Article: "Electric Vehicles Close to ‘Tipping Point’ of Mass Adoption" (idle, CRV)
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As I said in the other thread. Price out a car engine or transmission out of warranty of you have to buy one new from the dealer. You'll be in for serious sticker shock. A couple years ago a friend's 10 year old VW Beetle convertible needed a new automatic transmission (6 speed tiptronic). Even good USED ones without a warranty were $3500 and up. A NEW one from the dealer was $7500 and that didn't include installation costs. Just a transmission.
So complaining about battery costs on an EV is kind of missing the bigger picture.
My 2005 Silverado truck shows 211,500 miles on the odometer, and still running well. It has countless hours of idling time too. I had a mechanic replace the water pump, and a power steering hose. I take care of replacing oil and filters, and also replaced the original alternator because I didn't want to take the chance for it to fail while I was on the road. I bought this truck used five six years ago at the 184,000 mile mark, and paid $5,000.
My 2012 Corolla has around 70,000 miles. I bought it used before the factory warranty expired, and paid $12,000 for it. No repairs so far other than oil and filters changes.
But there is a difference between a battery and a transmission or an internal combustion engine. Comparing a battery to a transmission or an ICE is like comparing apples to oranges. An EV battery should be compared to the fuel tank on an ICE vehicle, not to the motor of the same vehicle.
... until it needs a new radiator, water pump, alternator, starter, CV joints, head gasket, fuel injectors, a valve job, spark plugs, distributor... all things that old ICE vehicles need replacing that EV cars don't have. I have and have owned older high mileage vehicles. You fix one thing and three months later something else breaks. That's just a fact of life with older cars. More frequent maintenance is the price of not having a car payment.
I have never owned a vehicle that needed a ‘valve job’. And EVs still have radiators, CV joints, ac compressors, electronic modules, relays, etc.
Lightness is the ultimate form of efficiency, whether the vehicle is powered by petroleum products, electricity, or rabid hamsters. Lightness is also the ultimate form of minimal environmental impact, but let's set that one aside here.
A light car allows for quick transients. It also allows for deleting intermediary technological intrusions, such as power steering. Note the comments up-thread about re-mapping electric power steering. OK, great. But what about a fully manual system, that deletes all power-enhancements? Did I mention that that is also going to be the most reliable and the most energy efficient?
Recently I had occasion to drive a heavy truck. It was a box-van from a DIY moving-company. The truck weighed maybe 7000 lbs empty, but it also had a payload capacity of 4300 lbs. I probably filled 2/3 of that. I also towed a trailer... 2000 lb (so said the sticker) trailer + 2600 lb car being towed. This, by my reckoning, was an efficient vehicle. Why? Because of its ratio of gross weight to empty weight. Not exactly a sporting-car... the driving dynamics were abysmal. But it felt... efficient.
Driving a compact car with 1000 pounds of batteries under my posterior... isn't efficient.
I definitely think that with greater energy density and lower per kWh prices, at some point automakers should switch into the mindset of instead of just providing more and more capacity that they move into lighter and lighter battery packs for greater efficiency.
Not a car per se as it's a three-wheeler classified as a motorcycle in the US, but have you seen the Aptera? https://www.aptera.us/
I think this thing might be up your alley.
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Originally Posted by RayinAK
My 2005 Silverado truck shows 211,500 miles on the odometer, and still running well. It has countless hours of idling time too. I had a mechanic replace the water pump, and a power steering hose. I take care of replacing oil and filters, and also replaced the original alternator because I didn't want to take the chance for it to fail while I was on the road. I bought this truck used five six years ago at the 184,000 mile mark, and paid $5,000.
My 2012 Corolla has around 70,000 miles. I bought it used before the factory warranty expired, and paid $12,000 for it. No repairs so far other than oil and filters changes.
But there is a difference between a battery and a transmission or an internal combustion engine. Comparing a battery to a transmission or an ICE is like comparing apples to oranges. An EV battery should be compared to the fuel tank on an ICE vehicle, not to the motor of the same vehicle.
I think it makes sense to consider batteries part of the powertrain since battery specs have a strong hand in determining available power (performance). It'll be interesting to see where the Bolt lands in maintenance costs and available range as the first model year starts going past a decade of regular usage. That's still about five years away which isn't all that far away. The original Leaf's certainly are seeing noticeable degradation in range, but there's a strong difference there in that there is no active thermal management for the Leaf, and those first generation Leaf's already started out with pretty small battery packs and overall range, so regular driving over a decade is a lot more duty cycles for the same range compared to EVs today and losing say 10kWh of capacity for those vehicles means that you quite likely have a vehicle that would have difficulty covering a normal roundtrip commute. You can see also how usable an early Model S in 2012 versus a 2012 Nissan Leaf--that much larger initial capacity and range plus the active thermal management has meant that 2012 Model S's are still just fine for covering the average commute.
This is all part of why the $100 per kWh figure can be so significant. It means that 250 and greater mile range EVs start being available for under the median US new vehicle sales price while leaving price "room" for putting in an active thermal management system. The Bolt and Bolt EUV are already there as is the Model 3 SR+. It's likely many more vehicles will start joining them especially in the years after the current federal tax credit sunsets for all the major automakers.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 03-15-2021 at 12:31 PM..
I definitely think that with greater energy density and lower per kWh prices, at some point automakers should switch into the mindset of instead of just providing more and more capacity that they move into lighter and lighter battery packs for greater efficiency.
Not a car per se as it's a three-wheeler classified as a motorcycle in the US, but have you seen the Aptera? https://www.aptera.us/
I think this thing might be up your alley.
I think it makes sense to consider batteries part of the powertrain since battery specs have a strong hand in determining available power (performance). It'll be interesting to see where the Bolt lands in maintenance costs and available range as the first model year starts going past a decade of regular usage. That's still about five years away which isn't all that far away. The original Leaf's certainly are seeing noticeable degradation in range, but there's a strong difference there in that there is no active thermal management for the Leaf, and those first generation Leaf's already started out with pretty small battery packs and overall range, so regular driving over a decade is a lot more duty cycles for the same range compared to EVs today and losing say 10kWh of capacity for those vehicles means that you quite likely have a vehicle that would have difficulty covering a normal roundtrip commute. You can see also how usable an early Model S in 2012 versus a 2012 Nissan Leaf--that much larger initial capacity and range plus the active thermal management has meant that 2012 Model S's are still just fine for covering the average commute.
This is all part and parcel for why the $100 per kWh figure can be so significant. It means that 250 and greater mile range EVs start being affordable for well under the median US new vehicle sales price while leaving price "room" for putting in an active thermal management system. The Bolt and Bolt EUV are already there as is the Model 3 SR+. It's likely many more vehicles will start joining them especially in the years after the current federal tax credit sunsets for all the major automakers.
A battery contains the fuel (electricity) used by the powertrain to function. Now, an EV's electric motor is a part of the powertrain. It is possible that batteries won't cost too much in the future, but if that's the case with EV batteries, why doesn't this happen to all things we surround ourselves with? Everything should be cheaper, including the cost of living.
See...we are just speculating. The future is still to come.
A battery contains the fuel (electricity) used by the powertrain to function. Now, an EV's electric motor is a part of the powertrain.
There's a pretty large functional difference between a fuel tank for an ICE vehicle and the traction battery for an EV. Battery capacity is strongly one of the factors for how much power output is available. This isn't the same as a fuel tank because opting for a larger fuel tank option for an ICE vehicle does not directly correlate to how much more hp or torque a vehicle can have. Furthermore, the battery is part of other subsystems such as the braking system because batteries are also a factor of how much power can be received during regenerative braking where there is little analogue for that in ICE vehicles, the maximum charging power that the EV can receive, or the powering of secondary systems which would be the alternator in an ICE vehicle. EVs really do have differences compared to ICE vehicles and there is not always going to be an accurate 1 to 1 comparison for their components. While increasing fuel tank size and increasing battery capacity do share the attribute that both conceivably increase total range on a full "tank", battery capacity also ties into quite a few other things including the amount of power available to the motor, so it's also closely tied to the attributes one would associate with a powertrain such as horsepower and torque.
We are speculating, but that speculation is using recent historical data and what the current state of research and production is for a near-future projection. There are certainly other things car-related or not that use projections within their industries to plan for the near future and it's not a terrible idea to do so. What isn't speculation is that larger capacity batteries affect multiple attributes of an EV--that's actual applied science and engineering. If you want maybe broader overviews of why this is for EV batteries versus some other things, then something like the experience curve effect and economies of scale might be applicable. There's been a broad industry trend for multiple industries that doubling total production units seems to correlate with a decent percentage drop in price for producing those units. It seems to be in play for EV batteries where the price per kWh went down about 89% over the course of the 2010s. That didn't seem to quite happen with too many integral components of ICE vehicles over the 2010s which is why it's looking like EVs will intersect on a price per vehicle of similar utility within the next several years. This will almost inevitably slow down quite a bit if and when EVs become the dominant powertrain for vehicles, but we're certainly not close to that on a global and historic scale.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 03-15-2021 at 01:34 PM..
My 2005 Silverado truck shows 211,500 miles on the odometer, and still running well. It has countless hours of idling time too. I had a mechanic replace the water pump, and a power steering hose. I take care of replacing oil and filters, and also replaced the original alternator because I didn't want to take the chance for it to fail while I was on the road. I bought this truck used five six years ago at the 184,000 mile mark, and paid $5,000.
I paid $6500 for my Suburban 2500 tow rig. it needed $2500 in brake lines and fuel lines this past year. The point is, any used vehicle can have budget busting immediate problems that you may not have expensed for.
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But there is a difference between a battery and a transmission or an internal combustion engine. Comparing a battery to a transmission or an ICE is like comparing apples to oranges. An EV battery should be compared to the fuel tank on an ICE vehicle, not to the motor of the same vehicle.
We've gone over this before, but that's not exactly true. I'll have to look for the exact conversation, but suffice it to say that it's not an apt description of the situation.
It is possible that batteries won't cost too much in the future, but if that's the case with EV batteries, why doesn't this happen to all things we surround ourselves with? Everything should be cheaper, including the cost of living.
Ever price a modern personal computer, with it's capabilities, and compare with what a pentium cost in '98?
How about the cost of a 50" flat screen TV in 2010 vs now? Yes, prices on many things come down, even as capabilities go up in the tech world, and EVs are no different. Just look at the tech you can get on a modern $20k economy car. That stuff used to be reserved for $100k luxury cars. And compared to inflation, cars cost less than they have been, and they get MUCH better capability, safety, tech and emissions.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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One interesting difference that just occurred to me, is that the EV batteries weight the same when full as when dead. With a ICE the longer the trip the more gas is used, the lighter the vehicle becomes. In the case of my 36 gallon tank, for example, it's about 227 lbs., and why I fill it up if snow is expected. When I get down to half a tank it's about 113 lbs less, and mpg will improve the rest of the trip. Also, a gas tank can be refilled over and over for the life of the vehicle, while as we know from our laptops and phones, the EV batteries will eventually need replacing. By the time most on the road today fail, who knows what they will cost, but today a full replacement pack for a Tesla Model 3 can be $16,000. That's twice the cost of replacing the 5.0 Coyote V8 engine on a F150.
Driving a compact car with 1000 pounds of batteries under my posterior... isn't efficient.
Sorry, still more efficient in multiple ways than a lighter ICE.
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