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Comment by adventured | Hacker News Reader

The economist has an interesting article out right now, about how the discussion over diesel cars is almost moot with the rapid rise of the electric car globally over the next few years:

http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21666226-volkswagens-f...

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Globally?

Electric cars will never reach that much consumers in Asia as it has in US. Very few people in Shanghai/Seoul/Tokyo own private garage to charge cars in over night.

And this is why Toyota/Hyundai are stubbornly pushing Hydrogen cars.

Maybe not cars, but perhaps busses will be the preferred electric vehicle in Asia. China's BYD has been building electric busses for a while, and even Los Angeles is buying.

To me electric busses seem a no-brainier for municipalities: they have predictable routes so you can schedule around charging times, fuel costs can be beneath what you'd pay for gasoline, and cities looking to reduce their carbon footprint can point to the busses and a demonstrable difference.

The idea that people need private garages to charge their cars seems silly. You can have plugs in public garages or even regular parking spaces, with cables you securely attach to both ends (to prevent energy theft) and a payment system. It's not that much more complex than a parking meter.

What about people who never park in a parking garage? Who's going to pay for installing/maintaining charging stations?

I would like to be proven wrong, but in markets with low level of private garage ownership, pure EV won't succeed.

That's as much a technology problem as anything else. If you line the streets with chargers, then have the car and charger interface with each other to report which car is actually charging, you can bill the owner.

Whether or not the areas cars are parked have the appropriate wiring to facilitate chargers is another problem entirely. And quite frankly, I'm still skeptical our electric grid can handle everyone plugging in a car - solar panels or not. It's been overcast here for 4 days straight, if I had to plug my car in, it'd be drawing from an already strained grid. If everyone in my neighborhood did the same thing, I can see a lot of rolling brownouts.

The effect of a significantly higher, controllable and predictable load will be nothing but positive for a strained grid. Electric cars are a great load because, unlike lighting and AC and most other household use, the energy doesn't need to be delivered at a specific time.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/518066/could-electric-c...

> Researchers ... have calculated that the grid has enough excess capacity to support over 150 million battery-powered cars, or about 75 percent of the cars, pickups, and SUVs on the road in the United States.

That's US. Not same situation in other places.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_vehicle_industry_in_C...

China is pretty excited about electric cars.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-23/china-won-...

> China [is] the only market where Toyota sells EVs.

The idea is not to charge the e-cars overnight at home, but during the day at the company parkhouse or parking lots, so that the energy companies can unload energy during the peak hours from those batteries. That's the most expensive energy, and car batteries are perfect for that. Win-win.

Or like in the air refueling. Self driving e-cars will probably be able to connect to each other while still driving and sell energy to each other.

Relatedly, Germany has some of the lowest incentives for EV buyers in the EU. Probably not a coincidence.

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