HN user

jeromeflipo

195 karma
Posts8
Comments65
View on HN

I disabled every control on this page months ago.

Unfortunately, the Google Maps app won't remember searches unless you're logged in and share your entire location history. There's just no way to keep a local history of places in Maps.

I'll get rid of Google Maps as soon as Maps.me let me stream OSM maps instead of downloading packages one-by-one.

How small a fraction? Tesla is expected to produce between 80,000 and 90,000 Model S and X this year. With 80 Kwh battery pack on average (my guess), Tesla currently consumes 6.4 Gwh of Lithium-ion battery.

Back in 2013, the global production was estimated to be 35 Gwh (cf. Gigafactory announcement presentation).

How much has it grown in the past 3 years?

A few thoughts/ideas:

Grid saturation: smart charging to flatten the demand curve (overnight), daylight charging with more chargers in parking spaces at the office, west-facing solar panels and grid storage to smooth the duck curve.

Lack of chargers on the highway: increase in charging speed (15 minutes breaks are recommended after 2h of driving), increased battery range, platooning with autopilot can save 15% of energy [0], very low cost of expanding supercharger networks, auto-pilot to tolerate longer drive, auto-park to accept longer pauses, battery swapping

Energy sources far from charging stations: don't underestimate the predominance of home charging; south-facing solar panels and wind turbines along highways; grid storage; battery swapping

Car sharing: battery swapping again; autonomous fleets to dispatch charged car and auto-park cars (with snake-like charger to auto-plug)

Infrastructure investment: large public program for distributed generation with solar panels and grid storage

Range anxiety: 250 miles might be the average range for EV in 2020, supercharging and battery swapping to the rescue

Trailers: battery swapping again, and battery integrated in the trailer (might turn into a backup battery once at home)

Lack of servcie: EVs require far less maintenance than ICE, Musk intend to make a 1-million miles powertrain and reuse battery for grid storage; also industry-wide standardization

Tax break: they will somehow be extended to balance the externalities of fossil fuels (health, environment); EV will reach cost-parity very soon too.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platoon_%28automobile%29

As more and more people will adopt EVs, you can expect:

- gas stations and car dealers to go bankrupt

- price for maintenance and spare parts to jump

- investment in oil extraction to drop (as demand for oil decreases)

- gas prices to increase at the pump, due to diseconomies of scale within the oil industry and carbon tax

This could quickly translate into a vicious circle, and make ICE as luxurious as horse riding.

I have 0 faith in governments both for understanding and acting properly in the information age.

Can we go without a government that properly understand the information age? If so, how? Who would you trust instead, to organize public affairs?

If not, why does this kind of government doesn't (want to) understand it?

The submission points to a comment since it articulates pretty well the relation between fossil fuel prices, renewable energy and energy storage.

The transition would be very quick if fossil fuels were taxed according to their damage on health and climate change.

EVs would become comparatively cheap in a just few years, and their price would also come down very fast as the production of battery packs increased massively. The technology is already here, we just have to manufacture these cars and set up the charging network (already much cheaper than the fuel station infrastructure).

Now that VW is investigated, we should focus on the emission standard themselves - not the tactics to avoid or optimize for the tests.

In Europe, the standards are a joke (no one drives like we test the cars).

What's more important?

a) some cars have are equipped with defeat devices.

b) some cars shouldn't have passed the emissions tests.

c) all the cars emit much more NOx and fine particles than the European Environment Agency and the manufacturers claim.

"NOx pollution contributes to nitrogen dioxide, ground-level ozone, and fine particulate matter. Exposure to these pollutants has been linked with a range of serious health effects, including increased asthma attacks and other respiratory illnesses that can be serious enough to send people to the hospital. Exposure to ozone and particulate matter have also been associated with premature death due to respiratory-related or cardiovascular-related effects. Children, the elderly, and people with pre-existing respiratory disease are particularly at risk for health effects of these pollutants.

VW may be liable for civil penalties and injunctive relief for the violations alleged in the NOV."

http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/21b8983ffa5d0e46852...

More about health effects of NO2 exposure: http://www3.epa.gov/airquality/nitrogenoxides/health.html