahn test bed somewhere in Germany using a power rail, an interesting project. Trucks a ideal for hybrid systems, similar to large container ships that burn cr*ap in international waters and clean stuff in coastal waters.
Peter wrote:
It’s about design, desireability, social status, etc
Not to me.
I drive a German car with fraudulently developed software
I could list what people generally associate with drivers of VW Scirocco but then you would probably kick me out of your forum
Peter wrote:
Volvo have just announced that they will stop making petrol or diesel cars and all new ones will be electric or hybrid. The statement, which is about as binding as Mike O’Leary saying he will have passengers standing up, is disingenuously written to enable them to continue making the current model range and all future derivatives and this obviously has to be so because they won’t be able to replace the lost revenue if they actually dropped the existing stuff.
That is an overly negative interpretation. Hakan Samuelsson (Volvo CEO) is in my view one of the best managers in the whole industry. For years he was one of the biggest sceptics regarding the electric car hype and he now openly admits that he was wrong about the rate of progress and that things have changed dramatically in a short period of time. Volvo is a small company with a limited R&D budget and they already had to stop diesel engine development because they just can’t afford it anymore (I happen to be quite an expert on Volvo diesels against my own volition…) with their volume of cars so their only chance as an innovative premium car maker is to be bold. A statement like he made helps the industry, it adds credibility and it creates pressure on other vendors.
Silvaire wrote:
My point was that few people will spend their money to buy electric cars (or electric planes) until they do almost everything that buyer wants to do, range for occasional trips (and back) included.
That might sound logical but I think it might not be true. Think about mobile phones. A charge used to last a week. Today none of the desirable/high end phones even last a day without charging. Sounds like a huge deficiency and yet people are willing to live with it.
I own my second pure EV and while it’s hard to describe — the car is so many times better than any ICE car that I would never consider going back and am more than willing to live with the inconveniences of having to recharge it than to go back. I find that most owners of EV think alike.
Think about mobile phones. A charge used to last a week. Today none of the desirable/high end phones even last a day without charging. Sounds like a huge deficiency and yet people are willing to live with it.
This hassle will limit the adoption % of smart watches however.
Peter wrote:
no choice
Political decisions push people to electric cars.
most people sleep at night so this is a natural time to charge the phone
Most people don’t drive that far so a battery powered car is fine.
Just confirms my point — people are willing to accept the deficiencies of the “new world” for various reasons. Whenever I speak to people who do not drive EVs, it’s always “but x, y, z”. Yes, x, y, z can be a problem but there are a, b, c which are so great that I accept x, y, z…
In aviation we will have similar disadvantages. There is another example — speed of airliners. The average speed of airliners has significantly degraded over the last 40 years. The fastest passenger airplane until today is the 747 which has been discontinued and is being faced out by most airlines. Every new aircraft design we’ve seen during the last 20 years cruises slower than the previous model. We accept that because the loss of speed is compensated by higher efficiency thus lower ticket prices.
