“inevitable”? hardly. how many first-year Leafs are out there on the original battery? a lot, i’d reckon most. how many dead Leafs are out there which were totalled because of needing a new battery? certainly less than those which were totalled due to rust, collision, etc., ie the things that kill gas cars too.
Thing is, first-year Leaf really isn't an old car.
Outside of the richest countries there are whole communities who'd never buy a new car, because the car they can afford to buy is a much-used cheap car that's the same age as the first-year Leaf is now; the rich countries/communities drive the first 10 years of a car, buy a new car, and the used car gets sold in poorer areas where most people don't ever buy new cars, because even the entry level new cars are like twice the cost they would afford. The ICE market provides a significant quantity of such used cars, which are cheap because of the wear and tear of being 10-15 years old but are still likely to be usable for a very long time if you maintain them properly.
Are 15 year old Leafs a comparable alternative to 15 year old ICE Hondas? If after the EV revolution buying a 15 year old car ceases to be an affordable option because it will need an unreasonably expensive replacement (compared to the value of such an old car) to be usable for 10 more years, then that's a major societal change in the affordability of transport.
So you imply refurbishing a car battery pack will be unreasonably expensive? Why?
And real world data does not suggest that will be needed at all. Sure there are outliers like someone damaging battery by doing only supercharging but that's exception like not changing oil in ICE.
Batteries cost a significant fraction of a new EV cost (something like 30%) - in the context of populations who want/need vehicles which are affordable because they're used for 10-15 years and should cost a fraction of what a new vehicle costs, that's unreasonably expensive; that replacement costs more than that whole used car should cost.
For example, the first reasonable site I googled for replacement costs (https://www.consumeraffairs.com/automotive/ev-battery-replac...) asserts that the battery replacement for a Leaf would cost on average $17,657 - but I'm talking about a target audience who currently would buy a $10,000 car and expect to use it for many more years; current ICE cars enable that, but if getting a usable range from a Leaf when they'll be 15-20 years old will require a replacement battery, that's not going to work out. The replacement batteries for full EVs (as opposed to hybrids with smaller capacity) are more expensive than even full engine replacements or full transmission replacements for old ICE cars, and even very old ICE cars usually don't need a full engine replacement but can work (with usable range!) with much cheaper repairs.
In essence, my doubts are about the longevity of EV cars - what proportion of EVs will be usable/used when they will be 15, 20 or 25 years old (or after 100k / 200k miles), and how that compares to the same metric for the current ICE cars; a downgrade there won't be a big difference for the relatively wealthy buyers of new cars now, but it can be a kick in the balls for the poorer communities in a few decades if the affordable used (and I mean significantly used, not those which were just leased for a few years) cars cease to exist.
There's also a huge population of people who pay even less for a car, like around $5k or less still. Go to the LA county craigslist, average car is $13k but the largest bin by far on the pricing histogram is the sub 5k bin. You set the price interval to be between $2-$5k you get about 2600 ads. You set it at 3k and you still get about 1500 ads, and these are "true" ads with that $2 start cutting off the people who don't list prices on more expensive cars.
You assume that everything will cost exactly as much as now. While the trends are clear, batteries keep getting cheaper and gas more expensive. Which is inevitable when production shrinks. And expensive gas is even bigger "kick in the balls".
The car may be maintained properly, but I see problem getting batteries and other components. When old batteries are no longer being made, the car becomes useless. Similarly, when you cannot get the electric and electronic components, the car is heading for a scrap yard. I'd love to hear from someone who is closer to the matter and knows is third-party battery or electronic component replacements for old EVs are a thing?
Not sure about leafs, but with teslas the batteries are only warrantied for 8 years and 150k miles. If you live somewhere with winters it probably diminishes a lot faster. With a gas car there are things you have to do around this mileage too e.g. timing belt and water pump but thats a fix thats an order of magnitude cheaper than an ev battery replacement.
Tesla's warranty also guarantees 70% minimum of original battery life. That is similar to the degradation you'll see in a gas car. My 10 year old Mazda has lost about 12% of its fuel economy from new and it's never had engine trouble. Low income people will probably continue to buy used cars like they do now.
Well if EV battery prices continue to decline at a similar rate - and there’s no reason not to expect this - then in 8-10 years the cost of the batteries is going to be about ¼ of today’s cost. So it doesn’t really seem like it will be such a burden.
Are the current replacement costs for batteries of 8-10 year old cars 1/4 of the cost that they used to be? The part costs for replacing batteries on 2014 Teslas or Leafs seem to be far more than that (https://www.consumeraffairs.com/automotive/ev-battery-replac...).
Is it obvious? Waymo has hundreds of driverless taxis in SF where you literally cannot sit in the driver's seat. Stuff that consumers can currently get their hands on isn't really driverless but the tech exists now.
For cars like Waymo/Cruise/etc, those are Level 5 to my knowledge (with restrictions for location, I guess). You can't sit in the drivers seat, so how can the passengers possibly pay attention or do anything? This study is talking about drivers (in the drivers seat) and Level 3/4 technology. So, what Mercedes is advertising and other car manufacturers are aiming for in the future.
Level 5 is essentially defined as L4 with an "unlimited" ODD, not a meaningful level on its own. Waymo and Cruise are L4 systems, but you could build an L4 system where people were able to drive if you wished.
I get that it's defined that way, but it's not, practically speaking, the same. The article is about a driver having L3/L4 tech. Waymo/Cruise are not allowing that. So you truly can relax/nap/do work email... because what else would you do?
Yes, and the article quotes people that are really only talking about L3, even though they use the word "L4".
One of the defining features of L4 as everyone else uses that term is that you are not required to take over, even in emergencies. L4 capabilities don't prevent you from voluntarily taking over, it's simply not required that you be able to in order to operate the ODD. Both Cruise and Waymo operate test fleets with drivers who can take over, incidentally.
This has been possible for years. I actually got in the habit of porting my qt projects to the web target because they ran better than native compiled on some of my older machines.
If it ultimately doesn't sell, that's a signal to the manufacturer that will affect forecasting and production next year. Manufacturers don't want to waste money manufacturing things that don't end up selling.
With few exceptions the browser market is a lot like the Volkswagen Group. They design key components and depending on market segment they slap a Audi, VW or Skoda label on it, do a few tweaks to the look and feel and add a few features that they know that a particular segment wants. Under "chrome" it's a Volkswagen.
Ruby package management is lacking in many ways. E.G: there is not good build in solution to manage projects and multiple versions of ruby on windows, it's all 3rd party. And C-extensions are still terrible to install
The apparent simplicity comes from the fact the ruby ecosystem is much smaller than the Python one, with 95% of it revolving around ror, so you are more often on the happy path and see less errors.
