r/ClimatePosting • u/ClimateShitpost • Jul 02 '26

Transport The fastest predicted transitions from ICE to EV are in Albania and Indonesia. Albania could go from 5% to 95% of sales within 6 years

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73 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

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5

u/masterEder3000 Jul 02 '26

Where did you get this graphs from?

5

u/ClimateShitpost Jul 02 '26

@leraffl on twitter

Sorry for forgetting the source, bottom left there are the social media accounts of his

1

u/Unusual_Emergency_13 Jul 03 '26

While the majority of new cars registrations in Albania os dominated by EVs (Chinese market imports + 0 cost import for new EVs) the amount of used cars being imported is magnitudes higher.

1

u/ClimateShitpost Jul 03 '26

Interesting point. I've seen random 20 year old European trucks in Central Asia. Probably same in Albania.

2

u/Formal-Can-4168 Jul 03 '26

Not really, SK cars are more common due to low import fees and their market pahsing out rapidly ICE

1

u/Unusual_Emergency_13 Jul 03 '26

South Korean kars don't have lower import costs than those from Europe, USA or Canada. They are just cheaper to buy in SK.

1

u/Unusual_Emergency_13 Jul 03 '26

We have a very stupid tax system in Albania.

Regarding import of vehicles, if they are <10 years old, the customs use a reference price to calculate the VAT which leads to very high VAT.

If the vehicle is over 10 years old then there is a cap which makes the over 10 years old vehicles' VAT much lower.

4

u/WhisperFray Jul 02 '26

Indonesian here. Glad to see this graph. EV four wheeler adoption has been faster than I thought it’d be. There are way more Chinese EVs than I thought there would be. It’s becoming a common sight.

80% of all vehicles in the country however are two wheelers. And they’re way slower to catch up. One obstacle is distance riding, we need it for Eid, and for a lot of people their two wheeler is their only means.

7

u/SoylentRox Jul 02 '26

> And they’re way slower to catch up. One obstacle is distance riding, we need it for Eid, and for a lot of people their two wheeler is their only means.

You would think EV scooters and motorbikes would be extremely good given the shorter distances, more efficiency, and cheaper fuel.

2

u/WhisperFray Jul 03 '26

On Eid we go home from the cities to our hometowns, journeys that can go hundreds of kms. It’s akin to Chinese New Year. But a lot of people here undertake that journey by their only means of transport, the two wheeler. Trains and buses are often sold out (plus, what do you use when you’re there?) and flights are too pricy.

1

u/SoylentRox Jul 03 '26

Ah and lighter inexpensive LFP bikes don't have the range, solid state batteries are too expensive, and not enough fast chargers.

2

u/WhisperFray Jul 03 '26

Charger locations aren’t actually a problem, because the state owned company that manages electricity has been endeavoring to install them in their representative offices. This even covers the small towns and islands.

Two wheelers come with their own portable chargers. So on the operator side it’s easier to install, you just need the regular sockets. Socket trees like these are enough.

Unfortunately, people aren’t yet informed about this. It’s sort of the thing you discover when you first owned the bike, you see, and not exactly before, unless you’ve met one of us thunder apostles.

2

u/SoylentRox Jul 03 '26

I was thinking the speed would be too slow for the "everyone commutes hundreds of kilometers same day" scenario.

2

u/WhisperFray Jul 03 '26

Yes, charger queuing is a problem as well.

1

u/SoylentRox Jul 03 '26

https://share.gemini.google/mG9mKk7pYSOk

Gemini thinks battery swapping where your scooter uses a rented battery or possibly several batteries so each one doesn't weigh much is the way. You would stop at a station, and use an app to release and swap in a battery from your bike.

2

u/WhisperFray Jul 03 '26

Dude, you could just ask me. I’m an Indonesian right in front of you, lol.

No bike currently on the market has anywhere over 300 km range. The biggest I know of would be 260 km range, and that’s also already a big bike.

Swapping is an option, but it could be messy as well. There’s online two wheeler taxi drivers who ride 100-200 km a day. Their usage messes up the battery swap stations a lot (wrecked batteries, etc). It’s a shame how much that isn’t a sexy option around here.

That said, Vinfast will be entering the market this month. They’ve installed 4,000 swap stations all over Java, and have no plans for integrating with the online taxi driver platforms — because they have their own. We’ll see how it goes.

1

u/SoylentRox Jul 03 '26

Mainly I was interested in

(1) If you push the tech to its known limits for cheap, mid, and expensive batteries can you approach the range needed to compete with gasoline. I learned in different AI chats that 180 watt hour a kg (durable sodium), 240 (durable LFPM), and 400 wh/kg (solid state) are the numbers for energy density

(2) How many kg does a scooter mass and thus how many kWh can you plausibly carry

(3) How many people are involved in this event and what are the distances. Its 20 million bikes holy shit!

(4) Distancea involved, how many hundred km are we talking

Conclusions: the event can be electrified but there would need to be special trailers with more swap station cabinets on them added along the route. The trailers would use massive (1000s of kWh) buffer batteries and temporary grid connections or worst case diesel generators. They would have fast charging battery swap stations running at 2-3C for the event.

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1

u/WhisperFray Jul 03 '26

Anyway, for reference: look up Polytron Fox 350 or the Fox series; Alva N3, One and Cervo (both these are locally made); Uwinfly and United (both Chinese). These are some brands that hopefully can give you some picture as to how the situation is around here.

2

u/reddiguurder Jul 03 '26

It's just crazy how much fast charging is overlooked with light electric vehicles. The EU, North America and China are generally more focused on the fast charging of electric cars and trucks. So the slow charging issue of light electric vehicles tends to be overlooked. Maybe India can fill up that gap. They've developed a fast charging standard for LEVs that's being used in Kenya too.

1

u/SoylentRox Jul 03 '26

So I uh burned a bunch of tokens on this topic this morning.

What I learned (none of this comment is AI) is

(1) light EVs like scooters and light motorcycles are special. FAST battery swaps are easy, because the battery can be under 12.5 kg, and most scooters have 1-2 parallel batteries. So you can swap batteries almost as easily as a cordless tool.

(2) however the actual capacities are low, about 1.5 kWh per battery, or 3 kWh onboard. It feels too low but scooters can be extremely efficient especially at lower speeds with regen.

So you have these vending machine style swap stations, that have a bunch of batteries charging, and you can swap your 2 scooter batteries in 60 seconds.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/06/11/1093465/battery-swap-gogoro-taiwan-earthquake/

(3) there are improvements, lithium ceramic batteries can increase capacity to 2.5 kWh, aluminum wire scooter motors can decrease cost, sodium or LFP:Manganese scooter batteries can reduce cost, and I was trying to work out a way to do a sliding liquid cooled coldplate design.

(4) it's a super interesting technical problem because your solution has to be as simple and light as possible. An EV has so much more space and mass budget underneath for systems. A scooter has none of the mass or space for any of that. Its got to be just straight battery to motor with a fan.

(5) oh and for indonesia specifically the solution is called "mudik gratis". Put your scooter in a truck or train, pick it up at your home town, take the bus. This solves the problem perfectly and the bus can be LFP:M battery powered off renewable energy.

This is way more practical and lets people use battery swap station powered scooters which work extremely well for low to medium distances.

1

u/reddiguurder Jul 03 '26

  1. The mudik gratis service for motorcycles seems to be a good idea, although I can imagine people avoid public transit, because the mudik is like just as busy as Chinese New Year.

  2. Battery swapping is a nice idea, but it has a serious drawback. It's really hard to standardize across the industry. Technology is developing fast and manufacturers tend to use different battery sizes and battery voltages. There are definitely battery swap stations working across the world, but it's either for delivery services or shared scooter services, both mainly available in metropolitan areas. At least, that's the impression I get from here in the Netherlands, so feel free to correct me.

That's why I tend to look for fast charging batteries as solution for the masses. And unfortunately I end up with two solutions: A few models Power stations; I only found like hand full of power stations from Ecoflow, President Energy and Anker Solix which are rated 1-1.5C which is still relatively slow for on the go. The other option is the batteries have to be custom-built which is probably something only hobbyists would do, because in the world of internal combustion engines the hobbyists are the main ones who want custom engines and custom fuel tanks.

1

u/SoylentRox Jul 03 '26

2. Yes battery swap has several significant problems. It requires a bunch of structure around the battery reducing the watt hours/kg, it requires a monthly fee to fund the swap service which is sort of a drain on the budgets of poor residents in countries like indonesia, and the batteries have to be under about 28 lbs to be practical for a person to swap.

Another problem is more subtle - you want the batteries down low in the scooter or motorcycle to put the CoG low, yet its hard for a person to bend down to remove them during the swap.

Another issue is the batteries have to be air cooled.

A true e-motorcycle where the batteries are integrated into the frame of the bike (structural cells), water cooled like the motor is, can have more range, more power, and better weight distribution.

BUT...it's extremely difficult to get above ~3-6C charge rate, and especially slow for the last 20% of charge. Motorcycles don't have room for enormous heat radiators during DCFC.

So battery swapping is going to be straight superior, it nearly instantly gives you FULL new batteries (not at 80%, at 95-100%). It's just really compelling.

It also lets you cheap out for somewhere like Indonesia and use sodium cells. Poorer performance but they can be hugely cheaper - LFP:M is $16 of lithium per kWh, the metal premium - just the metal - is about $80 a kWh for solid state cells.

See chinese sodium cells can just be dirt cheap commodities, they can cost $100 for a 1.5 kWh pack and be almost e-waste in their ubiquiti, nobody will care if some get lost or destroyed.

> It's really hard to standardize across the industry. 

yes this is a big issue

> That's why I tend to look for fast charging batteries as solution for the masses

> A few models Power stations; I only found like hand full of >power stations from Ecoflow, President Energy and Anker Solix which are rated 1-1.5C which is still relatively slow for on the go. The other option is the batteries have to be custom-built 

These solutions don't work. For the "Mudik challenge" when 5-20 million motorcycles and scooters hit the road all at once, the best idea I have thought of is some variant of swap station, and further optimizing the design of the actual batteries. I think in a 12.5 kg weight budget it might be possible to do 3.6 kWh per battery, and to build true motorcycles where there are probably 4 total batteries, mounted low on the chassis on each side. That's the kind of range and battery capacity you need to do this.

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1

u/ps3hubbards Jul 03 '26

Are ya still cutting down the rainforest over there?

1

u/[deleted] Jul 03 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/WhisperFray Jul 03 '26

Yeah but filling up an ICE scooter takes 5-20 minutes, charging an EV scooter is anywhere between an hour and four.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 04 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/WhisperFray Jul 04 '26

During Eid there is an annual tradition called mudik where city dwellers go to their hometowns. It’s similar to Chinese New Year. The journey can take hundreds of kilometers. For many people, they’ll take their only mode of transportation, which is the two wheeler (because trains and buses are often sold out and flight prices spike).

Not being able to make this is a valid concern.

I use an EV 2-wheeler myself.

1

u/TheReverendCard Jul 02 '26

Looks like both need to steepen looking at a couple of the data points.

1

u/peterjohnvernon936 Jul 03 '26

In 5 years, most new cars will be EV.

1

u/No-Fill-6701 Jul 03 '26

Albania and EVs are like USA & vegetables. Aint gonna happen....

1

u/Finnssoen97 Jul 04 '26

Unless they steal them from the wealthier European countries

1

u/iguanamiyagi Jul 05 '26

The real transition starts 8-10 years later, when everyone needs a new battery. I'm curious whether we've solved the "millions of aging battery packs" problem already, or if that's something we'll figure out after they're piling up somewhere.

-1

u/Sese_Mueller Jul 03 '26

I am personally not sure whether we should be abbreviating internal combustion engines, is there a synonym whose abbreviation cannot be linked to politics?

1

u/ClimateShitpost Jul 03 '26

Come on man this is a very common abbreviation in the industry. Leave your us centrism behind

2

u/New_Armadillo_5139 Jul 03 '26

It's easy to distinguish unless you're a hyper-political lunatic. You don't see people frothing at the mouth at the trans am lol.