Is ICE Dead?

NEVER!

Maybe, in 20 years or so the infrastructure, cost, life span, pollution issues will come more in line/competitive with ICE technology.

ICE dead? Not by a long shot.

I have my doubts. When they come up with a battery that holds something like 1 MWh of usable energy and can be recharged in under 15 minutes plus fits in a space equal to that of 55 gallon drum all for a price of less than $10,000 then I will say the IC engine is done for.

Until then my pickups and other long haul capable work vehicles are pretty safe from extinction.

I agree with both the previous posts. It will be a long time before EVs will totally replace IC vehicles. However, as the price of EVs drop, I can foresee a growing market with people who don't do a lot of long distance driving, like me.

I rarely drive more than 100 miles per week and rarely outside of a 20 mile radius. When the price becomes reasonable, an EV with a range of 100 miles or so, that could be charged overnight at home would make sense. In the event I needed or wanted to make a long distance trip, it would be more economical for me to rent an IC car.

I don't think it will be long before the combo of EVs and autonomous controls will have a segment of the population calling for partial bans on allowing bonehead human drivers on anything with highway speed. I know I'm early to note this but I see the writing on the wall. individual freedoms are increasingly on the run from the current folks influencing policy and law. I'm not saying I like it, I just see it coming

This could work out good if loss of driving privileges for bad drivers results in an 'auto pilot driver only' license....we could get a lot of bad drivers from behind the wheel and in the passenger seat where they can text to their heart's desire and stop causing accidents...

You're late to the party. Take a look at the futuristic world in the "Fifth Element" where Bruce Willis drives a floating cab that is under constant surveillance by some disembodied traffic authority that lets him know every time he breaks some minor traffic rule.

Of course we have that right now with OnStar, just not the immediate violation notice. Whether they have the network resources in place to monitor every car every second is unlikely, but certainly they can randomly ping any subset of cars and "see how I'm doin'", or worse the car rats me out when I hit 6,000rpm in first gear for 6 seconds, etc. And the insurance companies are already encouraging drivers to plug a squealer dongle into their OBD-II ports in exchange for lower "safe driver" rates.

When I think of Patrick Henry's "Give me liberty or five me death," or Ben Franklin's quip, "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety," or General John Stark's "Live free or die," I am amazed at how much more readily our feminized society is willing to give up freedom for safety than the founders of this country.

I'm not all that conservative, either. An extremely broad-based political test I took rated me just about dead center in the spectrum of American political views. But the founders lost 1/1000 of the population to establish this Republic (equivalent to about 325,000 today) to live free, when the British encroachments on freedom were far milder than those that drove the French and Russian revolutions, and we accept erosions of our freedoms to save numbers of lives that are negligible by comparison. And on top of the actual loss of liberties, this "safety" also shackles people economically, contributing heavily to the wage slavery of the lower half of wage earners. We're insured up the ying-yang, and considering all forms of insurance, the cost is about half of the median salary. For big earners, the burden is relatively light, but for the masses, it's crippling. Add in the cost of the "unfunded mandates" passed on to consumers, and it's no wonder that there's so much despair out there.

I don't mind most of the environmental regulations so much, but the safety regulations are out of hand.

I think we are dealing with two separate issues here

1. When it will be economical for us to trade in our gasoline guzzlers for a battery
2. When should we put our lives and safety in the hands of a computer

your life already is all the time

Not as long as Ron is using a trailer to extend his milage!

Does anyone know how these ranges are measured? Do they take into account real word conditions aka stop and go, using the A/C when its hot, and heat when its cold?

We just had a serious cold winter in the northeast US and from what I have read electric vehicles use wait for it 'electric resistance heaters' for cabin air heat.

So if its cold will my range drop from 250 miles to 150 miles just because i prefer to not see my breath in my car?

a car like a Tesla uses 100% battery power for all functions, there is no engine or radiator as in an ICE. there are small radiators and fans to cool them in the battery charging system( batteries get hot in the charging process. this heat is rejected below the car near the wheels, not into the cabin.

Correct so it requires separate electric heaters similar to baseboards for home heating to heat cabin air. These heaters take large amounts of current and I would think reduce range considerably.

from a Tesla forum..." I've had my Model S for over 3 weeks. From experience, the cabin temperature warms up remarkably well in cold climates. When temperatures were 30F (or below), my Model S took approximately one minute to heat up the cabin temperature to 70F. Heating the battery to its optimal temperature and maintaining the cabin temperature does require approximately 7% of the battery's range/capacity (again at 30F or below)."

It's 112°F outside my house right now. Assuming I've been parked in the sun, on asphalt, since 8:00AM, how's that Tesla AC gonna work, and how much juice will it take to drive 120 miles in the heat, on a freeway??

just fire up your Tesla ap and check. it will show your approx range, % of charge, etc, click on the "climate"icon" and select the temp you want, it will cool the car in advance. you can even 'fetch' the car to your fobs location.( limited range on that feature)

As with everything you only know how far you get when you get there.

The battery will not know if you go up into the Rocky mountains or not and how fast you go.

But it will definitely be able to show you whats left for certain driving conditions inclusive use of the heater - but again only when you drive not before that.

It's a lot more complex than "Flip on the heaters, Bo!" Energy management is the key to the success of any EV or hybrid, and the Tesla is no exception. The batteries have their own cooling fluid loop, and the instant the batteries start doing any work that loop heats up, and guess where the heat goes if there's a call for heat, right into the cabin. Of course the resistance heaters are modulated down as the battery warms up

It gets even more interesting when it's hot out. The air conditioning system for the cabin is also used to cool the battery fluid loop when there isn't enough ambient cooling available. It's sized to keep both the batteries and the occupants cool while tooling across the desert in search of the next charging station. That's got to be one sophisticated variable speed compressor, pump, and fan control system.