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Post by: Helena Trooperman
Dated: 29th March 2023
Now we’re going to take a closer look at the changes occurring to vehicles on our roads that will affect or narrow my writing window from our initial big view of 2024 to 2060 time window.
There’s one thing about the future, it should be fun. Yes, the climate is a serious issue, but that doesn’t mean we can’t create a bright, interesting, and positive life while working on saving our planet. To prove it, here’s a glimpse when I’m attempting autonomous driving for the first time in my EV.
I usually drive our Model Y as a regular EV. It really is fun! I love the sound system too. I’m only five foot tall and as I move toward the car it moves to my seating position before I step in and has my preferred music ready. When Rich, (Mr. T: “I pity the fool!”) approaches the car, it adjusts for him and his music. He’s much, much taller than me. 😉Sometimes when we arrive in the car simultaneously it’s a bit of a lottery. 🙄 It can take a few seconds with his knees up close to his chin, while he switches user on the screen. 🤣 Ah, before long all is well.
I now really appreciate the decluttered interior.
All joking apart, we have had our Model Y (Tesla SUV model) for over a year. (We couldn’t get our daughter’s cello into the trunk of the Model 3.) The FSD (full self-drive) is still in full-beta and Rich uses it often. Overtime, Tesla’s software learning engine has greatly improved how natural it feels in this mode. We took part in getting the autonomous drive right, since we see self-drive as a real investment for mobility in our old age. (There’s a long way to go, yet!) We do a lot of long road trips and for this, autonomy is awesome at removing the stress of busy multi-lane roads. For this reason we opted for the extended battery distance.
Another problem is that new inventions often come with a higher price tag as they try to recoup their research and development costs. Cars are no exception. In fact, with our five children all but grown up with a few still in university, the idea of having enough spare cash to buy any vehicle, EV or otherwise, was preposterous. We realized that there wouldn’t ever be a time we could easily afford it, so took the decision to stretch to get it. For costs on the product itself – just google and you will find the latest retail prices in your country. (Most car manufacturers now have an ZEV (zero emission vehicle) product, so there’s a lot to check out now.) Back to the costs of our Tesla Y.
The cost and installation of the recharger was CAD$1700 CDN in 2022. The cost overnight is circa $2 to $5 CDN.
The cost of supercharging to full charge takes between twenty and forty minutes (depending on weather and how many other users are nearby) and costs circa CAD$25 (google told me: £9 to £19 sterling.) When planning a route, the vehicle plans in, re-charging to the route. As a result, the vehicle preps the battery ahead of time so when you arrive at the charger it recharges more efficiently. The map allows you to select chargers with different power ratings so you can pick faster chargers. As you drive, if adverse weather conditions cause the charge in your car to drop faster, the map automatically reroutes you to a nearer charger to prevent “range anxiety”! The charger recognizes your vehicle and knows to charge you. There is no payment transaction with cash or your bank card. It’s a smooth, quick and easy system. While you can go for a coffee, you could sit back and watch Netflix or play arcade games just as easily. Be back just before your car has finished charging or you run the risk of a late fee. Don’t worry, your app reminds you when that is.
Service issues are dealt with by app too. Easy and convenient!
Service happens at your home. Problems are often corrected by a software upgrade so the service people give your car a great check over anyway. For tires or bodywork issues you can still go to your regular garage.
Other facts: There are seventeen moving parts on the model Y this includes the doors and the mirror. The battery is said to last 30 years. That leaves the tires and bodywork to maintain. It has interior and exterior cameras which are almost invisible. The 360 degree sentinel sensors kick in when you leave the vehicle.
We usually charge once on a long haul drive from just outside Hamilton, Ontario to Ottawa. In the winter cold (temperatures circ -2C) such a trip needs FOUR recharges.
In Winter, this journey is a slight saving on the usual journey by fossil fuel, but a great big saving the rest of the year. The Y has the extended distance battery and the battery is expected to last thirty years.
However, during winter, brownouts due to freezing weather conditions on a long distance route can be common. It’s important not to leave recharging to the last minute (last 5% charge) in the cold only to find the charger station is dead.
The price of EVs remains very high, and for us was something we really had to stretch for. However, costs are set to decrease for all EVs in 2023 and into the future as supply chain shortages begin to alleviate.
An important factor that Tesla reiterates during the buying process is the cost savings from not having to buy petrol (gas in Canada) — you need to build that into your budgeting plans.
While the introduction of Tesla’s product line constitutes a major disruption to petroleum and hybrid car production, many manufacturers have EV product lines in 2023.
In 2020, Musk suggested it would be 20 years for all new cars sold to be Electric but a many of the big manufacturers have made it possible that this is one deadline we can beat. So much so, the EU announced that no new Internal Combustion Engine vehicles will be sold after 2035. Why 2035? As this report by IEA says, it’s to achieve Net-zero by 2050. The UK is set to stop sales of new combustion engines in 2030 and hybrids by 2035. This gives us hope that the demand for ZEVs will continue to snowball bringing these earlier due to demand helping to increase the number of green resale vehicles.
Regardless of all these predictions, for my story purposes it’s likely that many vehicles on the road will still be combustion engines in 2035. All eyes will be on the numbers of ZEVs in the used car market long before that.
In the UK, the Government‘s 10 point Green Plan of 2020 aims to achieve all new cars sold as EVs by 2030. In 2022, they said the UK can see self-driving cars rolled out by 2025. (Very ambitious, but of course, it’s legislation that’s likely to hold up live FSD in most places, in my humble opinion.)
In Canada, the Government’s date for all new ZEV (zero emission vehicles – that’s electric or hydrogen) sold was 2040, but has been brought forward to 2035. They have confirmed that combustion engine vehicles usage and resale will still be legal. On the matter of autonomous driving, Canada says current systems are not robust enough.
Of course, EVs and autonomous driving are DEFINITELY NOT synonymous.
These green plans can of course change as the will of the ordinary people get behind these initiatives. Canada is certainly prepared to amend its deadlines.
I’ll leave you with a question that I’ve asked myself many times, would I like to be in a car without a steering wheel? 😱That’s ah no. What about you?
(No, seriously, think about it. Imagine yourself in your car and no steering wheel or no brake. Maybe, you can’t wait. Maybe it’s just too scary. Let me know in the comments, I’d love to hear from you.)
I will add that SpaceX already launches rockets into orbit autonomously and lands the first stage for reuse on a frequent basis. Guidance to mate the Dragon nose to the ISS is autonomous with manual operation as backup. There is no steering wheel, and in many cases no humans!
My research includes tracking Tesla and SpaceX’s innovations. I continuously update this as they have successes and failures, as expected. I’ve decided to take 2030 as the potential for ALL new cars and light trucks to be ZEV. (zero emission vehicles) I believe like the UK the trend will be to bring the deadline still forward from the average 2035 target. There will be a large percentage of combustion engines on the roads in Canada and fewer on the roads in the UK. This is all relevant to my world building.
My writing window has now reduced significantly to world events and inventions between 2030 and 2050 the latter is the year earmarked for Net Zero.
Hmmm, time for me to get back to my writing. Earth is my setting for now, but I’m still interested in the Mars events. The thrills are set around a female inventor who has a family to think about. She’s climate savvy but falls for a man that’s essentially Mr. Oil, although it’s so much worse than she thinks. Global travel is involved as is the oil industry, but it’s this new family the spot light is on. The projected shenanigans on Mars are going to be my next deep dive to see how it affects my writing window or if it does.
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The questions I’m examining in my research for my novels affect the future of mankind. My stories focus on how we, (ordinary people and families,) will face these challenges and as they extend into the future, explore the outcomes for better or for worse.
Afterword:
(I live in Canada & my stories are in Canadian. 😘 That’s why some of the spellings are British rather than American. These are not typos, although occasionally, I still make those – oops! But not too many.)