Electric Cars - Advise?

[lokisnow]

12 hours ago, Triskele said:

Does anyone happen to know to what extent one will be able to upgrade their battery without buying a new vehicle overall?

I've certainly heard that electric cars have less wear and tear than conventional but that it's all about the battery.  So are there prospects for these vehicles lasting a really long time just so long as there's a solution for the battery itself?  

I have a Leaf I've had for about two years and am wondering if this could the be last car I buy for a very long time.

At least so far I've seen virtually no change in the battery capacity, but I've only put about 10,000 miles on it in the two years.  

I have also noticed that the battery goes down way quicker if one is running heat or AC, and I feel fortunate to be in Southern California where I don't need either of those all that often.  

It was my dream when I bought the Leaf that after seven-eight years, I"d be able to buy an after market chassis for the original battery and turn it into a custom "powerwall" and buy an upgraded more powerful battery for the LEAF.

This isn't happening for a couple reasons.

one, while there's incredible value in the battery, there's only 130,000 of them in the US (about a half million globally) that's a relatively small customer base. very few (10 percent?) would want to keep a car long enough to replace a battery or upgrade the battery)

second, the car manufacturers want to sell you a new car not an upgraded battery, so Nissan won't make upgraded batteries available to old model cars, even if it's the exact same mounting format/physical size, you can only buy a battery akin to what you had before. This is to deter you from simply replacing the battery and keeping the car: planned obsolescence. 

third, each car manufacturer uses their own battery design and battery pack design more significantly battery pack _assembly_ process, so it's not really possible for Tesla to decide to make an aftermarket Nissan LEAF battery pack, for example, (and it competes with people buying a tesla), because the battery pack assembly process would be a unique snowflake, and for a market of 13,000 LeAF owners. Not to mention that the LEAF batteries are liquid sachets, Teslas are classic cylinder batteries (taller than a AA and slightly larger diameter), others are prisms. 

So to replace a LEAF battery with 2170 Tesla style cells, you'd probably have to hand assemble the battery modules in the battery pack, which would include hand soldering the terminals of all the batteries, hundreds of hours of labor. and add a cooling system, (which cylinder batteries need), and reprogram the car so that it understands it has a better battery, etc etc etc. 

so, it's tricky, unprofitable and unlikely to happen on any mass market scale in the next decade.

 

 

[felice]

1 hour ago, lokisnow said:

second, the car manufacturers want to sell you a new car not an upgraded battery, so Nissan won't make upgraded batteries available to old model cars, even if it's the exact same mounting format/physical size

Which is why we need to overthrow capitalism.

[Loge]

9 hours ago, lokisnow said:

It was my dream when I bought the Leaf that after seven-eight years, I"d be able to buy an after market chassis for the original battery and turn it into a custom "powerwall" and buy an upgraded more powerful battery for the LEAF.

This isn't happening for a couple reasons.

one, while there's incredible value in the battery, there's only 130,000 of them in the US (about a half million globally) that's a relatively small customer base. very few (10 percent?) would want to keep a car long enough to replace a battery or upgrade the battery)

second, the car manufacturers want to sell you a new car not an upgraded battery, so Nissan won't make upgraded batteries available to old model cars, even if it's the exact same mounting format/physical size, you can only buy a battery akin to what you had before. This is to deter you from simply replacing the battery and keeping the car: planned obsolescence. 

third, each car manufacturer uses their own battery design and battery pack design more significantly battery pack _assembly_ process, so it's not really possible for Tesla to decide to make an aftermarket Nissan LEAF battery pack, for example, (and it competes with people buying a tesla), because the battery pack assembly process would be a unique snowflake, and for a market of 13,000 LeAF owners. Not to mention that the LEAF batteries are liquid sachets, Teslas are classic cylinder batteries (taller than a AA and slightly larger diameter), others are prisms. 

So to replace a LEAF battery with 2170 Tesla style cells, you'd probably have to hand assemble the battery modules in the battery pack, which would include hand soldering the terminals of all the batteries, hundreds of hours of labor. and add a cooling system, (which cylinder batteries need), and reprogram the car so that it understands it has a better battery, etc etc etc. 

so, it's tricky, unprofitable and unlikely to happen on any mass market scale in the next decade.

 

 

Replacing the battery with some third party product is about as realistic as replacing the internal combustion engine of (say) a Ford car with one from GM. Even if somebody offered it it would take some effort to make the car street legal again after such a big modification. How many cars are scrapped because the engine failed anyway? Isn't it wear and tear on the car's body and suspension that causes you to ditch them? That won't change. Leasing might become more common though. That way you'd get the latest and greatest every couple of years and always have a good battery.

[lokisnow]

Well a twelve year old electric car with a naturally depleted range is the perfect car for parents to hand to an irresponsible teenager they don't trust. Limit them to sixty miles, hah! 

[Altherion]

1 hour ago, Triskele said:

I guess that I'd hoped that the EV sellers would, while they might love to sell you a new vehicle, also figure there'd be some folks who are no way going to buy a whole new vehicle at ten years but might be tempted to buy a new and expensive battery.  

Check this out.

The Nissan replacement program is a bit of a special case: they screwed up badly in that their battery packs were noticeably worse in just a year or two (that 30kWh graph is down to 85% after 2 years) so they had to fix it somehow.

Replacement after a decade is very unlikely simply because the technology is changing so quickly. Again, even 3 years from now, chances are the batteries being produced will be different in both capacity and interface. The number of people with old batteries who want a replacement is far too small to produce compatible ones (which definitely won't be used for anything else because the interface will be obsolete).

[Pebble thats Stubby]

I love it.  At least so far.  the noisiest thing about it is the Indicators.  And it drive feels so nice.

My trip to work used 18% of my battery - I was in ecco mode not using any of the heating features this time cos I want to see what how much spare battery power I have.  When I left for work it said I had 82 miles before I run out,  25 miles latter I'm at work and it says I got 71 miles left.   I tried to set the cruise control but I must have been doing something wrong will need to read the book for that, and I got lots of other bits to play with / learn but so far I really like it.

My 7kw charging pod is being installed on Tuesday morning.  I guess I should now get some solar panels, especially as I do shift work so the cars is often at home during the day.

 

[lokisnow]

11 hours ago, Pebble said:

I love it.  At least so far.  the noisiest thing about it is the Indicators.  And it drive feels so nice.

My trip to work used 18% of my battery - I was in ecco mode not using any of the heating features this time cos I want to see what how much spare battery power I have.  When I left for work it said I had 82 miles before I run out,  25 miles latter I'm at work and it says I got 71 miles left.   I tried to set the cruise control but I must have been doing something wrong will need to read the book for that, and I got lots of other bits to play with / learn but so far I really like it.

My 7kw charging pod is being installed on Tuesday morning.  I guess I should now get some solar panels, especially as I do shift work so the cars is often at home during the day.

 

powering your transit with electrons from the sun is the best!

 

[Jen'ari]

I was really considering a Tesla Model X last year I don't do that many miles so I wasn't too worried about the range and I could charge it in the garage, the thing that put me off is it was just a bit too quirky and surprisingly not as practical as I needed for loading baby stuff into, the sooner mainstream car makers get on board with more practical models the better, I ended up going for a Range Rover again, although it will be my last one, it has had issues which shouldn't be happening on a new car in that price bracket, my next car will be electric for sure.

 

Pebble, the Leaf looks like quite a good bet imo,I hope you enjoy it .

[lokisnow]

24 minutes ago, Bittersweet Distractor said:

I was really considering a Tesla Model X last year I don't do that many miles so I wasn't too worried about the range and I could charge it in the garage, the thing that put me off is it was just a bit too quirky and surprisingly not as practical as I needed for loading baby stuff into, the sooner mainstream car makers get on board with more practical models the better, I ended up going for a Range Rover again, although it will be my last one, it has had issues which shouldn't be happening on a new car in that price bracket, my next car will be electric for sure.

 

Pebble, the Leaf looks like quite a good bet imo,I hope you enjoy it .

Look up the rivian suv and truck launching next year, especially if you like range Rover

[Jen'ari]

20 minutes ago, lokisnow said:

Look up the rivian suv and truck launching next year, especially if you like range Rover

That looks pretty nice!, I don't know if they will be launching it in the UK though?.

[Pebble thats Stubby]

I had my 7kwh charging pod installed yesterday.  It charged my car up to 80% (when I have it set to stop charging) from 25% within 2 hours.  This is much faster than I was expecting and very much faster than from a normal plug socket.  this also makes the car far more usable if I need to go out after work.

 

I'm still loving my leaf.

[Fragile Bird]

I was reading a review of the new AWD Prius, and at the end of the review I was taken by surprise when the reviewer said it likely didn't matter now that there was a hybrid Corolla out. I might very well take a look at the Corolla now.

[Ronalddjon]

I really like the Chevrolet Volt or Opel Ampera, they have a small gasoline engine, the power reserve of the battery is 50 miles.

 

[lokisnow]

The volt has been discontinued globally, the only remaining ones in inventory will be sold and then the car is extinct.

But the Prius Prime and the Honda Clarity are pretty damn close to the same thing.

[Fragile Bird]

10 hours ago, Triskele said:

Nifty column puts a really positive spin on EV's

That was very thought provoking. Maybe I do need to see if a plug-in hybrid is possible. 

[lokisnow]

12 hours ago, Triskele said:

Nifty column puts a really positive spin on EV's

Indeed, the inflection point that is important is when the growth in the electric market more than covers the growth in the overall car market. Last year that was true, they're saying it's just a cyclic downtown in ICE car buying, and they're projecting a reversion to the mean for this year, with the inflection point being past the point of no return in 2020 or 2021, but if 2018 is not just a cyclic blip, it could be the beginning of a much faster decline of ICE than they're projecting. I don't think 2019 ICE car sales have given much indication that they're recovering from the 2018 global decline. 

If all the growth in car sales is going to be in non ICE cars, then manufacturers will race that direction, which is what they started doing seriously about eighteen months ago, with major rollouts of big manufacturers starting this fall and trickling out for the next eighteen months after that. 

Shoot, even the massive market of the tiny-penis-big-truck genre of vehicles is adding electric motors and hybrid technology to their trucks to improve performance and erection size, so "big" changes are coming even for the weakly endowed that have fought the technology. 

[lokisnow]

this is a really comprehensive, fascinating, informative primer on how electric car batteries work, where they come from, tradeoffs etc. big time nerd alert, but if you want to kill two hours...

https://youtu.be/18MYRkx_Vr4

 

[Jen'ari]

I got rid of my previous car because it had too many problems for a new vehicle.

Were keeping our older Toyota for main kid transport, long story short I have a Tesla model S for the weekend for a demonstration and this thing is amazing!, it’s insanely fast, very quiet and refined and has a feature that lets it drive itself!, it also is less quirky and more traditional looking than the model X, I’m seriously considering it.

I’m not sure how fast the home charging points are though.

[Pebble thats Stubby]

8 minutes ago, Bittersweet Distractor said:

I got rid of my previous car because it had too many problems for a new vehicle.

Were keeping our older Toyota for main kid transport, long story short I have a Tesla model S for the weekend for a demonstration and this thing is amazing!, it’s insanely fast, very quiet and refined and has a feature that lets it drive itself!, it also is less quirky and more traditional looking than the model X, I’m seriously considering it.

I’m not sure how fast the home charging points are though.

when I bought my leaf the UK government would fund 75% upto £700 for a home charger.  Then the dealership I was with also had deals with the charger company I used (probably others - the dealership never told me, but I found out when trying to order though their website)

A cheap 3kwh charger would have cost me nothing.  I spent £175 for a 7.5kwh charger.  This charges my leaf to the 80% mark (my normal charge) in about 2 -3 hours and gives me a range of about 75 miles.  ok it has a much smaller battery than modern Tesla's so would take longer, but should fully charge overnight.

 

You also don't have to fully charge it each time or wait till its low to charge.

[Jen'ari]

23 minutes ago, Pebble thats Stubby said:

when I bought my leaf the UK government would fund 75% upto £700 for a home charger.  Then the dealership I was with also had deals with the charger company I used (probably others - the dealership never told me, but I found out when trying to order though their website)

A cheap 3kwh charger would have cost me nothing.  I spent £175 for a 7.5kwh charger.  This charges my leaf to the 80% mark (my normal charge) in about 2 -3 hours and gives me a range of about 75 miles.  ok it has a much smaller battery than modern Tesla's so would take longer, but should fully charge overnight.

 

You also don't have to fully charge it each time or wait till its low to charge.

Thanks, from what I’ve read on their site it’s the UK grid that’s limiting to 7.5kw/h the car is capable of 16.5, and you can set the max charge to be say 70-80% and should only charge to 100% if planning a long journey.

Something else I’m not quite sure about is do different cars have to use different charging stations?, like when I’ve walked past an EV charge point before I’ve noticed there are usually two different adaptors and then Tesla have their own charging points too, I’m not sure if I can use a regular EV point with one.

I can’t see me needing to use charge points that often, the car has a 350 ish mile max range and I don’t go anywhere near that far regularly without going home so I’d say mostly I’d charge at home and if we are doing any long journies we will most likely have the kid(soon to be kids as of February!) in tow so would be using the diesel Toyota anyway, I’m really really thinking of getting one of these I love it!, the lack of noise is a bit weird at first when you drive an EV isn’t it?.