The Canadian Electric Vehicle thread

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

^^^ So you honestly think that oil companies are just going to stand by and watch their industry implode? You honestly think gov'ts are going to let the oil sector die with all the hundreds of thousands of high paying jobs and billions in revenue are going to stand by and watch their unemployment soar and revenues collapse? You honestly think that the big automakers are going to stand by while their industry sheds tens of billions just to sell EVs? This is what you are effectively saying.

Yes. That's sadly how incumbents work. Did Polaroid and Kodak stop digital cameras? Did Nokia and Blackberry stop touchscreen smartphones? Welcome to disruption. The smart automakers are trying to pivot to EVs so they don't end up like Kodak and Nokia. The less smart ones are just riding the decline to their graves.

We've barely begun to scratch the surface of battery technology. Just imagine what solid state batteries could do to BEV sales for example.

Originally Posted by ssiguy

I think, respectfully, that you are very naive.

What's naive is to be ignore actual data and economics and put faith in miracles.

In any event, give us your prediction. Date and numbers. I'll be happy to put a reminder in my calendar. Here's mine. At least 60% of all cars sold in the world will have a plug by 2030. And HFCEV sales will be largely restricted to Japan and South Korea but you'll still be here telling us Hydrogen is 5 years away.

[ssiguy]

I have no crystal ball in making predictions about hydrogen any more than you do about batteries. These are simply my opinions no different from yours.

I simply don't see how oil companies will work and spend money to rush themselves towards bankruptcy and ditto for the car makers. You cannot compare the small camera sectors to the massive auto & oil sectors.

Remember a lot of hydrogen infrastructure is going to have to be built regardless of EVs. There is no way, in hell, that freight, cargo ships, long distance passenger rail, agricultural equipment, heavy industry, mining, and air travel is going to go battery. It is going hydrogen regardless of what the cars do.

I don't have some hydrogen fetish nor do I have any stocks or monetary benefits from hydrogen. My next car {which won't be for a while as I have 2019} won't be hydrogen or battery but rather a hybrid so neither makes any difference to me.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

I have no crystal ball in making predictions about hydrogen any more than you do about batteries. These are simply my opinions no different from yours.

There is a difference. Mine is backed by actual sales trend. Yours is literally dependent on a miracle that requires unprecedented investment and deployment.

Originally Posted by ssiguy

I simply don't see how oil companies will work and spend money to rush themselves towards bankruptcy and ditto for the car makers.

They aren't going to rush themselves into anything. In fact, they'll fight and gouge and resist. And just like the whale oil salesman and candlestick makers they replaced, they'll inevitably just fade into irrelevance over time. We're not talking about a decade long transition here. We're talking about several decades. And cars are just one of the markets for oil (albeit a major market). If the oil majors could have stopped BEVs from taking off, they absolutely would have. Heck, they famously bought battery patents and sat on them for decades to try and delay this.

Originally Posted by ssiguy

You cannot compare the small camera sectors to the massive auto & oil sectors.

Calling the trillion dollar market cap electronics OEMs "small". That's definitely a new one for me
I'll give you that.

Originally Posted by ssiguy

Remember a lot of hydrogen infrastructure is going to have to be built regardless of EVs. There is no way, in hell, that freight, cargo ships, long distance passenger rail, agricultural equipment, heavy industry, mining, and air travel is going to go battery. It is going hydrogen regardless of what the cars do.

Right. But this thread is about cars. Not about airplanes or ships. And just because they build distribution networks for airports and seaports doesn't mean that they'll invest in distributing hydrogen for consumer use. It's not like Jet A and Marine Diesel distribution somehow helps retail gasoline distribution today.

Originally Posted by ssiguy

I don't have some hydrogen fetish nor do I have any stocks or monetary benefits from hydrogen. My next car {which won't be for a while as I have 2019} won't be hydrogen or battery but rather a hybrid so neither makes any difference to me.

It would actually help if you actually had money invested. Losing cold hard cash has the effect of reducing emotional attachment.

You should put all your savings in Ballard stock. If you're right, by 2030, you'll be quite rich. But I'm guessing you don't actually believe enough of your own pontificating to even risk a cent.

[Changing City]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

I have no crystal ball in making predictions about hydrogen any more than you do about batteries. These are simply my opinions no different from yours.

I simply don't see how oil companies will work and spend money to rush themselves towards bankruptcy and ditto for the car makers. You cannot compare the small camera sectors to the massive auto & oil sectors.

Remember a lot of hydrogen infrastructure is going to have to be built regardless of EVs. There is no way, in hell, that freight, cargo ships, long distance passenger rail, agricultural equipment, heavy industry, mining, and air travel is going to go battery. It is going hydrogen regardless of what the cars do.

I don't have some hydrogen fetish nor do I have any stocks or monetary benefits from hydrogen. My next car {which won't be for a while as I have 2019} won't be hydrogen or battery but rather a hybrid so neither makes any difference to me.

Oil and gas companies will still have industrial markets for their products. The demand for transportation use will fall as alternatives become cheaper, more convenient and have less maintenance costs.

All the major truck builders have an electric truck already on the road. The Tesla semi goes into mass production next year, and the charging infrastructure is already being developed. There are already 70 in full operation, and Pepsi drove one of their trucks over 1,000 miles in a single day. The company like them enough to order over 100 more this year. There are newer batteries and faster charging also being developed.

In Australia, where they have limited rail infrastructure and rely on road trains, Janus have introduced battery swap and charging stations for truck fleets, and those are already operational. They only use renewable energy for charging, and can also use charged batteries to top up the grid if there's demand, or excess electricity production.

Agriculture is already going electric, especially in Japan, apparently. Here, New Holland already have an electric tractor on sale. John Deere have several models, both hybid and 100% battery in development, for both agricultural and construction vehicles. Edison Motors, in Merritt, already have an electric logging truck, and can also convert existing trucks.

Caterpillar already sell an elctric mining truck. So do Hitachi, and other equipment manufacturers. Goldcorp's Borden Gold Mine in Ontario has had 100% electric vehicles for four years. Copper Mountain Mine near Princeton in BC is expected to be net zero by 2035, using all electric mining trucks operating on an overhead wire system. The regenerative braking taking the full trucks downhill to the crusher produces almost as much power as the empty trucks need to return uphill. Brucejack Mine in BC has switched to 100% electric underground vehicles too.

It's possible air travel might adopt hydrogen, but for local flights Helijet have an electric aircaft on order, and Harbour Air still hope to operate their entire 40+ fleet as electric planes as soon as they're permitted, but are having delays with government certification.

[Truenorth00]

Forget electric semis and short range electric airplanes. You know what is really going to make a dent in oil demand this decade? Electric delivery vehicles. Like the 100 000 electric delivery vans that Amazon has ordered from Rivian (of which 10 000 have already been delivered). Not only will they save a ton on gas, Amazon and Rivian designed them specifically to improve driver productivity and comfort, safety (collisions cost money) and even reduce repair costs. By 2030, any delivery service that isn't majority electric for last mile, will not be cost competitive. Amazon will crush them. This is why you see every mail and courier company, every grocery chain, every florist chain, etc working to electrify their fleets.

I think for a lot of you who think the EV trend is just hippy nonsense, it's going to finally start clicking in, when one of these shows up at your house to drop off an Amazon package in the next 5-8 years:

• Video Link

[1overcosc]

Originally Posted by Changing City

Agriculture is already going electric, especially in Japan, apparently. Here, New Holland already have an electric tractor on sale. John Deere have several models, both hybid and 100% battery in development, for both agricultural and construction vehicles. Edison Motors, in Merritt, already have an electric logging truck, and can also convert existing trucks.

In North America, electric tractors are going to be a very hard sell. Farms in North America are often huge (multiple hundreds of acres per farm), and combines often have to be driven hours, even all day and all night non stop to meet harvest windows. Farmers literally go out into the field with jerry cans because they don't have time to go back and get gas once the harvest starts. Combines move very slowly so driving back to the garage or driveshed often takes hours (remember - North American farms are enormous). Having to stop and recharge would completely wrecks the harvest. Many fields would be kilometres away from the nearest source of electricity, let alone the nearest high voltage charging plug.

Biodiesel or synthetic methane are a much more realistic way to decarbonize the megafarms of the Great Plains of North America than battery electric. To go back to the original point of this discussion, though - hydrogen is a complete non starter for North American agriculture for much the same reason. If you can barely get grid power to fields you're not gonna get hydrogen.

In places like Japan and Western Europe where the average farm size is much smaller, battery electric farm equipment makes more sense.

[1overcosc]

As for logging equipment, there's a similar issue in that the bulk of logging camps are often far away from any source of grid power so charging is problematic. I'm not sure how much greener, if at all, it is to charge batteries off a diesel generator, which is what would be happening in an "electrified" logging camp.

[Nouvellecosse]

^ Keep in mind that needing to be at net zero emissions isn't the same as needing to be at absolute zero emissions. While it's basically impossible to counteract our current huge volume of emissions, a few smaller scale polluter can be counteracted with things like carbon capture and offsets.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

^ Keep in mind that needing to be at net zero emissions isn't the same as needing to be at absolute zero emissions. While it's basically impossible to counteract our current huge volume of emissions, a few smaller scale polluter can be counteracted with things like carbon capture and offsets.

Well put. But also to the topic at hand. Electric farm tractors and logging equipment are pretty far down the list of problems to solve. Moving fleets and regular consumers to electrified vehicles (even if not full BEV) will deliver massive returns. 100% electric would cut 25 MBPD of oil consumption globally. That would be a massive win. Not just for climate. But for economic stability. It would substantially reduce the impact that oil prices have on the economy. I look forward to this happening over the next 20 years.

[Truenorth00]

"Why would oil companies ever support EVs?"

Big Oil is all in on electric cars
...
As electric vehicles go from niche to mainstream, it's clear that oil giants like Shell, BP, and Exxon Mobil want to profit off of how people get around — regardless of the fuel source.

Some are making hefty investments in charging infrastructure, a natural progression for companies that already operate thousands of gas stations. Others are also placing bets on emerging battery technologies, lithium mining, and even EV manufacturing.
....
BP recently announced it would purchase $100 million worth of Tesla Superchargers, making it the first company to independently operate Elon Musk's renowned charging plugs. BP Pulse, the firm's charging business, has installed more than 27,000 charging plugs so far and aims to get to 100,000 by 2030.

Shell Recharge, the oil company's charging arm, is farther along. It operates 140,000 plugs globally and earlier this year bought Volta, a US charging provider, for $169 million. In September, it opened a massive charging hub in China with 258 stalls. For reference, charging stations in the US typically have between 4 and 12 plugs. The project was a joint effort between Shell and BYD, the leading Chinese EV company.

Big Oil is also getting into batteries, the backbone of the auto industry's electric transformation. Koch Industries, for example, has spent hundreds of millions of dollars funding companies throughout the battery supply chain, The Wall Street Journal reported.

US firms are less keen on charging and more interested in doing what they do best: getting raw materials out of the ground, On said. Exxon Mobil bought up 120,000 acres of land in Arkansas earlier this year with plans to extract and process lithium, a key material in lithium-ion EV batteries, The Journal reported. Chevron is also considering

Oil drilling can produce lithium-rich brine as a byproduct, which has historically been ignored. As EVs boom and the US government pushes to develop a domestic supply chain for battery materials, it makes sense that oil producers see new opportunities.

Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter, has invested billions in EV manufacturing. It has a controlling stake in Lucid Motors, a California-based EV startup. It recently partnered with Foxconn (the iPhone maker with EV ambitions) to launch a homegrown EV brand called Ceer Motors.
....

https://www.businessinsider.com/big-...eries-2023-11?

Weird. Given some of the posts here, one would think every oil company was going all in on hydrogen.

[P'tit Renard]

Originally Posted by SFUVancouver

US EV segment market report for Q1-Q3 2023 illustrates just how stark Tesla's market dominance remains, despite sales headwinds and the legacy automakers making proportionally substantial gains.

Source

Can't imagine how depressed prices will get when this flood of Model Ys hit the used car market. Low quality builds with a mediocre drive experience that's notably worse than the Model 3. Terrible QC.

Hertz's write-downs of its EV fleet's residual value is a taste of things to come.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by P'tit Renard

Can't imagine how depressed prices will get when this flood of Model Ys hit the used car market. Low quality builds with a mediocre drive experience that's notably worse than the Model 3. Terrible QC.

Hertz's write-downs of its EV fleet's residual value is a taste of things to come.

By all accounts the Y is better than the 3, curious why you say this? The vehicle is improving with each iteration. It's getting cheaper and adding features.

The Y will get it's "highland" refresh probably in 2024 and continue to sell well IMO.

[P'tit Renard]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

By all accounts the Y is better than the 3, curious why you say this? The vehicle is improving with each iteration. It's getting cheaper and adding features.

The Y will get it's "highland" refresh probably in 2024 and continue to sell well IMO.

I've driven the Y at least a few times for business trips (corporate policy dictates that we have to rent from Hertz or Hertz affiliate), and it's a very disappointing drive. It's definitely not a SUV I would consider buying after the experience. Thankfully they were rentals, because the flaws and QC issues were notable even though I had the car for a weeks tops.

The Model 3 is still a better drive IMO. It's far from my favourite, average at best, but still respectable given that the car is not tailored to those who like to drive.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

In North America, electric tractors are going to be a very hard sell. Farms in North America are often huge (multiple hundreds of acres per farm), and combines often have to be driven hours, even all day and all night non stop to meet harvest windows. Farmers literally go out into the field with jerry cans because they don't have time to go back and get gas once the harvest starts. Combines move very slowly so driving back to the garage or driveshed often takes hours (remember - North American farms are enormous). Having to stop and recharge would completely wrecks the harvest. Many fields would be kilometres away from the nearest source of electricity, let alone the nearest high voltage charging plug.

Biodiesel or synthetic methane are a much more realistic way to decarbonize the megafarms of the Great Plains of North America than battery electric. To go back to the original point of this discussion, though - hydrogen is a complete non starter for North American agriculture for much the same reason. If you can barely get grid power to fields you're not gonna get hydrogen.

In places like Japan and Western Europe where the average farm size is much smaller, battery electric farm equipment makes more sense.

I switched to an electric (twin batteries powered) chainsaw a couple years ago and while it’s absolutely great for cutting and trimming urban trees (as part of real estate management), I always run out of power way too early when I’m in the woods and have to go back home having accomplished only a fraction of my forest management objectives for the day.

It’s started to annoy me enough that I’m looking for a solution (either buy more batteries so I can bring more charged batteries, or get a 120V converter for my vehicle that offers decent amps so I can charge while over there.

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by lio45

I switched to an electric (twin batteries powered) chainsaw a couple years ago and while it’s absolutely great for cutting and trimming urban trees (as part of real estate management), I always run out of power way too early when I’m in the woods and have to go back home having accomplished only a fraction of my forest management objectives for the day.

It’s started to annoy me enough that I’m looking for a solution (either buy more batteries so I can bring more charged batteries, or get a 120V converter for my vehicle that offers decent amps so I can charge while over there.

Yeah if only they invented a liquid fuel that would let you work a full day.

I get electric cars sometimes for rentals as well. Without a home charger it is a lot of hassle though. Even with the leeway they give you over gas it can put a crimp in plans. Will get a bit better with more fast chargers being built but as above nothing beats 2 minutes and 800km of range. It's crazy how much of a step back electric is.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

Yeah if only they invented a liquid fuel that would let you work a full day.

I get electric cars sometimes for rentals as well. Without a home charger it is a lot of hassle though. Even with the leeway they give you over gas it can put a crimp in plans. Will get a bit better with more fast chargers being built but as above nothing beats 2 minutes and 800km of range. It's crazy how much of a step back electric is.

Electric vehicles are actually a major step forward because there's more than just one factor that determines whether something is a net improvement or not. If you judge based on just a single factor you could single out any other factor like the cost to power the vehicle, the likelihood of fuel spills, the amount of resulting air pollution, the reliability and maintenance requirements, etc. and you could come to a completely different conclusion.

But yes, certain applications are more easily adapted to one vs the other. Perhaps farming is an exception to the average use case.

[Innsertnamehere]

farming and remote uses are tougher on electric, no doubt.

Those are mostly niche uses however. They probably represent 1-2% of total transportation emissions.

Even rental car uses won't be a problem once home charging becomes more universal, especially at hotels.

Electric cars for regular consumer demands are far better than most applications. the only time gas really becomes better is when you are driving more than ~600-700kms in a day as you start needing to make more, lengthier stops than you would generally like.. and that's a pretty niche problem for the vast majority of users.

Even for long range trucking electric can work fine as you can charge during mandated breaks and have time during the day due to maximum daily usage limits.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

Yeah if only they invented a liquid fuel that would let you work a full day.

Swapping a battery is a lot easier than having to do regular small engine maintenance. Why do you think electric tools have gotten so much more popular over the last decade? Did you think those buyers were all enviroweanies?

Originally Posted by YOWetal

I get electric cars sometimes for rentals as well. Without a home charger it is a lot of hassle though. Even with the leeway they give you over gas it can put a crimp in plans. Will get a bit better with more fast chargers being built but as above nothing beats 2 minutes and 800km of range. It's crazy how much of a step back electric is.

Nobody gives a shit about 800 km range. Especially for a rental. That's a useless talking point. Almost nobody drives 800 km at a stretch. And it's certainly not a factor for most car buyers, even when they buy a gas car.

The biggest issue with EVs is charging. Not just at hotels or condos. But the lack of coordination between chargers and navigation systems, the maintenance of the chargers and all the various payment and membership systems. A lot of this is being sorted out. First with various requirements imposed by the US Government with the IRA, and then with Tesla winning the charging format war which means North America will now standardize on NACS over the next 2-3 years. This should result in dramatic improvements to charging services over the next 10 years as the networks start to emulate Tesla's charging services more and the OEMs build cars with wider charging compatibility.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

Even for long range trucking electric can work fine as you can charge during mandated breaks and have time during the day due to maximum daily usage limits.

Businesses are data driven. And diesel is expensive. If they can go electric and it means an extra stop or longer lunch break, they will still do it. All that matters is that they achieve a lower total cost per mile (which accounts for the higher capital cost of the electric truck and higher operating cost of drivers taking longer breaks). We're talking about companies that use software to map routes to eliminate a handful of left turns, just to reduce collision risk and delays caused waiting at a light. Just imagine what they'll do to get fuel costs down by 83%. Operating savings won't be 83% of course. But the difference against diesel is likely to be enough to give any operator a substantial competitive advantage.

This is why I said earlier, there's a race on to electrify freight and delivery. Why did Amazon order 100 000 EDVs from Rivian? Why didn't they just stagger orders of say 10 000 to 25 000 EDVs? They wanted to make sure nobody else had access to Rivian's trucks for the rest of the decade. Walmart is desperately trying to craft a deal like that with Canoo now. They were completely caught off-guard by the Amazon-Rivian deal. I wonder who is going to craft a deal like this with one of OEMs for electric semis.

[WarrenC12]

Pepsi and Walmart made the biggest Tesla Semi pre-orders. We'll see who gets the most access to them as they ramp up production in 2024.