|
Tesla is unfortunately for Daimler an all bark and no bite company.
The issues at hand for mass market EVs are still as yet unmet.
Tesla or anyone else for that matter has yet to go ahead and run batteries cyclicly until they fail. They just ran them for a long time continuously and checked them off as extremely long life.
One of the most damaging things for a battery is not running charge discharge back and forth, or sitting for weeks and then running on and off. . .its running sitting for a few hours charging. . .running... sitting.. charging.. running... sitting.
Thats what causes the battery packs on the Prius and the Insight to drop out. Yeah I know they last a long time. . .but if 50% of your car's price tag is the batteries. . .I want them to last at least 10 years without any appreciable downfall. That has yet to occur in a viable mass market battery.
Even if just half the cells drop out over 10 years its going to be 10 grand to fix. My Del Sol can get an entire engine trans and drive train swap for 1K. The amount of money I'd save on gas after I pay for an entire drive replace. . .still wouldn't pay for those batteries.
Car manufacturers just need to own up to the idea that there aren't any golden bullets out there. You can't have a 4 seater that can haul any amount of groceries do 60mph and cover 100 miles on a charge.
Well you can. . .but the batteries are expensive and replacing them throughout the lifetime is more expensive than gasoline. . .
|