When all cars are electric, where will the electricity come from?

I don’t see how all cars will ever be electric. I guess if we have some sort of amazing technological breakthrough where we can charge the battery in just a few minutes or batteries could maybe hold a charge for a much longer time to be able to drive much farther.

I seriously considered buying an electric car this time, but my husband would not be able to drive it to Tennessee so I decided against it. I like the idea of never having to touch a gas pump during this covid mess.

We could easily have much much more solar power on homes. Some parts of the country can use windmills.

If solar panels became much more efficient, which seems to be very difficult to accomplish, the car rook could be a solar panel and charge the battery. The wheels going round is a neat idea also.

We have a EV charging station in just about every town,I know nothing about them although they are there and people do use them,I guess there is some kind of fee for using them.

I have good friends with solar panels on their house. They charge the car from sunlight.

I love your idea of “turning automobile wheels (the wheels that go “round and round”) into generators”. Along those lines we could use fans to blow air into wind turbines. Apart from solar, wind, water and nuclear power we could get the power from the outlet that charges the battery or just find stuff to burn.

Note:solar only works during daylight obviously, and that’s when most people are at work, so you either need to save the energy in batteries at the house, or sell the energy to the electric company, and then you use their energy to charge overnight.

The electric company can be powered by solar altogether, that’s a different thing. There are electric companies that use solar and/or wind. They either have fields of solar or they use the roof tops of people’s houses.

Solar, gas, hydrogen, nuclear, hydro. Lots of options.

Luckily it won’t be a every car powered by the sun overnight situation and supply for alternate sources can ramp up over time. Which helps with economies of scale and efficiency of alternate sources.

We can wait and see how Europe deals with this and then do the exact opposite and fuck it all up. For the second time.. MAGA

Hydro electric, nuclear and a lot from coal.

@JLeslie ”...my husband would not be able to drive it to Tennessee.”

That’s not accurate.

I just plugged in the route and a Model 3 using the supercharger network would go from Orlando to Nashville in about 13 hours whereas via ICE car Google maps says it takes 10 hours. But you’re still going to stop for gas, bathroom breaks and likely at least one meal in that time. Ultimately, it’s a more relaxing way to travel too where you can take a short break and stretch every 150–250 mi, with a couple of longer stops for food and maybe a quick walk. So it’s probably about 15–25% slower to do that in an EV with access to supercharging.

I would say that if you made that trip every few weeks, that would be enough of a pain to pass on the EV (or have a 2nd ICE vehicle), but for most people, a couple of extra hours, a handful of times per year, is a reasonable trade-off for all of the benefits you get by going EV (assuming you can charge at home overnight). If you total how many minutes per year you spend pumping gas, waiting for oil changes, etc. it’s way more time (not to mention the cost/hassle). Of course the other option is to take the savings from gas and oil changes/maintenance and use that to either rent a car for the occasional longer road trip-or fly. Again that’s not an option for everyone, and for some people an EV really doesn’t make sense if they are making 500mi+ trips on a frequent basis or can’t charge overnight.

As to the OP’s question, solar power has been getting cheaper, and as batteries become more ubiquitous, having battery storage for the grid as well as a more distributed grid will help as well. Remember that burning gas is horribly inefficient, so replacing it with more-efficient electric power will require a smaller increase in energy production. Also remember that most people don’t drive that far every day. It’s about 16 miles per day for the average American.

From batteries, be that as they may. Batteries can be recharged from hydro electrical resources, or solar.
But the drawback to batteries in general is the cost of replacement, the weight of the batteries, and, something nobody talks about, the ferocity of electrical fires in the event of accidents. And there is the limited range of the vehicle between chargings.
Something else no one is talking about is that electrical cars will have no resale value because batteries wear out and the very high cost required to replace the battery/batteries. Imagine buying a used gasoline powered vehicle and having to replace the engine. Or trying to sell a used gasoline powered vehicle and having to replace the engine before putting the vehicle out on the lot for sale. The cost of the reconditioned used vehicle would be almost the same as a new one.

@kritiper “Something else no one is talking about is that electrical cars will have no resale value because batteries wear out and the very high cost required to replace the battery/batteries.”

This isn’t really very accurate and is dependent on many factors. I expect my electric car to last me 500k miles or more. If you look at Tesla’s battery retention figures on Models S & X, they’re holding strong at about 90% of their original charge capacity after 200k miles. They are thermally managed, load balanced and protected from over-discharging, unlike other EVs and hybrids. Furthermore, Lithium Ion batteries don’t really degrade if you’re charging to 80% and then recharging at 40%. If they live in that happy-medium state most of their lives, then they should outlast most gas engines/transmissions (by a pretty significant margin). When a car has limited range you’re having to charge to full and then take it very low. That produces significant wear on the battery if done on a daily basis (like many of us do with our phones). The Nissan Leaf suffered from this and is partly responsible for the origins of this fear.

Another factor to consider is that a degraded battery is still useful (if not in a vehicle). Batteries from EVs can be repurposed for commercial power storage facilities where even a 50% degradation isn’t a major concern.

@gorillapaws I appreciate the time you are taking to calculate all of this. In a non-covid time, we stop and eat, stop to stretch, partly because I like the break, and partly because of my risks with blood clots, we usually don’t push to make long trips as fast as possible. During covid, we aren’t keen on eating along the road, and we don’t want to stay overnight in hotels if we can avoid it.

I still don’t understand how it works. You can’t just plug in anywhere you stop right? And, if someone else is plugged in when you get there then you can’t plug in. Moreover, doesn’t it take more time to charge up? If I plug in for 15 minutes how many miles do I get?

Lastly, if my husband takes the car to Nashville he might have it there half a year before driving back to Florida, so the rental doesn’t work. It’s not a bad idea for some circumstances though. For instance I usually buy a car taking into consideration our older parents and wanting the back seat to be easy in and out and comfortable. Sometimes, I think don’t bother worrying about that and I’ll rent a car when they visit.

@JLeslie When I put in the route, and changed it to the Model 3 option, it wanted Supercharging stops as follows:

Lake City, FL 25 mins.
Tifton, GA 30 mins.
Macon, GA 30 mins.
Acworth, GA 45 mins.
Manchester, TN 15 mins.

You could take more frequent/shorter stops, or less frequent/longer stops of course. The system adapts as you drive/charge without you having to do anything. Also speed is a big factor. If you like going 25 over-the-limit, that’s going to really hurt your efficiency the same as with gas. For some people that schedule isn’t very appealing—especially during covid where you may want to minimize time spent in other buildings. I think for trips over 500 miles the EV thing does seem to become a lot less appealing. But if you’re doing <350 mi trips you’re looking at a single stop for lunch or dinner which is easy to plan your drive around.

Charging is really easy: when your battery is low, you drive to a supercharger, plug in, and you leave when it’s ready. If you want to science the process and try to optimize for time, then there are a few things to keep in mind. Your car will charge very fast when it’s close to empty, it will charge much slower if it’s close to a full charge. Think of filling a measuring cup with water to a specific line, you’ll pour the water much more slowly as the water gets close to the mark. With the new V3 superchargers, at peak efficiency you can be charging at a rate of >900 miles of range per hour, but you won’t sustain that pace of charging the whole time. So you can go from 0–155mi of range in about 11 minutes, but it takes about an additional 15 minutes to go from 155–285mi. In practice, you don’t have to think too much about it.

“You can’t just plug in anywhere you stop right?”
Well technically you can charge anywhere there’s a wall outlet, but you’re going to be charging so slowly that it’s not practical (like trying to fill your bath with a straw). I was getting about 3 miles of range per hour—so 100 hours of charging to get to 300mi of range. There are things called level 2 chargers which are run by 3rd parties and they are like the electricity you would have for an electric dryer in your home. These are much faster than a standard 110 outlet, but also not really practical for road trips. I think they’re charging at something like 30–50 miles of charge per hour. So you’re realistically talking about at plugging in overnight or most of the day if you’re at a theme park or something like that to charge to full. You’ll frequently see these at malls, movie theatres, certain retailers, parking garages and hotels. These are all over the place and aren’t restricted to any particular make/model of EV.

Lastly there’s Tesla’s proprietary Supercharger network. These recharge your vehicle very quickly. Other manufacturers are pursuing similar charging networks. As you can see from the map, you can pretty-much go anywhere in the US in a Tesla. Each “pin” on the map usually has between 4–20 stalls (some as big as 50 stalls), and you can see if they’re in-use via the car’s map so you can plan accordingly. I’ve never had an issue having to wait for someone charging. The locations tend to be in strip-malls with a Panera, Chipole or sometimes much nicer food or near actual malls/points of interest so there’s something to keep you busy while you wait.

I feel like we’re in the last chapter of the the first phase of EV adoption.

@gorillapaws Since the jury is still out on this, all I can say is “good luck.” My knowledge of automotive batteries tells me otherwise.

@kritiper They don’t use automobile batteries; they use Panasonic nickel-metal hydride modules in Prius hybrid, not lead acid batteries. Some have warranties for 100,000 miles.

@Tropical Willie Warranties for 100,000 miles are great…for ten years. After that, what I said about resale value applies. And what applies for lead-acid batteries probably applies to any other type. Over time, a coating forms on the reactive plates slowing down or restricting the chemical reaction that makes the batteries work. So an old battery may take a full charge but it won’t last as long as the charge on a new battery.

Yup short length discharge, One of my neighbors bought a Prius after his daughter ( she’s about age) had bought a used Prius. Hers was $4000 under book, it needed a hybrid battery. She had one installed for $3000. She was third owner.

@kritiper ”...And what applies for lead-acid batteries probably applies to any other type.”

I don’t think that’s a valid assumption. There are many factors involved in the rate of battery degradation. As I said above, the depth of discharge, temperature management, battery chemistry, load balancing, frequency of rapid charging, and other factors all play a role. It is my understanding that hybrid batteries suffer from most of these issues.

@gorillapaws You can’t assume that it isn’t true.
But besides all that, when people get burned alive in electric cars because of an accident, even minor ones, which causes a massive ferocious fire cased by an electrical short, sales will fall off. (My prediction.)

@YARNLADY: The same places it comes from now: Natural gas turbines, hydropower, wind turbines, solar panels, oil-fired turbines (yes, just because we do not need gasoline any more, it does not mean you give up completely on crude oil!).

By the way, my wife for years drove a gas-powered car because she said one of the family cars needs to be gas in case of a major power outage. Took me a while, but I finally hit on the right response: “How would you pump gasoline in a major power outage?” Now we have two Teslas.

@JLeslie: Eventually, all cars will be electric. Of that I have zero doubt. However, I have no idea when “eventually” is!

By the way driving to Tennessee or any other state in the US would be a breeze today. Charging is not as fast as gassing up, but it happens while you are eating, so the total time required for a refueling stop is no longer. It helps to have a long-range electric car though. I think 500 mile range is coming in the Lucid Air (we’ll know for sure next week), and, I am certain, it will come soon to Tesla.

SQUEEKY 2: Teslas can charge at any EV charging station (with the right adapter). As I am writing this message, the reverse is not true. I expect it will be soon.

A full charge on my Model S (100 KWH) costs about $28 at a high-speed Tesla charger. It may take 1–1.5 hours depending on how depleted the battery is.

@Hawaii_Jake: My wife and I both drive Teslas, we have solar panels that produce about 80% of our annual electricity needs, the rest comes from our utility.

@Gorillapaws: That is a great answer. My wife and I recently drove in her Model Y from LA to Oakland and back. We needed just one stop each way; we normally do that anyway, even though her previous car (an ES300H Lexus hybrid) had enough range to cover the distance without stopping.