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After reading the most recent article on C&Ds EV of the Year, what stood out from the article is that the EV batteries are warranted for 8 years/100000 miles (California: 10 yr/150000 miles). Many are getting more years/miles but the battery will become an expensive replacement (wear) item in the future. We're living with this today on our rotary-engine cars with our compression loss due to the rotary apex and side seals. Should EV owners have to live with the burden or do you think car companies will do something different - own the car but rent the batteries?
Has anyone found a good site that lists the mean time before failure (MTBF) for EV and hybrid batteries?
Our work Honda Accord hybrid battery was $8000 replacement cost so similarities are striking for cost (shop install and all new parts) and timeframe (10 years).
Considering some newer designs are making the battery a structural component or integrating batteries into the structure, the market will probably decide if it wants to replace batteries or cars. I imagine it will differ by manufacturer. But, the battery tech that's coming up on replacement interval now is about 15 years out of R&D, batteries being put into new cars now should be a lot more resilient at affordable cost (or same resilience for cheaper).
Unlike an engine I can't think of a reason you couldn't replace an older battery with a newer, more evolved one in the same packaging and input/output characteristics as the original but lighter/more efficient/more durable. The aftermarket for replacements isn't really there yet, but cost and barriers to entry are coming down.
Quick swaps are the future in my opinion. We are still in the 8track/reel to reel/cassette days for EV. Or Betamax/VHS.
But, I still believe IC engines will be with us a long, long time. There is not enough infrastructure to support large scale EV adoption. That will be the hard part.
Saw 2 videos recently highlighting this problem. One was for a minor coolant hose damage that "totalled" the battery unit, the other was simply for an old battery needing remplacement, both on teslas, and both costing north of 16,000$. May be worth it on newer cars, but that will prematurely send older cars to scrapyards, even if the body condition is still good! So yea, a bit like the RX8 in that regards.
Net I think that I (still) wouldn't balk at the cost (relative to EV replacement) when I have to replace the FE Series II engine since Mazda is still making them. I really love the car, the handling, the value, and the modest power and to me wouldn't give it up when the engine needs replaced.
This is why we need right to repair so when batteries fail like this, we're not forced into a monopoly where the only company that can replace the battery is the manafacturer (for dealer pricing).
Well, batteries deteriorate depending on how you use them. If you keep it between 40% and 80% most of the time, it will live a happy, long life. Charge and discharge fully all the time? Yep, that's gonna get expensive.
Originally Posted by kevink0000
Nio has an easily replaced battery system, and plans to have stations throughout China. 5 minute swap, instead of charging.
Quick swaps are the future in my opinion. We are still in the 8track/reel to reel/cassette days for EV. Or Betamax/VHS.
But, I still believe IC engines will be with us a long, long time. There is not enough infrastructure to support large scale EV adoption. That will be the hard part.
Yeah, I am sure it will work great in winters, where EVs have reduced range(so they will use this more often) and will come in with that delicious, salty snow melting into the machine.
At best, the precise machine needs a ton of maintenance given the corrosion caused by salty water melted from the snow(or heck, just regular rainwater). At worst, the machine decides to glitch out, puts the screwdriver onto the battery pack instead of the fastener it's supposed to take off, and punctures the battery, and... you can imagine the rest.
ICE ICE baby. I agree that we will have a long transition out of internal combustion engines unless incentives are given to infrastructure and consumers. Given the debt load, savings, and state of the economy - I would say that these incentives (while important) will likely never materialize to:
* build more efficient electricity generating sources
* closer to the user (REM: 12% of all produced electricity never makes it to the user due to that infernal entropy problem)
* closing or converting gas stations to electric charging operations
* REM: when we convert to EV - there will be a large need for plugs, spaces, and waiting areas (the eternal wait)
* figure out how to deal with more stranded vehicles everywhere since we all push that needle to E
* home charging units (for potentially 2.5 vehicles per household - don't forget the motorcycles and e-bikes that will suddenly appear)
* home service panel upgrades (from 100 to 200+ AMP service)
and much much more.
We're still at the 50000 foot view on legislation and no entitiy has really mapped out the end-to-end supply chain for future electricity and worked backwards to effective vision and legislation up front.
Well, batteries deteriorate depending on how you use them. If you keep it between 40% and 80% most of the time, it will live a happy, long life. Charge and discharge fully all the time? Yep, that's gonna get expensive.
Yeah, I am sure it will work great in winters, where EVs have reduced range(so they will use this more often) and will come in with that delicious, salty snow melting into the machine.
At best, the precise machine needs a ton of maintenance given the corrosion caused by salty water melted from the snow(or heck, just regular rainwater). At worst, the machine decides to glitch out, puts the screwdriver onto the battery pack instead of the fastener it's supposed to take off, and punctures the battery, and... you can imagine the rest.
Basically, bloody useless outside of California.
None of that is unsolvable. Any industry with salt water experience has been over these problems many times (the Navy, say). There are simple ways to engineer things to fail safe rather than drill through the battery
The deep discharge problem assumes we never evolve beyond current battery tech, which sounds unlikely.
The electrical load on the grid system would be very difficult to solve, especially in these times.
US gas demand per year: 146 billion gallons
US diesel demand per year: 47 billion gallons.
One gallon of gas is equivalent to 33 Kwh
One gallon of diesel is equivalent to 41 Kwh
Do the math on that, and the real engineering marvel will not be the vehicles, but the electric generation and delivery system. Solar and wind, uh, probably not.
Nuclear in some form on a larger scale than we have now is probably the only option. Will that be acceptable to the public? Is largescale electric adoption coming soon? I say no.
True, but the gallon of gas to kwh conversion doesn't factor in that ICE only uses 30-40% of that gallon to do useful work, whereas electric drive is double that. So it's not quite a 1 for 1 replacement.
I agree though, cars one facet of changing energy production as a whole. Clean nuclear would be great, but we better get started on that...
I believe the solution to electric is to electrify the roadway. We have the technology to bill the usage to an individual. A slit in the roadway where a device similar to what electric trains use however it pushes down instead of up. Smart enough that if you maneuver out of the slot it would disengage without breaking obviously. If you do this on the interstates and some of the major roadways suddenly the range problem goes away. You use the batteries to run the secondary streets to your job, home etc. In this way you eliminate all the fueling stations, or most of them anyway. For the most part you could just charge at home as the electrified road could also serve as a charger. Traveling with the car becomes a reality. Problem with this plan, I am sure electrifying the roadway would be expensive as well, however it does solve many problems. Forward thinking individuals may have included this in Bidens' already massively expensive infrastructure bill.
If manufacturers insist on charging and refueling stations, then I thing the best solution would to build a standard battery chassis. Everybody uses the same one, period. You can design your car to look anyway you like, however the vehicle must fit around the battery chassis. This way you could just swap out the chassis from the bottom (preferably) get a set of charged batteries "from the fueling station" and move on. If you can get the swap down to about 15 minutes or so, that would be just about right. It takes roughly that amount of time to fuel a car anyway and can take even longer if you choose to go inside the station. Problem with this approach is how many battery chassis can you keep on hand, how long it takes to charge them, how busy your station is etc.
You can also gain efficiency by eliminating the transportation loss. The closer you move the power generation to the area of consumption the more efficient it is. Expect to see more and more local solar panels.
You can also gain efficiency by eliminating the transportation loss. The closer you move the power generation to the area of consumption the more efficient it is. Expect to see more and more local solar panels.
Well, that's going a step backwards if anything.
Edison had the same idea when he first wanted to establish a DC distribution network: many small generation facilities, each of them powering one individual neighbourhood. With DC's high transmission loss, this was a necessity.
Solar panels work, sort of, but you need a few considerations to really squeeze the most out of it. For one thing, they are only really efficient when you include some form of energy storage with them because you don't always end up using the electricity generated during the day(when you are likely out at work, LOL). And transforming DC to AC is also gonna have some losses, and AC transmission loss is already decently low.
Edison had the same idea when he first wanted to establish a DC distribution network: many small generation facilities, each of them powering one individual neighbourhood. With DC's high transmission loss, this was a necessity.
Solar panels work, sort of, but you need a few considerations to really squeeze the most out of it. For one thing, they are only really efficient when you include some form of energy storage with them because you don't always end up using the electricity generated during the day(when you are likely out at work, LOL). And transforming DC to AC is also gonna have some losses, and AC transmission loss is already decently low.
Its only a step backward if local generation is less efficient than other forms of centralized power production, after you include the transmission loss. To your point the solution is not as simple as building all houses with solar panels.
Back to the original topic, the environmental and economic impact of large EV battery production will be significant. Try to support EV manufacturers that build a platform with a swappable battery pack. This provides at least the opportunity to recover some of the spent materials in a used battery pack and extend the life of the vehicle.
If packs are part of the structure of the car, they will become more disposable, which is good for no one.
If they can do a much better job with batteries this might be feasible. I think nuclear power instead of solar/wind/tidal is the future. Looking forward to the hysterical response to nuclear with all the other societal nonsense right now. Jinx, I still think hydrogen fuel cells will have a comeback once all the battery shortcomings are realized. Even with the storage issues.
They have limited lifespan
Are fuckinggggg expensive to replace
and the Waste/Recycling process is complicated, expensive, and ever so toxic, some argue it creates significantly more pollution then any Modern ICE powered vehicle in it's average lifespan
but unlike a Rotary Powered vehicle, EV's offer zero joy when behind the wheel of one to offset the drawbacks.
Dealing with end of life batteries issues in the volume that EV cars would need to operate in would be a new twist on an old problem. The disposal, recycle and recovery industry will need to adapt as well. Batteries that readily separate from the vehicle will be easier to process when they are out of life.
They have limited lifespan
Are fuckinggggg expensive to replace
and the Waste/Recycling process is complicated, expensive, and ever so toxic, some argue it creates significantly more pollution then any Modern ICE powered vehicle in it's average lifespan
but unlike a Rotary Powered vehicle, EV's offer zero joy when behind the wheel of one to offset the drawbacks.
Well, it really depends on how you drive an EV. If you have a large enough battery and keep it between 40% to 80% of the charge level at all times, the battery wear will be very minimal. That's just how lithium-ion batteries work. They don't like being drained or charged too much, which is why your cell phone and laptop batteries wear so quickly.
And everyone has different definitions of fun, you know... Some consider having gobs of low-end torque fun. One of the nice things about EV is that you can rip it and make no noise, so it's easier to evade the attention of cops or just some Karen pedestrians/old people(versus your rotary or V8 making sure everyone in the half-mile radius knows you are stepping on it).
It seems like more people started to bring EV to the local AutoX events as well. Too bad I didn't go(more into tracking now), but I would love to see how they do there. It's just that heat management can still become an issue on the track for some, although there is a guy in my area that brought his Taycan to the track and it's pretty impressive, considering the weight.
sure, no problem at all to expand and grow an ever more fragile energy grid to depend on
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I'm not sure what the alternative is. Not develop the grid? Unless the population plans to continue to develop everything else while not consuming more energy that's kind of a non-starter arguments. Normal counties have a reliable grid, it turns out.
well as you can readily see occurring in Ukraine, it’s a lot easier to shutdown an electric grid than to cutoff a carbon fuel system that equates to stored energy on a scale not yet possible with electricity. Electricity is essentially on/off. The EV battery only equates to a tankful of carbon fuel and then it’s dead in the water. Not that the same can’t happen with carbon fuel in time once the storage system is exhausted, but it can withstand short outages better as currently configured and with proper management. At least when we’re not selling off our reserves to our adversaries.
and that’s still not counting that places like California still haven’t ever been able to overcome grid outages and demand exceeding supply for the last 30+ years. Like they’ll suddenly fix it now; no it will be just more corruption and submission control of the slave class citizenry.
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07-18-2021, 11:42 AM
