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  • Author Author: rscasny
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Seeking your Opinion: Is the Market Headed to Fully Electric Vehicles or 48V Hybrids?

Recent news that Tesla is going to produce an all electric vehicle for $35,000 didn't surprise me that much. Sooner or later Tesla would have had to produce an electric vehicle in the price range that most people could afford.

 

But what really turned my head was the $ billions that Ford plans on investing electric vehicles in the next few years. GM is also responding to the electrification trends of the day and is expanding its electric car portfolio in China. And Volvo is planning on have its entire lineup electric vehicles.

 

But wait a minute.

 

Is the global market ready for full vehicular electrification?

 

What happened to the hybrid market?

 

Specifically, 48V hybrids that offer more torque, faster acceleration, and better performance than the older generation 12V hybrids, while at the same time maintaining fuel economy and emissions standards compliance.

 

Hybrid vehicles use a high voltage DC bus to supply power to the motor. To accomplish that, 48v hybrids use a bi-directional current/voltage converter, which is needed to provide power between the 48V and 12V batteries in a hybrid vehicle (i.e., boost 12V to 48 or buck 48 to 12). Some studies say the potential market for 48V hybrid vehicles is great, yet at the same time, some countries such as India and China expect to skip hybrid and go directly to full electric. 

 

In your opinion, where do you think the market is moving towards: fully electric or 48V hybrids?

  • in reply to DAB

    Don,

     

    Good point about the charging infrastructure. Off the top of my head, I can only think of one or two public charging stations in chicago.

     

    Randall

  • In my opinion, full electric is the way to go - with a range extender if you think you'll need one. (That's just a petrol power generator to get you out of trouble.)

     

    I've been riding an electric motorbike for about 2 years and love it. I thought I'd want a conventionally fuelled bike to go with it by now, but I don't.

  • I understand the push to electric vehicles from an air pollution standpoint, but I doubt that most people understand that most of the power grid is still coal based.

    That means using electric cars means MORE pollution, not less.

    There is also a major energy efficiency with using electric cars verses fuel efficient gasoline vehicles. Electric vehicles are NOT that efficient.

     

    Then there is the problem of establishing a recharging infrastructure so you can use your vehicle as a primary transportation source. Not there yet.

     

    The big elephant in the room is what are you going to do with all of those EV batteries? You need to establish a viable recycling infrastructure to keep them out of the land fill.

     

    So I think going electric is a tad premature. Yes, they are great novelty items for those people who can afford them, but they are compounding the pollution problem, not solving it.

     

    DAB

  • I voted for full electric, but that is a literal answer to the question which asks where the market is heading - the direction now looks like full electric but it may change.

     

    I drive a diesel truck in the UK and it has a range of just over 500 miles on a full tank. I won't willingly replace it with an electric truck unless I can get a similar range.

     

    There are huge issues with materials for motors and batteries, infrastructure for charging and electricity generation.

     

    The other big myth with electric cars is that the fuel is cheap - in the UK electric power for cars is cheap because it carries no fuel tax, but petrol or diesel carries about 60p per litre of fuel tax and 20% VAT on top of that.

     

    Eventually all the political silliness will settle down a bit and we may adopt a good engineering solution - currently it's not at all clear to me that we have one that ticks all the boxes.

     

    MK

  • in reply to Pavel.Simon

    I gave my opinion and frankly I don't care about yours.

  • in reply to jomoenginer

    I see many time environmental argument against EV. But did you have time to dig deep to find comparison of environmental impact of full ICE operation and full operation of EV? Digging of cobalt, lithium or other is dirty, but oil is not? And what is worse?

    I did research of EV owner habits in Slovakia. More than 80 % of them are using EV for less than 100 km daily. And then does not matter where you charge. You can put those 20 kWh during night from your socket. Charging infrastructure is not problem.
    Dirty energy source: another "good" myth. If you would change (by miracle) all car in cities to EV, you would immediately see difference in those cities. And you could put more resources to produce clean centralised (or rather decentralised) energy production. We have plenty of Sun shine falling to Earth, but only we need to catch where we can - roofs. Energy is everywhere only we are not seeing it and not prepare to be responsible enough to use it...

  • in reply to michaelwylie

    Wasn't the Hindenburg filled with Hydrogen?

  • Based on current technology, I don't see it happening in the near future.  Besides, just the manufacturing alone of the batteries that go into a Tesla produce a large amount of pollution not to mention the damage that digging for the material is having on the Planet.  Also, where are they going to get all the electricity to charge the electric cars?  In California, the grid is already taxed to its limit, so adding more charging stations would seem to just add to the issues.

     

    Currently, at my day dig, there is a collection of semi happy Tesla owners who organize themselves so they can coordinate the access to the few charging stations in the near area. It's quite an elaborate process which includes texting and staging the incoming and outgoing cars at the charging station and battling the other electric cars.  If more folks buy into the all Electric vehicle thing, it will be interesting to see how they deal with the charging.

     

    I had a brother visit recently from Nebraska and we had seen the Tesla showcase in the local mall, but he said that there are not many of these in his area since they just don't make sense and can not weather the weather there.  Funny, Edison ran into the same issue when he was creating his version of electric delivery vehicles something like 100 years ago.

     

    I'm still waiting for someone to find that the EMF emitted by these electric vehicles are harming the drivers and those that work on them.   Same with Solar Panels.

     

    That's just my opinion.

  • In my opinion, we will shift to Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles (FCEVs). The difference is that with FCEVs, hydrogen is used to create the electricity.

    https://afdc.energy.gov/vehicles/fuel_cell.html

  • Depends on what time period you are asking, but any fossil fuel based car (hybrid or full ICE) are to vanish. It would take years, but as many technologies, it would disappear - for that technology, I need to say luckily disappear very soon.
    There is no need to burn precious chemical compound to have mobility and move fromA to B...