Category: EV
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EV has come a long way but US is falling behind
I came across the data of EV stock at the country level from the IEA website. While it is informative, it does not have any map visualization, which is quite easy to do with Excel. So I just did that. The above is the one on EV stock in percentages by country as of 2022.…
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EVs with 500+mile range? Maybe a hybrid with a large battery and small engine is better for the market
Photo: Milan, Città metropolitana di Milano, Italy, June 2023. I used to think that EVs do not really need a long range of, say, 300 miles, for the simple reason that we rarely drive that long. In a series of my earlier posts (here and here), I plotted the histogram of daily driving distance, and…
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Should I Buy or Lease a Tesla Part 6: The Saga Continues
Photo: A rainy day in Cambridge, MA, Summer 2022. Last year, I wrote a series of articles about the uncertainty around the decision of buying vs leasing a Tesla model Y. In particular, I cautioned in one of the posts that Tesla cars’ depreciation rates may be better than other brands, but there are still…
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How has the work-from-home world affected the environment?
Photo: Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden, summer 2022. The net impact of work-from-home on the environment is actually quite complex, and depends on a number of factors such as commuting patterns and energy consumption at home and at workplace, both before and after the switch. But let’s first discuss where the potential positive and…
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Tesla’s ticking time bomb?
It was reported by WSJ that Tesla is halting its production at its plant in China. There are multiple reasons, according to the report, but one of the main reason was due to the waves of covid infections that have been hitting its workers and suppliers in China. This incident brings forth a more concerning…
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EV Charging Networks: The Top 8
In the EV book that I co-wrote and co-edited (with Peter Fox-Penner and David Jermain) in 2019, we documented the status of EV charging infrastructure in cities around the world such as Los Angeles, Oslo, and Beijing. Since then, EV adoption has continued to grow by leaps and bounds. In this post, I intend to…
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EV prices 2022 (I): The Distribution
How much more expensive are electric cars these days, compared to gasoline cars? Most articles are this topic compare the averages, and some look at the box plots. But I would argue that the best way to compare is to look at the entire statistical distribution of the two. I looked around on the Internet,…
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EV Fast Charging in the US is becoming better but still has a long way to go
Recently I experienced myself how hard/easy it was to fast charge an EV while on the road. To be specific, I drove a Nissan Leaf, and that excludes the Tesla network which to me is the most accessible. The Nissan Leaf uses the ChAdeMo charger, and had a partnership with the EVgo network, which was…
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So Ford Wants to Do Away with its Dealers…
According to the Detroit Free Press, Jim Farley, the current Ford CEO, said that he wants to sell its EVs online rather than through its dealerships. Apparently, he was upset at the markups added by many of its dealers on its ever-so-popular electric F-150 Lightning that offended many customers. For example, one of the dealers…
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How much do you pay charging an EV on a monthly basis?
I always knew it is a bit cheaper to drive an EV as opposed to a gasoline car (not the owning part, which deserve a separate calculation, but just the day-to-day cost of using it) in New England where I live, but I never bothered to quantify that saving. That is, until today. As you…
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EV in 2022 and Beyond: More Good News, but Uncertainties Too
Recently I was asked to reflect a little on the recent EV movement, so I dug a bit on the latest statistics. 2022 is not over yet, so the latest number we have is from 2021. I was encouraged to find that while everyone was focusing on the COVID in 2021, EV sales actually nearly…
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Do you really need a Power button for an electric car?
I just got my second EV, and it is a Nissan Leaf. It is a good-looking car, especially with its signature “Scarlet Ember” exterior. It drives smoothly, and rides comfortably. In fact, everyone who rode in the car told me they do not feel the difference between this and my Tesla. And I agree with…
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EV is not just about making cars. It is about the Supply Chain.
JB Straubel, Tesla co-founder and its former chief technology officer, recently gave an interview, where he warned that some auto manufacturers may have not thought through when they announced that they were going to switch to 100% EV by a certain date. Indeed, if you look at how a car is made, whether EV or gasoline ones,…
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Understanding CO2 Emissions for different freight transport modes (renewable as well as non-renewable)
One of the most important questions to ask in transitioning to renewable modes of transport is simply: How much less CO2 are we going to emit by switching to renewables? The other important question is: How much does it cost? I have been researching on that question quite a bit. And I found quite a…
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SHOULD I BUY OR LEASE A TESLA? PART 3: It is not black-and-white (because we do not know the future)
In my last post, I showed that the total cost of buying a Tesla with a loan (or cash) is easy to figure out. However the final value is critically dependent upon one thing: the depreciation of the car when the owner sells it. Unfortunately that quantity is uncertain, because it has not happened yet…
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SHOULD I BUY OR LEASE A TESLA? PART 2: Total loan cost (when you are sure about the depreciation)
In a previous post, I calculated the total cost of leasing a Tesla, using my own experience as an example. Before we move on to the buying option, let me mention one important feature of leasing: It has more certainty in terms of total cost. You know what you pay, and you do not worry…
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Should I Buy or Lease a Tesla? Part 1: Leasing Cost
Recently I read quite a bit of discussion on “Should I buy or lease a Tesla?”. I do not want to weigh in on which side I take, as I know it is not just about numbers. People value things differently. So here I would just focus on the monetary cost side. When it comes…
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Road Transportation is the Single Largest Decarbonization Opportunity with a Clear Path Forward
My apology for the unwieldy title. But I chose the long title to highlight one thing: Although there are many decarbonization opportunities with large impact, road transportation offers the clearest path forward. Let me elaborate. First, let’s examine the areas where we need to reduce our carbon footprints. There are lots of high-quality research and…
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The Sustainability Perils of E-commerce (II): Fast and Furious (Fuming)?
In an early post, I talked about the upsides and downsides of e-commerce logistics on the environment. The main idea there is that e-commerce can potentially reduce CO2 emissions if customers end up driving less in their own cars. However, because of the small batch size of typical e-commerce orders, delivery trucks end up drive…
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Zero-Carbon Economy: A Grand -and Necessary – Vision
I just watched a video produced by Cambridge University called “The Climate Crisis: Towards Zero Carbon”: Well done, Cambridge! The video first shows that data on historical CO2 levels and temperature makes it irrefutable that the current climate crisis is created by us humans. The video then highlights a few important areas for decarbonization: Energy…