EVs Are Great Around Town, But.......

[Isaac Zackary]

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

ICE cars have expensive transmissions, exhaust systems, and fuel systems, and cooling systems, not required by electric cars. They have thousands of moving parts vs about 2 dozen. They require regular maintenance every 3-5K miles, and you have to go to a gas station to fill the tank.

Electric cars can use renewable energy. In my area of the country, an EV gets the equivalent of 103MPG, all told. We are saving about $2K per year, at least. And we have cut our utility bills by a lot, at the same time.

Those are reasons I got my Leaf when I did. Man! I miss that car!

I don't get along with mechanics. And I don't have many choices to chose from where I live. (Ever drive away from a mechanic and have no brakes AT THE NEXT STOP LIGHT or the steering wheel linkage fall off AS YOU'RE DRIVING?) So I do all my own maintenance and repairs whenever I can. But it's a bit of a hassle in my case. Going by the manual's recommendations, I've had the Avalon since August and I've already had to change the oil 3 times, the transmission oil once as well as the intake air filter (it says to do all that at these mileages right in the OEM owner's manual). Add to that we decided to have just one car, so when I change the oil and rotate the tires once about every 2 months my wife sometimes gets a little impatient.

But in the Leaf it was so much easier. No oil changes. No transmission to worry about. Just plug in and go.

Of course for a fair comparison as far as money goes, EV's don't have expensive engines and transmissions that could go out. But those components in an ICE car can last some 200,000 miles average, and much more than that with proper care. But in an EV the battery is also expensive. And for many, they are having to change their batteries out long before 200,000 miles. For an example, the 24kWh Leaf battery now costs some $8,000. But some Leaf batteries are reaching end of life capacity levels in as little as 2 years with less than 30,000 miles. Replacing an expensive engine and transmission every 200,000 to 300,000 miles is one thing. But replacing an expensive battery every 30,000 to 50,000 miles is another. Of course there are better EV batteries than the Leaf battery, and in the right climates the Leaf battery does last a lot longer. But maybe not 200,000 miles long.

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

Sales of EV's is growing very quickly, and as we get more models to choose from, they will take over the market. How quickly did cars replace horses?

I sure do hope so. Right now most of the world can either buy a Leaf, a Bolt or a Tesla. And that's about it for most folks. For those that want to save money their best bet is a used Leaf. We need more than that. And most importantly, EV's need to build up a good reputation of reliability. And all that takes time. And so far, it hasn't been all good for the EV. Like I say, many Leafs have already needed a new battery with very little mileage compared to an ICE. We're still in that "wait and see" period of what will happen in the future.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by RedDevil

The battery layout is optimized for performance, weight, cooling and crash safety. It is hard to combine those qualities with a modular, expandable design.

But then you wind up with expensive, incompatible batteries, which will probably wind up being unavailable or prohibitively expensive in a decade.

If anything, the biggest fault Tesla made was to rely on outside suppliers.

No, their biggest mistake was to invest a lot of their capital in developing autonomous driving. How much does that bump up the unit cost of a Tesla? And what percentage of buyers actually want it? Then there's replacing usable tactile controls with a touch screen.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

For less than the price of a rental car my small local air port will fly me to DFW.

Which is fine, if you want to go to DFW. Not so fine if you want to head out to say a trailhead near a wilderness area, and stay for a week or so.

[Isaac Zackary]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

But then you wind up with expensive, incompatible batteries, which will probably wind up being unavailable or prohibitively expensive in a decade.

That's a concern I have. What of the future?

Comparing to ICE cars you have two different trains of thought. With older cars, ya, the engines would konk out every 50,000 miles or so. But those engines were and are rather inexpensive to rebuild. I remember my father rebuilding engines and transmissions on several occasions. With newer cars it seems they are a lot more difficult and expensive to rebuild or even R&R. But at least they last longer.

What of EV batteries? Right now they seem to have short lived lives and cost a lot of money, the worst of both scenarios.

[RedDevil]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

But then you wind up with expensive, incompatible batteries, which will probably wind up being unavailable or prohibitively expensive in a decade.

Modularity adds to the cost. Batteries need to go into the car and ideally stay there for its life. Compatibility is a reason to reduce the options. Even a modular battery would need different control electronics depending on its capacity. And last but not least, Tesla redefines batteries, integrating the charging and control electronics in the pack. The 'battery' is a complete system nowadays.

Originally Posted by jamesqf

No, their biggest mistake was to invest a lot of their capital in developing autonomous driving. How much does that bump up the unit cost of a Tesla? And what percentage of buyers actually want it? Then there's replacing usable tactile controls with a touch screen.

I want it! Not for myself, but for all the idiot drivers I come upon daily.
I would use it myself if it gets good enough to trust - and to not give the idiots a reason not to use it. I believe it would make me a safer driver - but I'm certain it would make other drivers less of a risk in traffic.

Kudos for Tesla trying to make it work. It seems hard - but so was building an electric sports car, and luxury sedan, and supercharger network, and so on. Tesla habitually achieves goals that many declared impossible before. They do have self driving capability that is less than perfect, yet does work in most cases, and improve on that gradually.

[JSH]

Originally Posted by Isaac Zackary

I sure do hope so. Right now most of the world can either buy a Leaf, a Bolt or a Tesla. And that's about it for most folks. For those that want to save money their best bet is a used Leaf. We need more than that. And most importantly, EV's need to build up a good reputation of reliability. And all that takes time. And so far, it hasn't been all good for the EV. Like I say, many Leafs have already needed a new battery with very little mileage compared to an ICE. We're still in that "wait and see" period of what will happen in the future.

Agreed. The lease on my Spark EV will end in September. I will not buy it because the car is not supported by the aftermarket or GM. If they will extend the lease at $100 a month I might look into that.

Leaf: Cheap but boring. I was a buyer with a $5500 battery but not now that it is $8000.
Bolt: Still too expensive in the used market
Tesla: Way too expensive and horrible interior

A 2017 Volt or newer is still under consideration but I've never been very interested in them due to the cramped rear seat

I agree that fear over battery replacement continues to hurt EV sales. Nissan isn't helping matters by putting out crappy batteries that have high failure rates. A possible solution would be a mandate to warranty EV batteries for the same 10 years / 150K miles as hybrid batteries. That is longer than most people keep a car.

The other thing that hurts EV sales is that the typical buyer doesn't even consider total cost of ownership. For most buyers it is all about the monthly payment. Fuel savings or reduced maintenance don't even factor into that calculation.

[oil pan 4]

Well a lot of people think that if they switch to electric then the anount they paid for gasoline will end up on their electric bill. With $2 a gallon gas I spend 1/4 what I did on gas.

[JSH]

Originally Posted by RedDevil

Modularity adds to the cost. Batteries need to go into the car and ideally stay there for its life. Compatibility is a reason to reduce the options. Even a modular battery would need different control electronics depending on its capacity. And last but not least, Tesla redefines batteries, integrating the charging and control electronics in the pack. The 'battery' is a complete system nowadays.

Using modules reduces cost of you are going to make dozens of vehicles on the same platform and want to use the same modules to mix and match pack size based on the application. Especially if you use the same modules for hybrid batteries.

The Audi E-Tron Battery:

[RedDevil]

The necessity of modularity is a numbers thing.

When I grew up there was the MSX standard for microcomputers using the same basic design and BASIC, which was adopted by several computer manufacturers.
To no avail, as the Commodore 64 blew them away in sales. At one time the C64 sold more than all other microcomputers combined.

The Commodore 64 software and hardware was not interchangeable with other computer models. It did not matter whatsoever.

Tesla now has more than one production line making identical battery packs. Like the C64, there's no reason to make the parts of those packs interchangeable. That would only make them more expensive.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by RedDevil

Modularity adds to the cost. Batteries need to go into the car and ideally stay there for its life.

Ideally, yes. In the real world, not hardly - unless you're thinking of the lifetime of a car as maybe 10 years at most.

Compatibility is a reason to reduce the options. Even a modular battery would need different control electronics depending on its capacity.

Sure, but the interface and the form factor of the modules are universal. Just like disk drives in your computer: you can plug in a bigger larger capacity one, or even one that uses an entirely different technology (rotating disk vs SSD), and it just works.

To no avail, as the Commodore 64 blew them away in sales. At one time the C64 sold more than all other microcomputers combined.

How many was that? Humm... 12.5 million, per Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64 Then along came the IBM PC with its completely open architecture, C64 sales tank and disappear completely by 1994, while PC clones were selling around 100 million units per year: http://www.retrocomputing.net/info/s...tal_share.html