Blog

Short blog posts, journal entries, and random thoughts. Topics include a mix of personal and the world at large.

You're waiting for this?

Last week I was at the local Safeway which has an electric vehicle charging station in its parking lot. On a mid-week morning there was a line of cars waiting to use the four already occupied charging ports. Are these people really sitting there for god knows how long, waiting to “fuel up”? Charging an electric vehicle is far slower than filling up a combustion vehicle with gas. The advertised maximum charging rate only occurs in spurts, and in ideal conditions.

My current stance on electric vehicles is: if you cannot charge at home, then you’re better off buying gasoline-powered. The public charging infrastructure (outside of Tesla’s own superchargers) is still not ready for primetime. I follow quite a bit of car people on twitter, and the consensus I’ve gather is that the public charging network is slow, inconsistent, and not enough. The convenience of being in and out of a gas station in under 10 minutes is still a massive advantage.

I’m genuinely surprised that people are even willing to wait that long for a charging spot. The amount of impatience I’ve witness on the driving road these days is high. You have drivers honking at cars with the audacity to wait for pedestrians to cross before making a turn. What do they want? To run them over? Worst is when I see such impatience on weekend mornings. You’re aggravated on a Sunday morning? I have to assume you’re simply in a hurry to go die.

Personally I do not have the facilities to charge a car in my home. Therefore an electric vehicle does not factor in my future anytime soon. My time is worth way more than spending an hour just to charge up a car.

The ICE era is truly over

With Ford set to announce a fully electric version of its venerable F-150 pickup truck - the best selling vehicle in America for the past few decades - the era of the internal combustion engine is truly over. We’ve reached the point of no return in the transition to electric vehicles. The question is only how fast can we get to mass adoption, and how quickly can the public charging infrastructure build out to compliment the EV transition of nearly every major automaker.

I think that if you have the capability to charge at home, your next new car should be fully electric. Unless you drive an absurd amount of miles for your commute, there’s absolutely no need use any public charging point. An overnight charge on any standard 240 volt home system should be able to adequately charge an EV. For the few instances when you absolutely need the range (think road trips), you can always rent a regular gas-powered car. Don’t be like that person who drives a pickup truck, but only goes on a Home Depot haul once a year.

I am more certain than ever that my BMW M2 Competition will be the last new internal-combustion car I buy. The only petrol car I would get to replace it with is something used, and something with a Porsche badge. Otherwise, any future new car will surely be electrically motivated. Other than the current state of the public charging infrastructure, there’s really no downside to electric vehicles (perhaps price). Once you’ve experienced that EV shove and the silent ride, there’s no going back.

Obviously I am keen to hold on to the M2 for quite awhile. Hopefully by the time I am ready for my personal transition to an electric car, public charging points will be way more abundant and reliable than it is now. I see no greater incentive for that to happen than America’s best selling vehicle - the Ford F-150 - going fully electric.

An EV should be your next car

To get around the relatively vast San Francisco State campus, we have these small electric trucks to drive around. They are similar in size to the kei cars you see in Japan: small engine, narrow size, supremely maneuverable. Especially during these COVID times, when the campus is largely empty of people, it’s very fun to zip around these things. A few years ago we got fully electric versions to replace the aging gasoline fleet. It’s with these tiny trucks where I had my first prolonged experience with EVs.

Conclusion: I think anybody with the capability to plug-in at home should buy an EV, and never look at gasoline vehicles ever again.

Our trucks at work are always charging and ready to go. The electric motor have more than enough torque to push a full load of cargo up an incline. Best of all, there’s no emissions to speak of, so when there are people mingling about on campus, we’re not choking up the place with smog. Range is not a problem: there’s enough on a charge to drive around campus multiple times over. Soon as we return to base, it goes straight to the plug.

If you have the capability to charge at home, there’s really no downside to an EV. Should on the few occasions you need to go somewhere far, you can always rent a regular gasoline-powered car. It’s the trap of thinking you need to have one singular car for all scenarios that’s giving people pause for EVs in regards to range. I get it: the current charging infrastructure is not broad enough and too cumbersome (who wants to wait over half an hour to “fuel” up?)

Which is why I caveat that only those with charging capabilities at home should buy an EV.

Just as you shouldn’t buy a pickup truck for the few times out of the year you think you’ll hit the hardware store, or a Jeep Wrangler for the few times you’ll go off-roading, don’t let the notion of a long road-trip deter you from buying a fully electric vehicle as your next car. EVs are the future, and I see everyday how awesome that future is at work.

China is working hard to be green

I’ve now gone home to Guangzhou for the past five Januaries, and every single time, the city amazes me with how much it has advanced in quality-of-life aspects. I can remember back in 2016 I could barely breathe the air it was so choked full of smog; had similar conditions occur in San Francisco, we’d be advised to stay indoors, and classes would be cancelled. Fast forward to now, air quality in Guangzhou have improved so much that I have no problem spending two weeks there.

Mind you it’s still not the cleanest of air. I’d compare the current Guangzhou to a particularly bad air day in Los Angeles: not ideal, but very livable. The city government - and I’m sure the same is true for every major city in China as well - understands that smog and pollution is big issue, and it’s doing everything it can to address it.

On last year’s trip, I was utterly surprised to find the entire public bus fleet in Guangzhou have switched over to pure electric, a hefty undertaking that eliminates a huge source of emissions from the surface streets. The smug of you may say what good are electric buses if the power supplying those batteries comes from dirty coal that China is stereotypically known for. Well, bad news for those of you: Guangzhou is powered by nuclear energy.

I can’t even imagine San Francisco doing something similar, switching the SF MUNI fleet to electric. I’d be shocked if such a thing happens within the next twenty years.

On this most recent trip to Guangzhou, I found the city have begun a massive garbage sorting campaign. Propaganda was absolutely everywhere, and residents are now required to divide up their garbage properly before throwing out into the corresponding bins. Perhaps it’s bad on my part, but I honestly never thought I’d see the day that people living in China would have to sort their garbage like we do. With so much land and landfill, it’s far easier to simply lump it all together and haul it out - as it has been done for as long as I can remember.

Everyone sort of expects China to be this gross polluter, with its cities filled with smoggy skies. If Guangzhou is any indication for the rest of the vast country, then China knows it’s got a problem too, and it’s doing something about it at a pace and scale that’s impossible in the West.

I look forward to many days of clear blue skies in future trips back home.

Where's the EV infrastructure?

The past few weeks I’ve been writing about automotive industry quickly evolving to mass electrification. The annual Geneva Motor Show confirmed that is indeed where auto manufacturers are heading, and very rapidly. Fairly soon we’ll be seeing electric vehicles all over dealership lots, hoping to find a good home that will hopefully be fitted with an appropriate charger.

And there lies my only contention with electrification: the charging infrastructure, or lack thereof. Lots of automakers are talking up plans for electric vehicles on a massive scale, but none I can see are discussing the other side of the equation. Gasoline-powered cars have gas stations; where’s the convenient equivalent for electric power?

Some will point out “refueling” stations will be obsolete because owners can charge at home; but what if you don’t have a home? My apartment certainly does not have any sort of provisions for charging, and neither does my workplace. You can give me an electric vehicle for free today and I’d have no practical way of using it. Driving to a charging lot to then wait many hours to “fill up” a car seems like a tremendous waste of time.

Owning a home isn’t in my future, not with the historically astronomical homes prices in the San Francisco Bay Area. Basically, I won’t have the ability to charge an electric car at the place I’m living in, and if manufacturers want to sell me one, they – or someone – need to build out a charging network facsimile to the traditional petrol station. Ideally I should be able to visit a charging station, and fill up the batteries in less than 10 minutes.

Automakers are coming in hot on the supply side, but without a proper infrastructure, will the demand side be there? Up until now, most people who have purchased electric vehicles own a home, therefore capable of installing home chargers; that’s certainly the case with owners I know personally. If electrification of the automobile is indeed the future, then those of us not lucky/rich enough to own a home will need a different solution.

Perhaps this massive infusion of capital by automakers into electrification will be one huge waste of money. I don’t think we can yet know.

Then on some days you just want to pig out.

Verdict from GIMS 2019: electrification

Media day for the 2019 Geneva Motor Show was yesterday, and there’s plenty of exciting stuff to see. I’ll leave you to peruse the major media outlets for an outline on each and every new model; rather I’m going to touch on the major theme I see at this year’s Geneva show: electrification.

Dread it, run from it, destiny arrives all the same (thanks, Thanos); the automotive industry is rapidly shifting from internal-combustion to the electric motor, and it’s all readily apparently when looking at what’s being displayed and talked about in Geneva. Super cars have a need for electric power in order to achieve ever lofty performance numbers: both Ferrari and Aston Martin will be turning to turbo V6 engines with hybridization for their next generation products. Normal city cars are converting to full electric to satisfy increasingly stringent emission standards: German manufacturers are promising massive electrification of their portfolio in a very short timeframe.

I don’t suppose in any of our lifetimes we’ve seen such a paradigm shift on the motive power of vehicles. The combustion engine has been de rigueur for the longest time, and it’s only rather recently the industry have changed from natural aspiration to small displacement turbocharged motors – for the sake of efficiency and lower carbon outflow. It appears this ‘turbo era’ will super short-lived: full and partial electrification is quickly arriving.

Let’s look at the brilliant Honda Civic Type R. The latest generation have only just made the switch to turbocharging after a long history of fantastic atmospheric engines, and now Honda is already announcing the next Type R will be an electric hybrid. We can thank tight emission requirements for this one: Honda could easily squeeze more power out of the turbo engine, but adding an extra electric motor instead makes it far easier to achieve that extra power, but with zero penalty at the tailpipe.

The automotive landscape is transforming right before our eyes, and the rate of change is something I did not anticipate to be so swift. My 911 GT3 is 2015 model year car, yet it’s already feeling like a relic of the past: a gas-guzzling sports car with a non-turbo engine.

To be clear, I am not against electrification: I think fully electric vehicles are fantastic for dense urban commutes. Once the powers at be figure out the technology to deliver “refueling” technology for electric at the same speed as the ubiquitous petrol station, electric cars will be a good fit for suburban and rural communities, too. For the sake of cleaner air and a healthy populist, the switch to electrification is a worthy process.

However, for the weekend sports car type of vehicle, electric motivation just doesn’t stir the soul. Once you get pass the accelerative prowess of an electric car, what’s leftover is, to me, immensely dull. I want an engine that speaks to me: a thundering howl as the revs climb, pops out of the exhaust on a throttle ease, and the clattering of the mechanicals. This is the sort of motoring joy I grew up with, and I’m going to cling to that ethos for as long as possible.

I intend the GT3 to be my ‘forever car’, and the electrification of the automotive industry isn’t helping to convince me otherwise.

Here we have the Golf GTI in its natural habitat.

Are we sure about electric vehicles?

Somewhat surprising news from Porsche today when it announced the next generation Macan sports-utility vehicle will be entirely electric. The current lineup of petrol engines will be no more. It seems the Taycan sedan is but the first salvo in an all-out assault on electric vehicles for the company in Stuttgart.

The announcement came as a surprise to me because the current Macan is the best selling Porsche car by some margin - 1/3 of all Porsches sold annually, a veritable money printing machine. To switch the motive power of their most popular model to completely electric within one generation is quite a strong bet: that our immediate motoring future is electric.

My question is: are we sure about this?

Due to marketing forces I can’t understand, much of the auto industry is shifting focus to electric; the upstart Tesla have really started a revolution (pun fully intended) indeed. Manufacturers are either already producing fully electric cars (Jaguar i-Pace, Audi e-tron, BMW i3/i8, etc) or are actively gearing up to make them (Mercedes Benz, GM, Honda, etc). The discussion doesn’t include hybrid powertrains anymore - that is so early 2000s. Rather, the industry is poised to ween itself off the internal combustion engine.

There is one marketing force I can understand: money. Innovation brings customers to the showrooms, and for better or worst, Tesla have made electric cars the glamorous thing to own. Much like television makers jumping from 3D to 4K and soon 8K, enticing people to upgrade for no practical reason (3D is dead, and 4K programming is not the least ubiquitous), automakers are seeking a similar splash in a super mature industry. They see Tesla causing Apple-like frenzy with each vehicle launch, and they want in on that action.

Outside of money, where is the impetus for electric vehicles exactly? People want to make the argument of zero emissions, but don’t batteries need to be mined and produced? Energy generation in cities and countries - to charge the cars - surely isn’t free of pollution. Even if I were to grant that electric vehicles are cleaner in aggregate than the petrol counterpart, the massive infrastructure overhaul required to accommodate this new mode of “fueling” isn’t going to be inexpensive, either.

Not to mention charging times have yet to even come remotely close to that the traditional gas station. And plenty of people don’t live in quarters that can easily integrate vehicle charging. My apartment of no parking garage sure isn’t one.

Obviously a huge part of this is me simply being a curmudgeon about electric cars. I grew up on and adore the petrol combustion engine, and it will be a sad day indeed when that technology is left to the history books. These latest wave of news just makes it seem like that day is right around the corner. Automakers have switched attention to electric at a much faster rate than I had expected and wanted. Porsche plans to have half of their vehicle lineup be electric by 2025, and that really isn’t that far away.

It’s good to see, then, not all manufacturers are abandoning the petrol engine: Mazda will soon mass-produce a compression-ignited gas engine - the Japanese company have yet to produce even one hybrid model. Meanwhile, Toyota isn’t yet convinced on the idea that electric vehicles are the bright future other automakers are so dumping R&D money into.

Wouldn’t it be hilarious if electric cars turn out to not be the future of motoring.