[Irace86.2.0]

Originally Posted by soundman98

lithium, neodymium, and copper to name a few.

Again, see the previous post about lithium.

Tesla doesn't use neodymium or rare earth elements in its AC motors, and it cut the use of them 25% in its DC motors, but at the last investor's day they announced a permanent magnetic motor without the use of rare earth elements (1). Sweden recently found the largest deposit of rare earth elements, so it begs to be seen what is or isn't available (2). Regardless, it seems like Tesla is showing that it is possible to have your cake and eat it too with their new engines.

Tesla is switching to 48v, and I'm sure the rest of the industry will too, but that should save on copper (3). Aluminum can be used for wiring too. It is probably lighter, even if the wiring had to be bigger.

Originally Posted by soundman98

battery swapping is likely never going to happen under the current vehicle ownership model. we already argue over parking spots, and those have very little intrinsic value. 'motor swapping' a car, and ensuring that every available swap is just as good as the previous one is just not cost effective. either people with 10 year old ev's are getting new batteries and people with 1 year old ev's are getting 10 year old batteries, or the auto maker would be going broke constantly re-stocking the changing stations with new battery stock, which could never be properly amortized unless there's a rather large fee attached to it.

Nio has already done 20 million battery swaps (4)(5). It sells three versions of their cars: people can buy a car without a battery and do battery swapping; people can buy a car and lease the battery with an option to buy the battery or renew; people can buy the car with a battery. Part of the advantage of this business model is that an EV can be purchased for around $20k and have a subscription service for the battery, making the entry price a little more attainable.

It is lighter and more efficient to integrate the battery into the structure of the car like Tesla, but battery swapping might be appealing to many people who want to quickly swap instead of sitting at a supercharger, and it is also far more efficient to drive a 35kWh battery and do quick swaps on a trip, or drive a 35kWh battery daily and swap to a 75kWh battery for a holiday trip, than to drive around with a big battery all the time. Supercharging decreases the longevity of the batteries, so slow charging and swapping is smarter.

I'm more a fan of this business model, and I would be a fan of standardizing the battery dimensions for swapping, so third parties could sell batteries and provide swapping. Unless battery tech improves with charging, swapping will likely become a business model for many companies.

Originally Posted by soundman98

i've also got some rather large concerns about electric grid capacity if everyone is running electric cars, electric ovens, and electric cooling/heat...

Are you saying the US doesn't have the ability to grow electricity production fast enough to meet the scale of EV and other electronic growth? I've already posted an Engineering Explained breakdown on this topic, and the US has already grown the grid much faster than what it is doing now, so it is all about investment. We don't lack the time, recourses, capital, etc. It is just a commitment/demand issue.

The big red herring is the misinterpretation of the timeline of EV adoption. The article stated 67% of new sales by 2032, so in nine years, 67% of new cars sales will be EVs most likely. Considering only 6% of vehicles on the road are new at any given time, this means maybe 4% of vehicles on the road will be new EVs, and that will be added to the existing mix of old EVs. In 2022, 4.6% of new vehicles were EVs; that is 4.6% of the “6% of new vehicles”, which is 0.24% of all registered vehicles on the road were new EVs, and Biden wants that 0.24% to grow fifteen to twenty fold to 4% by 2032 (6).

Currently, less than 1% of all vehicles on the road are EVs. In ten years, if that number was 5% of all registered vehicles, we would be increasing it by 4% per year until we got to 100% of new vehicle sales, which would be replacing 6% of old vehicles with EVs. Some of that will be replacing wrecked and old EVs with EVs. Unless the government does a cash-for-clunkers program or creates even more attractive incentives like Norway that replaces older vehicles with new cars faster than the historic, and slowing, average of around 6% per year then it is going to take decades to replace all the cars in the US with EVs. Given his targets of 67% in ten years, we are talking probably thirty years at the soonest to get to 80%+ EV adoption of all cars on the road, but it probably is more like fifty years. There is more than enough time to build the grid in thirty to fifty years.