Full disclosure: I own an electric car, and I think they are useful for city transportation. However, having owned one for a decade, I can say that it hasn’t been practical or cost-effective. John Hardy believes they are the future, I’ll let you, the reader, decide. – Anthony Watts
The demise of the Western auto industry: Part 2 – the problem
By John Hardy
Part 1 of this series here, expressed the view that regardless of “the environment”, Electric Vehicles (EVs) are poised to inflict a massive disruption on the automotive industry, and outlined the strengths of the technology and some of the reasons that it is happening now.
In Part 2, I outline what I see as the main issues for Western automakers. They need to wake up and smell the coffee: the history of technology is strewn with examples of once-great companies that failed to adapt to a technology advance and went to the wall. Traditional Western automakers may just do the same. They appear to have failed to realise that gearing up for EVs is not just business as usual with a different drivetrain. In particular they have until very recently shown no sign of thinking about fast charge, sourcing the cells that go into batteries, the dealer network or maintenance.
Fast charge
First of all, fast charge*. Most privately owned cars spend most of the time parked, and most of their journeys are short (in the UK private cars average around 21 miles per day)[1], but are occasionally called on to go cross country (think commuting in the week and visiting granny on occasional weekends). The comparable figure in the US is about 30 miles per day [2]. Overnight charging at home handles most driving.
Fast charge capability is however critical to cross-country driving; and most people require this capability, even if they don’t use it much. The fast charge standards supported by the major Western automakers have been inadequate (pitiful power levels), coverage spotty and use cumbersome. By contrast Tesla built their own supercharger network with twice the power levels of most public stations: and the sat nav in the car knows their location. Tesla cars are internet connected and do over-the-air software updates like laptops, so presumably the fast charge locations the car knows about stay up to date. If the major automakers do not take ownership of the fast charge issue they will remain at a disadvantage compared with those who do. Relying on a publically-funded infrastructure won’t do. Generic commercial charging stations after the style of the present auto fuel infrastructure may become viable on busy routes (with profit coming from the cake and coffee sold to drivers sitting for the 20 minutes while their cars charge) but most charging will be at home, and with electricity so cheap it may never be very attractive commercially.
*There is some terminology confusion here. By “fast charge” I mean charging from a DC source at 40Kw upwards. This is also sometimes called “rapid charge”.
Cells
Next, cells (a battery is composed of many cells wired in series like the battery in an electric toy is composed of a few AA cells in series). In 2013, world output of lithium ion cells was said to be a little over 30 Gigawatt-hours (Gw-hr) per year [3]. A Gw-hr is a measure of energy. A high powered household device like an electric kettle or electric fan heater might use 3 Kilowatts (Kw). Leave it on for an hour and you have burned 3 Kilowatt-hours (Kw-hrs). If you do half an hour of vacuuming with a 1 kW vacuum cleaner, you will have used half a Kw-hrs. A Gigawatt is a million kW, so if you do the maths, if you took all the lithium battery output of the entire world for 2013, it would (in theory and neglecting losses) power a million 3Kw electric heaters for ten hours, or ten thousand for 41 days (a thousand hours).
More pertinently, an EV burns 1 Kw-hr every 3 – 4 miles; so a 300 mile range EV would need 75 – 100 Kw-hrs of cells, so world output of lithium ion batteries in 2013 would at best be enough for around 400,000 EVs with a 300 mile range. Worldwide car production in 2016 was probably about 72 million. To electrify all of them to that range would require (again ball-park figures) roughly 200 times the 2013 production of lithium ion batteries.
The majors seem to be waking up (arguably too late and too slowly) to the fact that the supply of cells for battery packs is an issue. In June 2017 Ulrich Eichhorn of VW, went public with a statement that the whole VW group (Audi, Seat etc.) would need 200 Gw-hr of battery cell production by 2025 [4]. They have not announced any definite plans for sourcing these cells. Meanwhile, Tesla have once again thought ahead of the pack. They broke ground on their gigafactory in Nevada in 2014 with the initial target of 35 Gw-hr per year capacity: at the time this was roughly equal to existing global output from all manufacturers (love him or hate him, Elon Musk can’t be accused of timidity). More gigafactories are planned.
The problems for the traditional majors are illustrated by the GM Bolt. The Bolt is a 200+ mile range EV, which is seen by many as competition for Tesla’s new Model 3. However the Bolt uses cells from LG Chem (a Korean company). LG produce cells for the Bolt in a plant in Michigan which has a capacity projected to rise to around 3 Gw-hr in the next year or two [5]. Even if we assume that all these cells go into Chevy Bolts that is going to constrain Bolt sales to a fraction of what Tesla can achieve: 3 Gw-hrs is enough for about 50,000 Bolts. Tesla’s stated intention is to ramp up to ten times as many Model 3s.
For the next few decades at least the traditional majors need to think of cell production the same way they think of engine plants and put serious money ($billions) into it. There are trade-offs in the chemistry and packaging of cells that potentially affect battery management, charging, heating and cooling of the pack etc. This in turn has an impact on the cost and performance of the car.
Sales and maintenance
The standard sales channel for new conventional piston engine cars is via dealers, and the dealers do much of the maintenance, especially on new cars. The profit on the sale of new cars is low; the dealers make much of their money on maintenance [6]. This model probably won’t work with EVs, because they need so much less maintenance; no oil and filter changes, no exhaust replacements, no intake air filters, no spark plugs, no cam belts, even fewer brake pad and disc changes because of regenerative braking. Add to that the preference of the rising generation to do everything on line, plus the move to disintermediation across the commercial world [7], and the dealer model is probably dead.
There is another potential dealer-related issue for traditional automakers where the dealer is selling a mix of EVs and conventional cars. If a savvy dealer has two cars on the lot, one a high maintenance conventional piston engine car, and one a low maintenance EV, which vehicle is that dealer going to push [8]? Tesla have no dealers; they sell direct on the web and have in-house service centres (they also do software upgrades wirelessly and don’t do conventional advertising)
The Chinese aren’t just putting in lots of new coal fired power stations; they are developing EVs and lithium battery capacity. One forecast suggests that Chinese production of lithium ion battery production will increase by a factor of five between 2016 and 2020, making it easily the largest producer worldwide [9]
China’s indigenous auto industry is also flexing its muscles. For a brief period in May the production car lap record at the Nurburgring was held by the Nio EP9 (Figure 1) [10]. It actually held the record for just two weeks and then a McLaren took the record. With a hybrid.
If this doesn’t make the CEOs of the traditional Western automakers wake up screaming at 2:00 a.m. then they lack imagination. Here is a company few in the West have heard of, from a country with almost no previous performance car pedigree, strolling onto one of Europe’s most iconic circuits and beating all-comers with a pure electric car.
Finally consider this statistic: plug in hybrid and pure EV sales in China in 2013 were under 20,000. In the US in the same year sales were about five times greater: close to 100,000. By 2016, US sales had reached about 160,000: a respectable percentage increase, but less than half the sales in China. Over 350,000 EVs were sold there in 2016 (Figure 2).
A lot of the growth in China was a result of subsidies which were reduced in 2017 [11], leading to a slowing of growth in sales in Q1 of 2017, but in one sense that hardly matters: the capacity is being developed. No US or European automaker (apart from Tesla) could get anywhere near 350,000 units even if they wanted to.
In conclusion
Much of Western economic activity relates to cars: apart from the automakers themselves there are all the parts suppliers, and much of Big Oil is focussed on fuel for road vehicles. EVs will have a big impact on all this. It may already be too late for the Western automakers: they should have been breaking ground on cell production and rolling out fast charge years ago. But we are where we are, and maybe some will survive. If they don’t, our children will inherit even more of an industrial wasteland than is coming their way already.
In part 3 of this series I will take a look at several misconceptions about EVs
References
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/632857/nts0901.ods 7,800 miles per year for privately owned cars = 21 m.p.d. Company cars 18,900 = 51 m.p.d. but they are a small percentage of the total number of cars
[2] https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2013/ dataset VM1. 11,244 miles per year is about 30 miles per day
[3] https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/gigafactory
[4] http://europe.autonews.com/article/20170710/COPY/307149996/industry-needs-40-gigafactories-vw-says
[5] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/lg-racing-beat-tesla-first-gigafactory-us-chris-smedley
[6] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimhenry/2012/02/29/the-surprising-ways-car-dealers-make-the-most-money-off-of-you/#1661b601e6fd
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disintermediation
[8] “Chevrolet currently has about 3,000 dealers in the U.S. but aside from some dealers in California and a few other locations, most seem pretty averse to selling plug-in vehicles. Sales people often don’t understand them and try to steer customers to other products that might have higher margins.” From: https://www.forbes.com/sites/samabuelsamid/2017/07/11/living-with-the-chevrolet-bolt-keep-it-in-low-sell-it-hard/#109472a41c5d
[9] http://www.visualcapitalist.com/china-leading-charge-lithium-ion-megafactories/
[10] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4MRydmz86E
[11] http://www.theicct.org/blogs/staff/subsidy-fraud-reforms-china-ev-market
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I prefer the air powered car-
“The tanks can be filled with air from a compressor in just three minutes”
http://www.thelivingmoon.com/41pegasus/02files/Alternate_Fuel_Air_Cars_France.html
DO you discount that compressed air exhausted through a piston can provide useful work?
Do you deny that windmills can compress air, and also store the adiabatic heat of compression in an Underground Thermal Energy Storage system to be used to level the load for Utility scale Wind farms?
If a person had a windmill and compressed air — and stored the adiabatic heat of compression in a heat sink that was used to heat the home and water and also heat compressed air to do work, are you saying such a vehicle cannot function as described?
Be careful — I have personally seen a compressed air exhaust vehicle work (piston based)
No, that system cannot work for the super-majority of people in living in the real world.
If it’s so adiabatic, why do they need to reheat with natural gas when they decompress the reservoir?
Or even better, the perpetuum mobile.
:
Perpetuum mobile
Why not Petroleum Mobile?
In reality it is a Pneumatic Engine. In 1974 I made a go-cart that would do 42 mph using a 1/2 drive impact wrench that used 90 PSI and used a centrifugal clutch from an old snowmobile as a transmission. My air tank was too small and it was only good for 1/4 mile sprints…but it worked. Sitting a few inches from the ground. That 42 mph felt like 100 mph and scary as heck for a 14 year old kid on a poorly paved country road. It only had a pressure type brake with metal pads against the rear tires and took another 1/4 mile to get it stopped. That one run was all I had the nerve to make.
Very many hot air. Why not a perpeduum mobile?
perpeduum mobile:
Wonder how people who live in 2 – 4 story apartment buildings would handle their recharging. 100’s of extension cords coming out of one building?
would look the way telephone and power distribution looks in some Asian cities with hundreds of cables tied of to poles into the street. I am sure retrofitting and rejigging the streets can happen at great expense over time. This is one of the constraining factors in widespread use and uptake.
They are an ideal city car, where is the provision of power for charging points most problematic? in cities. It will get glossed over, but the same people will say the cars spend most of its time stationary. This is true but they imagine company car parks and houses/garages because that what they have (the wealthy EV buyers of today)
While I don’t doubt that EVs will become more prevalent as time passes, unless the manufacturers can market models that sell for the price of a car like the Honda Civic, and without subsidies, they’re going to take much longer than their proponents care to admit. Right now, they’re simply overpriced.
Edward I agree that they have to get cheaper. UBS thinks cost parity will arrive in 2018
Thats big price drop in 3 months folks, keep an eye out for it. Elon will reall be looking to drive that Model 3 price down next year. That sounds right doesnt it, or as they say in my country, nah that doesnt pass the pub test i.e. people know BS when they hear it
Remember, we live in 2017, 2018 is next year. 14 months till it’s over.
The Nissan Leaf is 30k — that is barely a 15% premium for a comparable vehicle — not to mention a 125 mile range and 30 minute charge at 440V
‘Electric Vehicles (EVs) are poised to inflict a massive disruption on the automotive industry, and outlined the strengths of the technology and some of the reasons that it is happening now.’
No, it is not happening now, your assertion not withstanding.
Then why does every major vehicle manufacturer in the world have at least 1 if not more EV.
If it was not disruptive, they wouldn’t
Remember — they manufacturer gets dick for making an EV — and only in certain countries and in certain circumstances are tax credits available.
It’s already disruptive.
And how many non-EV models are there?
I take it you are unfamiliar with the CAFE standards.
It’s always interesting to read comments from those who’ve never owned an electric car or hybrid yet are experts on everything about them.
As stated in pt 1, we own a 2012 Mitsubishi MiEV all electric, a 2008 Prius and a 2007 Camry. Last year the Camry main battery failed. Dealer cost to install a replacement: ~$4300 I opted to buy a Dorman reman for $2500 + $200 to install; 3 year unlimited mileage warranty. So, after all the money saved it was completely lost when the battery failed.
The Prius battery failed this year. Dealer cost if we do it is $2600. Aftermarket can be had for less than half that. The car has 220,000 miles and used on a mail route. While it has been a reliable car, the weak link is the front wheel bearings which have failed twice now. They seem to last about 100,000 miles give or take and about $900-1000 to replace. I’m debating whether to get another battery because the car is really showing its age from the mail route. Either way, the battery cost outweighs the cost of a similar sized class car for maintenance and life cost.
Back to the PEV. Sorry people, but EV’s are a PITA for anything but running errands and short trips. You’re always afraid to use the factory heater because it runs at 5kW and drains the battery faster. Plus the fact that cold temperatures alone are a strain, the range can drop much below the rated factory “fantasy quoted” range. There may be 10 year warranties on them, but that is telling me that EV’s are basically dixie cups. Mine is 10/100,000 on the battery. It will never ever see 100,000 miles. By then it will be a rusted hulk and everything else failing.
Resale value? Ha! Who wants to buy a car at 9 years 11 months knowing they will be spending $3000-4000 soon. So you buy an EV that has lost its resale value by 75% within 4-5 years with the only selling point being “well you still have 5 years left on the battery”. What you aren’t told is the battery is allowed to degrade a certain percentage and still be considered acceptable. Ever read the warranty for the battery? The list of disqualifications is LONG. My battery will only charge to 54 miles now, when just a few months earlier it was over 70 miles. I think some of the cells are going bad, yet, the dealer says it checks out fine.
Once they find the dilithium crystal mines and make the batteries last forever, increase the range (to like forever) safely and affordably (without nanny state giveaways), I’ll be all in. For now, this EV I have is a toy that is nearly useless in cold weather.
Oh, it’s time to go to work, gotta fire up the electric blanket, sit on the seat warmer, put my hood on, breathe shallow for no frost on the windows and hope there’s enough battery to get there and back (40 miles, factory claims 62 average; reality, maybe 50 on a good day) as the temps are dropping below 30F.
Been there, done that.
interesting comments
not really EV related but I was stunned by “the weak link is the front wheel bearings which have failed twice now. They seem to last about 100,000 miles give or take and about $900-1000 to replace” maybe even more stunned of they are USD.
I have a classic 80s BMW. Just did the front wheel bearings ( in a workshop) $550 supply and fit. Those Toyota ones must be made of Unobtainium
@yarpos
What you may have missed on the wheel bearing issue is ‘because the car is really showing its age from the mail route.’
Mail routes infers aggressive stop and go driving often on dirt roads. The best way I can think of to destroy a car without hitting something.
I do not recall when Toyota switched to sealed wheel bearing. On my 1980 Tercel, I discussed this the local dealer. I was driving dirt roads in the Pennsylvania mountains and repacked the wheel bearing on my American made trucks.
I think the EPA should adopt the “fantasy quoted” range verbiage. More on EPA MPge lunacy.
I once got 93 mpg on an 8 mile trip with the Prius my daughter now has. If you know how to hyper mile — the epa MPGe are actually low.
I once got 93 mpg on an 8 mile trip with the Prius my daughter now has. If you know how to hyper mile — the epa MPGe are actually low.
And if you use a scrub board and a hand-cranked ringer you can do your laundry for less than 50¢ per load. It will just take you a full day to do it.
In the UK EVs lose 80% in 3 years, the worst depreciation of any vehicles.
If you like your electric car, you can keep your electric car, but don’t try to force one on to me.
https://youtu.be/PnuWS4enJI0
This is just one example and other links are available in it.
I brought this up in part 1 of this series. Challenging people to look up free energy. There are many videos the people have posted by using a small electric motor that once it starts a flywheel turning, it can power a larger electric generator that can run the motor and provide more electricity for other things.
The main issues with EVs is charging yhe depleted battery pack. Everyone tends to not see the forest for the tree’s. Because the technologies are available to create onboard charging that eliminates the need for exterior charging.
If you have an onboard charging system that can maintain the equal amount of output, stabilizing the optimum working range of driving. The battery would not be depleted or require external charging. No infrastructure would be needed.
There are many examples online being done by people in depressed countries using available materials to make these systems. Where there are engineers that can take those ideas and incorporating more advanced technologies to reduce size and increase reliability. Regenerative braking just lacks the means to obtain the level of input these EVs require. Batteries work best and last longer if they are not drained and charged repeatedly. A proper system would actually be running on the onboard charging system if input and output is balanced. That would reduce the size of the battery pack needed, which is only there to provide a longer/farther driving time and not the requirements of the drive motors.
That is just one application of these technologies. If all those windmills and solar farm’s had used their millions using these technologies… There wouldn’t be any need for large capacity battery storage or for many of the fossil fuels generators, hydroelectric or nuclear. Because once a system like these are running they are self sustainable until parts go bad…and a simple small storage battery is all that it would take to start it going, like a geared starter for an ICE. The other plus side is no emissions.
There is no such thing as free energy.
Additionally flywheels will never work as a form of energy for cars for the simple fact that you cannot undo the gyroscopic affect.
If your fly wheel has enough energy to drive your car several miles, then your had better hope that there are no curves ahead because your car will flip if you try to turn it.
Not to mention that in a crash that fly wheel will fail, catastrophically, with all that energy being released in milliseconds.
Had one of these when I was a kid. It was a gyroscope disguised as a flying saucer.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1P66X7zBHRc/Tzhf27Fb7pI/AAAAAAAAAWk/dCJMZJyZcy8/s1600/014.JPG
If you held it in your hands and tried to tilt it it would flip 90 degrees. Would be a real bad idea for a car.
Kind of ignores the FACT that every single IC vehicle actually has a FLYWHEEL attached to the driveshaft, now doesn’t it?
That Flywheel is what transfers energy from the engine to the TRANSMISSION.
[??? And that “flywheel” has how much energy stored, compared to a flywheel storing transportation energy? .mod]
ICE engine’s have Harmonica Balance Wheels that dampen the wobble of the Crankshaft from the turning of the engine and piston action…in short explanation. The flywheel is where the gear is mounted for the starter at the back of the engine on the Crankshaft, that is where a Torque Converter is mounted in an automatic transmission or the Clutch for Standard Transmissions. None of these Flywheels actually act as a Flywheel to add power. They are there to provide balance. The Torque Converter on Automatic Transmissions is also a dampening device by fluid exchange through the channels, but acts as a Flywheel convering the energy to the transmission into higher RPM. A Variable Speed Transmission that is most popular today has replaced old style Automatic Transmissions. VST have a Planetary type fuction that did away with shifting gears and smoothy converts the RPM to Torque at the driveshaft end as speed is increased. The Nissan LEAF uses a VST.
Once more…the Flywheel is not a function of the drive train in what I am talking about. The weight of it would be small to the gross weight of the vehicle and not effect it as you are implying.
I assure you my FLYWHEEL equipped vehicle turns just fine.
As far as energy storage on a large scale — magnetically levitated flywheels that rotate at extreme velocities and have extreme mass — stored underground — have been identified as a potential energy storage medium.
They would be used to create a dynamo effect — and slow as the rotational energy was converted to electricity
It’s all about the amount of energy — after all, the EARTH is a giant flywheel, the gravity well of the SUN keeps us in orbit..
Terrible idea. Horrible specific energy. Pumping water up a hill remains our best bulk energy storage, which tells you why there’s no real grid energy storage.
“karl November 7, 2017 at 6:22 pm
That Flywheel is what transfers energy from the engine to the TRANSMISSION.”
No. The flywheel keeps the engine running smoothly between power strokes, esp at idle, storing rotational energy to keep the engine turning. It’s the reason why race tuned engines, with lightened flywheels, have a rough “tickover” and won’t idle at 800 RPM. The crankshaft transfers the linear motion of the pistons into rotational motion, through the clutch and input/main/counter shafts and final drive, to the wheels.
First, the flywheel is not connected to the drive shaft, it is attached to the crankshaft. In the grand scheme of things it is relatively small.
Second, numbers matter. It is one thing to use a flywheel to smooth out the energy fluctuation of a piston engine. It is orders of magnitude larger if you want to use a flywheel to store energy to move a car.
Do yourself a favor and take a physics course.
It is obvious you don’t realize that a flywheel would probably be less than 10% of the vehicle weight. It is kept in motion by a small electric motor and not storing energy. The flywheel would only be increasing the horsepower needed for the generator. That it is mounted to the vehicle and secured by bearings to keep it in place without a gyro effect when vertical to the length of the vehicle, the vehicle would have to be at near roll over before any effects would be felt…if at all. That an EV uses about 3 to 5 kw in approximately 3 miles as explained in the article the size of the electric motor, flywheel and generator does not need to be as large as these systems in these videos to maintain the battery. Or is that concept too hard to understand? Again, these examples are using antiquated technology that new technologies can improve. I have my own ideas to work out. But why should I give those away here?
“have been identified as a potential energy storage medium.”
Ah!…. Karl takes a trip down make believe land.
Don’t eat the wrong mushroom, little karl. !
quite right Mark – no such thing as free energy!
Andy you will however note that flywheel energy storage is an actual fact:
http://schwungrad-energie.com/hybrid-flywheel-energy-storage-plant-europe-announced-ireland/
“There is no such thing as free energy.”
Without getting technical. If the energy going in is 1 kw and it produces 5 kw and 1 kw of that is used to run the 1 kw it leaves 4 kw available. How is that not 4 kw of free energy? Watch the videos. A 1 hp electric motor is turning the flywheel and powering a 220 Volt generator that would normally require a larger electric motor or gas engine.
Tesla is a bubble, and like all bubbles, it will burst.
Every professional investor who has looked at Tesla’s financial’s understands that Tesla cannot maintain a stock value north of $60 for any foreseeable future revenue scenario. Yet many have invested anyway hoping to bail-out before the bubble bursts. But make no mistake, many have already bailed out and banked a tidy sum on the TSLA bubble.
So … how fast is a fast charge? It takes me ten minutes or less to pee and to refuel at a rest stop. A fifteen minute charge would work, but anything longer would be Most Inconvenient.
” It takes me ten minutes or less to pee and to refuel at a rest stop.”
Wait ’till you’re 80-years-old. It will take you fifteen minutes.
How many times do you drive more than 250-300 miles in one day?
This may be a stupid question, but why not exchange the battery for a fully charged one instead of recharging? We do this with small devices, why not cars? If the “fuel” companies lease the batteries to customers, then car owners don’t feel the cost upfront, and charging is like filling a tank. Is there some reason the batteries can’t be popped in and out?
“Is there some reason the batteries can’t be popped in and out?”
Yes, PEV batteries weigh more than a car engine.
Simply the current design
If you think rationally, they are popped in and out — The Toyota Dealer will charge you 3.7 hours of labor to swap a Prius battery pack — even though it can be done in under an hour.
Like I said — design is the only issue.
karl shows he has NO IDEA about the physics of storing large amounts of energy in a small confined place.
DOH !!!
Yes, they take out your lovely discharged new battery and give you a 5 year old one, what a great deal that is.
Oops, I over-charged this battery, used it in sub-zero temperature at high speeds, then over-discharged it climbing steep hills. No problem, I’ll exchange it. LiOn’s can be wrecked which is why there are about 100 disclaimers in the “10/100,000” warranty.
A Prius battery weighs about 75 lbs IIRC. You can quick charge a PEV battery to 80% capacity in ~10-30 minutes. Then there is the matter of a LiOn essentially being a bomb. I’ve seen (and done) what happens when a LiPo battery decides it wants to self mutilate. Many houses are burned down each year.
Personally, I’m about ready to sell my MiEV; have driven it about 6 weeks. It’s been fun, but I don’t see a future enjoying it longer than 8 weeks (winter is almost here). My employer has not approved installation of a charging station nor simply plugging in for 4-6 hours (for a nominal deduction from my pay) to make sure I have enough battery to get home. Right now with the cold, I have 15-20 miles to spare. The thought of no heat (unless I install a diesel water heater) and relying on an electric blank and the heated seat is less appealing each day.
Some tree hugger college student in Ann Arbor will gladly pay a premium for my EV. I’ll be happy for making a nice profit and he/she will be happy for saving the planet. For them it may be more practical on a serious note.
But batteries do not like being discharged too much. That gives you, in this case, a battery efficiency of let me say, about 30-40 % of its nameplate capacity. I call it P*ssed Poor Performance.
Absolutely. I explained this in part 1. Draining a battery and fast charging overheating the battery for long trips creates longer charging time to get a full charge. There is a reason the charging plug has several connectors that communicates between the car and the charging station to determine the state of charge and the temperature of the battery. The hotter the battery the less amperage at the starting point and as the battery charges the Amperage going in is constantly lowering. So that “20 minute charging time” can take over an hour to reach the “80%” that people are repeatedly saying on here.
Absolutely. I explained this in part 1. Draining a battery and fast charging overheating the battery for long trips creates longer charging time to get a full charge. There is a reason the charging plug has several connectors that communicates between the car and the charging station to determine the state of charge and the temperature of the battery. The hotter the battery the less amperage at the starting point and as the battery charges the Amperage going in is constantly lowering. So that “20 minute charging time” can take over an hour to reach the “80%” that people are repeatedly saying on here.
Would it then make sense to cool the battery during its recharge? IMHO cooling is more energy-consuming than heating, I suppose, so the input/output ratio would be from bad to worse.
Then there’s monthly lease charge for a battery exchange program. that would easily be a serious outlay of several hundred dollars or more a month. EV owners like to fool themselves that they filled up/charged-up for pennies their batteries, and that depreciation and overhead costs can be ignored. But overhead and depreciation coasts get baked into a monthly lease payment by the financial considerations of the leasing company.
A battery swap lease system would blow away that mirage. And then if you participate in a battery swap lease program, what incentive is there is charge at home overnight?
It would be far more practical to convince people (from a behavioral standpoint) to lease a Tesla by the hour or by the day. All of their personal customizations such a seat position, environmental settings, music and news radio selections would be either downloaded via wireless-internet (cell data) from the customer database (or from a personal USB stick inserted by the customer, but that would have virus/trojan horse software issues).
Y’all are starting to sound desperate. I think I’ll wait for the closeout/scrap sales after the subsidies and loan programs run out.
I have not found any information about recycling of EV batteries exept one pilot recycling plant, built/under construction by Lithorec in Germany. Cobalt and nickel are of greater importance than lithium. It seems as if the manufacturers are trying to postpone recycling -not extended use as buffer-station below the 80% margin- until Kingdom come. Are the manufacturers squandering resources?
http://www.lithorec.de/index.php?id=179
The major point overlooked with electric cars is that not everyone has a driveway or garage to charge them. That, and parking spaces in cities are always a valuable commodity, and as soon as you put in a charging point that’s one less parking space, since you can’t leave your car there -electric or no- unless it’s actually charging.
Which raises another issue; that if you go somewhere distant by electric car you have to be prepared to split your visit between charging the car and moving it away to other parking when it’s charged. If you can’t return to the car when charging completes (maybe you are on foot and several miles away) then the car might get ticketed or towed for blocking a charging point. All in all, not very practical.
Teslas are said to be capable of automatic and unmonitored driving. Get them unplugged automatically when the charging has come to its end and then let the car drive away by itself to a nearby parking lot. The driver will be notified by cellphone where to pick up his pricey trinket.
“Tesla: Two self-driving cars walk into a bar …” by Paulo Santos is a long, detailed article on autonomous cars. Bottom line: They’re decades away. And Tesla’s approach is no good and will have to be scrapped. (As a result Tesla can expect lawsuits from buyers who thought they would get that feature next year.)
https://getpocket.com/redirect?url=https%3A%2F%2Fseekingalpha.com%2Farticle%2F4115592-tesla-2-self-driving-cars-walk-bar%3Fli_source%3DLI%26li_medium%3Dliftigniter-widget&formCheck=43daa9f905ef489cde4af2f119000d6b
Sorry but Tesla will go under financially within 3 years. It will have been about as successful as the original Tesla companies that burned through jp Morgan’s investments before pulling the plug. Tax reform within the next six months will be one of the nails in the coffin but unresolved production issues will be the main death blow. Of course Musk can blame the coming bit coin market crash and Trump, not his own issues. Send in the the UAW demolition crew to finish him off.
Couldn’t agree more. Musk’s refusal of the CSS and CSS2 standards will kill Tesla.
The main reason many automakers are developing EVs is that California will require large sellers of cars to offer such an item in their lineup. It’s NOT that they anticipate a big, rich market for them, or that they think EVs are the future. One story I read quoted an auto bigshot as saying he anticipated losing nearly 10,000 on each EV sold.
Also a requirement in the EU and China (in EU case there’s a restriction on average emissions across whole of manufactured fleet coming in)
One little problem that “home charging” for Evs that th advocates are missing is multiple car families, some have as many as 3, 4or more cars, one for each Adult and 1 for each of their 2 children.
Everybody knows about queing for the Bathroom, well that will have nothing on “queing for EV Charger”.
Of course you say why not have 4 chargers, so for fast chargers and additional $28,0 dolars over an FF car.
Plus the power requirements for 4 chargers would require massive re-cabling and wiring.
There are problems, and Engineers usually come up with solutions.
New battery technologies are already making headway and have improved charging speed and capacity. It takes a few years to implement any new technology.
The grid will become distibuted by multiple smaller sources of power, from convetional heat engines to solar, wind, hydro, anything, as long as it as local as possible, solar in New Mexico, , hydro in the Cascades.
Battery storage will be at every house and at every filling station, so power will not just be available from the grid but from batteries that are charged up when demand is low.
Power saving, even as simple as insulating your house, will improve, especially in old buildings.
It can work, it may not be perfect to begin but somebody once said “Perfection is the enemy of progress”.
And unicorns can fly!
…”hydro in the Cascades.”
I’m not sure about that. New hydro projects in Germany and Switzerland get very strong opposition *from the greens*.
Opposition to dams here (Washington state) too, mostly for the sake of salmon. They’re being dismantled.
Too much pessimism. Problems are for solving. Mankind usually finds a way.
Interesting that the main benfits of renewable power is price, not the AGW hysteria.
And you dont need dams for small scale hydro, just a pipe running alongside or in a creek bed. What matters most in mountains is the head, because head X flow gives power, and in the Cascades/Sierras/Rockies there are creeks with thousands of feet head.
““Mercedes for a while had a comparison of a hydrogen car and a gasoline car both catching fire. The hydrogen car basically went poof and was soon out. The gasoline car basically “melted.””
Edwin apparently does not understand difference between safety and property damage. First and and foremost safety is about not killing people.
I do not need to do a test to know that hydrogen detonates and kill people. I just have to read the fatal accident investigations.
It is the speed of the shock wave that kills. Hydrogen detonates while gasoline wooshes. It is also the range of concentrations that make hydrogen so hard to mitigate risk.
I am an expert at designing systems that handle hydrogen.
When a test is done to show how safe hydrogen is, point at the idiot doing the test and shout liar. Yell I am going to put you in jail.
Making misleading statements is the same lying. If you are a safety profession, it is criminal.
It does not matter how many nice people like Edwin you convince. It is the local fire marshal you have to convince that HFC of BEV are not a danger to their neighbors.
Based on observation, I am skeptical of those who say would spend the extra money for a BEV to actually do the things they will do.
I am an environmental professional. I have been trained in protecting the environment and paid to do it. This is different than being a silly rich person who claims to be an environmentalist.
So let me start with free things that rich environmentalists will not do very often:
– Compost
– Use a clothesline to dry cloths.
– Drive conservatively and slow down on the highway
– Turn off a light when they leave the room. Yes they will brag about saving money by purchasing expensive LEDs.
BEV advocates like to make the argument that plugging in a BEV is more convenient than going to the gas station.
It is not!
My daily commute was less than 20 miles a day because that was one of my criteria for buying the house. I only needed to buy less than 15 gallons a month and there were numerous stations along the way. Since I had the PU on the block, neighbors would borrow it and bring it back with a full tank of gas.
So I think BEV owners will find plugging in too be too inconvenient over time and stop doing it.
Just for the record plugging in is inconvenient. It is one of the chores that come with owning a motorhome. I try to get the handyman to do it. I wait I am the handyman.
“Lol, there goes MarkW claiming there is no link between automobile pollution and health issues with zero supporting evidence.”
There are lots of ‘links’ just an absence science to support the links.
The second part is that air pollution issues have been solved in the US. https://www.airnow.gov/
What are BEV advocates claiming? Good air quality below the threshold of health issues is going make a new category of air quality. ‘Gooder air quality’
“FYI, I work for a power company, and we would love, Love, LOVE to see EVs become successful. I just don’t see battery technology ever becoming truly competitive …”
Let me second that! Think about the number of cars that either the power company has or employees have. Nothing like a pictures of 30 cars parked in front chargers in-front of the home office to send a message.
The problem is there are too many of us that have to perform a ‘pay back period’ calculation for every suggested improvement.
The front office like to put out ‘Earth day’ quizzes that knowledgeable engineers always fail. The front office seems to think the NYT or USA Today knows more than than those who make power.
I was taking a foo foo training close. I asked how much a saving program cost and how much was save. What do you mean, the instructor asked? You folks put a color sign on the wall by are black and white copier telling us to make less color copies to save money.
When you see engineers at the power company driving BEV on there own dime, BEV will have arrived.
https://blog.caranddriver.com/tesla-aside-resale-values-for-electric-cars-are-still-tanking/
“Never mind those electric-car bargains we told you about mere months ago. Prices have been on such a steep downward trajectory that there’s already an entirely new, sweeter set of deals to be found. You might find a five-year-old vehicle with relatively low mileage, very low operating costs, and nothing wrong with it—for the price of a beater. The asterisk: That car would most likely be a Nissan Leaf, and you’ll only be able to go about 60 miles before needing many hours plugged in—unless you’re fortunate enough to have fast-charging hardware nearby. Apparently most people aren’t willing to live with that asterisk or the few others that accompany life with a used electric car. According to the pricing authority Black Book, retail values for the used 2013 Nissan Leaf are at an average 22 percent of the original MSRP—in the range of $8000 to $8500—while that five-year-old Leaf is selling at just 11 percent of its original sticker. A three-year-old Leaf—a $30,000 to $40,000 car new—returned from lease gets sold at wholesale auction at $6000 to $7000 or, on average, just 18 percent of its original price. For gasoline vehicles, a three-year residual is typically in the 45- to 65-percent range. “To be under 20 percent is fairly telling,” said Anil Goyal, Black Book’s senior vice-president of operations. “A lot of it has to do with demand.””