Saul Goodman
It's all good, man
Nonsense. You can't replace individual cells in a pack. All the cells degrade at the same time and need replacing together. Charging unmatched cells is actually dangerous.
Electric cars
- Thread starter ch750536
- Start date
A380
How do I change this 'custom title' thing then?
Friend of mine had a really high milage Prius which needed a new cell. They found someone in that there South London that buys battery packs from accident write off Toyotas and does some kind of witchcraft to match the 'age' of replacement cells to the battery pack. It was a lot cheaper than a new battery.
Leafster
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More recent EVs have sophisticated battery management systems which reduce degradation significantly. There are a lot of independent studies out there for various vehicles which show the loss in range is a lot lower than many people think.
Here's a chart for a Tesla from the Electrek website which shows range is still pretty good after 250,000km.
A look at Tesla battery degradation and replacement after 400,000 miles
In this new installment of our series on the highest-mileage Tesla Model X (and one of the highest mileage EVs...
electrek.co
Saul Goodman
It's all good, man
Same rules apply. Drawing high current from cells with a different IR is dangerous. It's an excellent way to start uncontrollable fires. Maybe the witchcraft guy found a cell with a very similar IR, or maybe he just chanced his arm.
Yes, of course. All batteries fade over time, the old NiMH and Cadmium were even worse. The 'memory effect' was terrible with those as anyone who works in construction will tell you.
I was merely suggesting that its no more likely that you will need to replace the whole battery system on an EV then to replace the whole engine on an ICE car. Over time the battery cells will need to be replaced but there is no reason to think that all the cells will have to be replaced at the same time every 8-10 years.
More recent EVs have sophisticated battery management systems which reduce degradation significantly. There are a lot of independent studies out there for various vehicles which show the loss in range is a lot lower than many people think.
Here's a chart for a Tesla from the Electrek website which shows range is still pretty good after 250,000km.
A look at Tesla battery degradation and replacement after 400,000 miles
In this new installment of our series on the highest-mileage Tesla Model X (and one of the highest mileage EVs...
Tesla are some way ahead of other manufacturers in this regard so I have no doubt we will see increasing horror stories in the press over the next few years. Its how these things work, it wasn't that long ago that it was all about how terrible LED lightbulbs are and this is a way bigger deal. The introduction of new technology is never a smooth process.
The question is though how many cars these days actually do 250,000km in their lives? Not many I'd wager I reckon in the UK the average will probably be closer to 100,000 miles. As battery tech continues to improve at a pace there is no reason to think they will not last for the lifetime of most cars even if there is a gradual reduction in capacity.
In a former life when I worked in car rental we supplied a replacement car to a guy who had just had his engine on his 911 blow up. The car was 14 months old and Porsche was telling him the warranty for that element ran out at 12 months. I don't know what the outcome was (he wasn't taking it lying down though) but the point is these things happen with cars and will happen regardless of how the thing is powered.
cybershot
Well-Known Member
Excellent reply and hope it's accurate (can't be arsed to fact check) paid off my 64 reg Mazda 3 I bought about 3 years ago second hand, and have been umming and arring if to keep it, get something a bit more modern but still petrol, or look at leasing electric. You've pretty much convinced me to keep the Mazda for perhaps 3 more years and then evaluate. Of course the down side is the Mazda will probably be worth jack all by then, while at the moment 2nd hand car values are actually going up due to the lack of new cars on the market, and it might have been a good time to start looking at leasing an EV.
I guess really this reply belongs in the 'buy or lease' thread, I'm also lazy, so I'll probably just keep the Mazda anyway unless I can find what seems a deal of the century on the work car lease scheme. (unlikely with the amount of mileage I do)
Leafster
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Yes, Tesla do seem to have particularly good batteries and management systems. I expect with the number of Nissan Leafs on the road, the horror stories may well be focussed on them as they carried on producing them for years with rather old battery technology.
I meant to mention in my post that very few cars are likely to get to 250,000km during their usable lifetimes. (I did manage nearly 300,000 km in a BMW 3 series but I kept it for 14 years and was doing a lot more miles in a car then.) So for most people, having to change the battery is not going to be an issue.
Having said that, one of the bigger issues we should be tackling is making sure we get the most out of our purchases whether that's cars or toasters. A lot of resources and energy go into making these things so we need to consider keeping them going for longer. This may mean battery replacement in EVs becomes part of that strategy. The old batteries can still be used for other applications (second life technology such as battery storage in homes etc.) so this should extend their life before they have to be ground up to extract the raw materials.
A380
How do I change this 'custom title' thing then?
Apparently he had significant amount of kit and huge range of cells and the new cell was fine for a further 2 years and 12000 miles.
urbanspaceman
Well-Known Member
Tesla has always put rather a lot of engineering effort into thermal management, and so that's why Tesla batteries tend to last a long time. Tesla offers 120k/150k mile battery warranties, and there are reports of Teslas with hundreds of thousands of miles on the odometer (eg LA to Las Vegas shuttle) which have degraded by only about 10% (generally accepted as the acceptable degradation threshold). Musk says he wants to achieve a Million mile battery pack. In any event, it seems fair to say that battery pack lives are increasing, and that the pack itself will probably last as long as (or perhaps longer than) the car.
There is an interesting new business opening up: second-life batteries. Old vehicle batteries still have plenty of life and (thus value) left in them for static applications, eg, home batteries. commercial building batteries, grid peaker plants, etc. Also, such bargain second-life batteries will be a great boon in the developing world, for developing microgrids.
So one can imagine a 15 year first life followed by a 15 second life. After 30 years, a case-by-case decision can be made to either recycle, or proceed on to a putative third life: intermittent, light usage, eg. emergency backup, trickle charging boats and caravans.
There is an interesting new business opening up: second-life batteries. Old vehicle batteries still have plenty of life and (thus value) left in them for static applications, eg, home batteries. commercial building batteries, grid peaker plants, etc. Also, such bargain second-life batteries will be a great boon in the developing world, for developing microgrids.
So one can imagine a 15 year first life followed by a 15 second life. After 30 years, a case-by-case decision can be made to either recycle, or proceed on to a putative third life: intermittent, light usage, eg. emergency backup, trickle charging boats and caravans.
Saul Goodman
It's all good, man
All we need to do now is move everyone to a country with a battery friendly climate.
If you want to see how shit EVs are in the real world, check out The Long Way Up
If you want to see how shit EVs are in the real world, check out The Long Way Up
urbanspaceman
Well-Known Member
Ewan MacGregor and pal on a long-haul reality show trek across South America on prototype electric Harley-Davidsons. Is this really a useful data point ?
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Saul Goodman
It's all good, man
Did you watch it? They had hundreds of charging points installed to make sure they couldn't possibly run flat, and guess what happened as soon as it got a bit cold?
urbanspaceman
Well-Known Member
No, not a big fan of EMcG.
Existence proof: Millions of battery cars are already on the road, some in colder countries.
I don’t really get where you’re going with is. Rather than me trying to guess your conclusions or predictions or forecasts about the battery vehicle market, can you just set them out ?
Existence proof: Millions of battery cars are already on the road, some in colder countries.
I don’t really get where you’re going with is. Rather than me trying to guess your conclusions or predictions or forecasts about the battery vehicle market, can you just set them out ?
Saul Goodman
It's all good, man
EVs are shit, and battery life/range figures are bullshit in the real world.
BigTom
Well-Known Member
Just like MPG and emissions figures, manufacturers will always find the best possible number.
But we do get to see real world usage figures as well, increasingly so as the number of EVs increase.
So that graph of Tesla battery life that was posted a few posts back is real world, and real world reports say that the V3 supercharger will get you around 150-200 miles range in about 20 minutes rather than the 250 in 15 tesla claim.
EVs are clearly working for a lot of people right now, and save a lot of money for them, and this will improve as public charging stations improve and solutions are found for on street charging.
Not everyone is in a position to do this but it's silly to put a blanket "they're shit" when clearly they work well for those that are.
Saul Goodman
It's all good, man
Of course they're not shit, they're an excellent idea... at the moment, while only a relative handful of people own them and most of those have off-road parking with their own charger, and it's probably a second car, which is only used to drive to work, but once everyone is forced to own one, the whole thing will probably turn to shit, even with the absolutely necessary regulations in place. I just fail to see how it won't turn into a complete shit show.
ska invita
back on the other side
What's the case against hybrids? Seem like a good idea to me
Aladdin
Well-Known Member
I have had 2hybrids over the past 6 yrs.
Brilliant cars.
But...then covid hit and wfh hit. And the hybrid sat there.
The 12v battery kept dying.
I was told I needed to drive the car every day for 20 to 30 mins.
Doesnt sound too bad but smack in the middle of lockdown when we were not allowed go within 5km of home it was awful driving round and round the place for 30 mins aimlessly.
I traded it in for a small 1litre petrol engine as soon as I could.
If I ever get back to having to drive to work and if covid plus variants die off then I would absolutely love a hybrid again. The fuel consumption difference was very noticeable. And the automatic drive was great to have.
Winot
I wholeheartedley agree with your viewpoint
They still use petrol.
ska invita
back on the other side
electric cars are responsible for burning fossil fuels too, through production and recharging. Hybrid seemed like a good half way solution during the transition to full electric whilst the charging infrastructure is built.
Leafster
.
I understand your reluctance to embrace EVs. They have been around for a very long time but only recently * have they started to become a significant proportion of the vehicles on the road. Infrastructure in the UK does need to improve to enable far more people to own and run them easily. At the moment, if you're reasonably wealthy and have off-street parking it's relatively easy to use an EV as your primary vehicle. Most of your charging can be done cheaply at home and then for the odd long journey you can use the existing charging infrastructure.
There are technologies already in existence which can be rolled out (and are in some locations) to provide on-street charging. Second hand EVs are slowly becoming available to allow some of the less well off to buy one too, although they are by no means cheap. Also, other locations like supermarkets are beginning to install more charging points - for instance, there's a proposal for a new Aldi within five minutes walk of where I live which will have a bank of chargers. But I agree, we do need to see retrofitting of chargers on a larger scale in places like public carparks, parking provided for blocks of flats and workplace carparks.
I haven't studied the details but I think we should look at Norway to see how it's working with larger scale adoption of EVs. In 2020 more new EVs were sold than ICE cars (in 2019 EVs made up about 40% of new cars). Incidentally, Norway would also be a good example of where it's much colder than the UK but still hasn't put people off buying EVs.
* I'm ignoring the very early part of the 20th Century when EVs, ICE and steam cars all vied for supremacy.
It depends what you mean by hybrid. There are two types of hybrid on the market there are "Self-charging" hybrids and Plug-in electric hybrids (PHEV's).
The self charging ones are basically a successful marketing trick that the likes of Toyota have been getting away with for years. Interestingly they've been banned from using the phrase 'self-charging' in some countries because there is a belief that they are misleading people into thinking they are buying an electric car. They are not electric cars, their only source of power / fuel is petrol. It would be more accurate to describe them as more fuel efficient ICE cars.
The "self-charging" bit comes from regenerative braking which all electric cars do, basically using the energy from braking to charge a small additional battery pack. That energy still has to be created though and it does that by burning petrol. I had one for a few years and from a fuel consumption perspective it was excellent around town on short journeys but lousy on motorways and faster roads. If you do a mix of driving you're probably no better off with a "self-charging" but if you pootle around town they're pretty decent by ICE car standards.
PHEV's are different as you charge the battery like you would on a EV and of course brake regen. A decent PHEV will automatically drive the most fuel efficient way switching between battery and petrol motor. As a result some of the MPG claims of PHEV's are huge because the battery is in use at slow speeds where petrol engines are at their least efficient.
I've heard PHEV's described as methadone. They are the in-between to ween us off of ICE cars before going full EV. The problem with them is you need to regularly charge the battery to get the most from it and people quite simply don't so they end up just running off the petrol engine. This is bad because they get worse fuel efficiency then if they just had a standard ICE car because PHEV's are heavier because batteries are heavy.
The other big problem with PHEV's is that there is a very attractive tax discount for company car drivers over ICE cars. Once they have the car though there is no obligation to charge and they don't pay for the petrol so...
There is a place for PHEV's but I don't think they will be around for long. This being said there are more PHEV options out there than EV because its easier to design an existing type of car to be a PHEV than it is to build a full EV.
Leafster
.
Hybrids were a stop-gap technology to make fossil fuel vehicles more efficient but we shouldn't need them for much longer. I think they've actually hindered the development of full EVs by allowing some manufacturers to greenwash their profiles. Take for instance Toyota who make a big thing of their so-called "self-charging hybrids" as if they aren't burning fossil fuels to do the charging!
ETA: I see Teaboy covered the self-charging aspect in more detail
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Yeah I mentioned upthread that EV's are not environmentally friendly, quite simply cars can never been seen as that. Private cars particularly are just shit for the environment so we are dealing with degrees of bad rather than good.
EV's still have to manufactured and powered. How clean the electric is will depend on where you live in the world and is completly out of our hands. If you live in a country that has a very dirty grid (coal reliant) such as Germany and Poland then all you are doing to stealing from your left hand to give to your right. From an environmental perspective anyway, it will still benefit you financially.
Thing is though grids are being cleaned up, not quick enough for sure. The cleaner the grid the less bad EV's are but an ICE car will always have to run on petrol or diesel. It can never be converted to a non-fossil fuel (well not in a mass commercial way anyway). We're at the start of things with EV's and you have to hope things are only going to get better from here.
dessiato
🇪🇸 my spirit is crying for leaving
Because of this thread I keep looking at EV, I'm starting to be convinced. I like the idea of an economical, clean car. My sister swears hers is quick too.
When Spain has the infrastructure and the range is acceptable I'll be looking to buy.
I'm moving to the dark side...
When Spain has the infrastructure and the range is acceptable I'll be looking to buy.
I'm moving to the dark side...
Acceleration wise most EV's are crazy quick because the power is instantaneous, there are no cogs and belts to whirr around. Also they only have one gear so no pesky gear changes to slow you down.
I will leave the question of whether this is a good or bad thing for the other thread.
hash tag
Books, not bombs
Dirty electricity is not nearly as bad as the materials used to make the batteries and the "recycling" of those materials.
Another infrastructure issue not considered yet is having sufficient electricity available. There are people who keep an eye on power demands, peaks and troughs because power cannot be stored. They plan for demands during the adverts of certain television programmes or breaks in major sporting events when lots of people boil their kettle at the same time.
Could we cope with a huge surge in demand when lots of people arrive home from work at the same time and plug their cars in to charge them?
Another infrastructure issue not considered yet is having sufficient electricity available. There are people who keep an eye on power demands, peaks and troughs because power cannot be stored. They plan for demands during the adverts of certain television programmes or breaks in major sporting events when lots of people boil their kettle at the same time.
Could we cope with a huge surge in demand when lots of people arrive home from work at the same time and plug their cars in to charge them?
Leafster
.
This from Graeme Cooper, Transport Decarbonisation Director as National Grid - "There is definitely enough energy and the grid can cope easily"
Can the grid cope with the extra demand from electric cars? | National Grid Group
Also, you may plug your car in when you get home but it won't necessarily start charging at that point. Chargers can be configured to charge when demand for electricity is much lower (over night). If you have a flexible tariff then your charger will be able to check the price of electricity and charge when it's cheapest. The cheaper electricity is available when there's lower demand.
