The Electric Car Thread

[cogwheel]

I believe the most useful electrification path, for the next decade or two, is along the lines of the Volt. A moderate electrical range (50-80 miles would be perfect), a battery treated gently (the Volt does a great job of short stroking and thermally mananging the battery), and a gas engine for extended range operation. And a competent gas tank size (10 gallons, though perhaps an early shutoff feature for filling if people don't use it much).

Without disagreeing with you, what effects does having a rarely-used gasoline engine create? I know the Volt is capable of automatically burning off gas before it goes stale, but apparently that isn't a concern over time periods shorter than a year, so stale gas shouldn't be an issue beyond using potentially a few gallons of gas per year more than would be expected with near 100% battery powered miles driven. General maintenance like oil changes should probably be similar to a normal ICE vehicle since you're becoming time limited instead of usage limited with modern ICE oil aging (oil change intervals for normal driving are approaching or exceeding average yearly mileage for commuting). Are there any other maintenance concerns or failure modes for a potentially rarely used engine?

 

[cogwheel]

So, if we see metallic anodes and solid state electrolytes that actually work and get good cycle life, yeah, we can get another factor of 2-3 in density. Hopefully. Until then, I don't expect to see much in the way of improvements.

Assuming all the extra density is put into increasing range instead of decreasing pack size (or at least can be chosen as an option), we've probably hit the limit of what's needed for personal transportation. 400-600 miles of range is, for almost everyone, enough range for any single day's worth of travel. At that point, making sure there's enough charging infrastructure at stopping points is a much more effective thing to work on.

If you are one of the few people who does 600+ miles in a single day, you'd probably be better served by an ICE running synthesized fuels, but since that would be a quite small portion of the fleet, the efficiency loss should be a rounding error overall. (Still a better idea than H₂ FCEVs, though).

Commercial and special use cases are, of course, their own thing.

Weight also affects energy efficiency, esp. at higher speeds (kinetic energy being proportional to square of velocity), which in turn affects range.

Huh? At speed, the vast majority of energy expended is in countering air resistance. There's some increase in rolling resistance, but not enough to be a significant contributor in a personal vehicle. Weight only really comes into play in acceleration and going up slopes. For the former, that isn't the dominant case for higher speed travel. For the latter, electric vehicles being able to do regenerative braking when coming back down (assuming the down leg isn't at the very start of the trip when the battery is full) likely fully counters the increase in weight.

 

[cogwheel]

the press materials and transcripts say 16, not 6.

No, it said six:

https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedi ... -2020.html

All-in push on hybrid-electrics to bring new capability and features to customers on high-volume, profitable vehicles like F-150, Mustang, Explorer, Escape and Bronco; battery electric vehicle rollout starts in 2020 with performance utility and six BEVs by 2022

Although actually it might be seven.

Yeah, that press release disagrees with itself:

Ford’s new performance battery electric utility arrives in 2020. It is the first of seven electric vehicles coming by 2022 as part of the company’s $11 billion global electric vehicle investment.

The press release that Mhorydyn linked does say 16, though:

Ford also will expand its electrified vehicle lineup with a total of 40 vehicles globally, which will include 16 full battery electric vehicles by 2022.

While that is an older press release, it's only two months older than the one you linked. Did Ford drastically cut their plans in the very short time between those two press releases, or is one (or both) wrong, and if so what is the correct number?

 

[cogwheel]

We've had that experiment in the Netherlands. While in theory it might be a good idea to split one giant EV battery pack over many PHEVs and thus increase the amount of electrification in the fleet, in practice people rarely plugged in, partly due to the fact that the majority of leased vehicles (where tax incentives made owning a PHEV interesting) also had employer-paid fueling cards, so there was zero incentive to invest in charging points at home and very little incentive to do that at work.

Since the massively distorting factor in the Netherlands experiment you mention, employer-paid fuel, won't be true in the US, the conclusion you draw also can't be assumed to be true. In fact, in the US miles driven for business are usually considered at a flat rate per mile set by the IRS, and either taken as a business expense by the driver on their taxes or reimbursed by the employer. This gives significant encouragement to plug in a PHEV since the electric miles should end up costing the business driver less than the writeoff/reimbursement rate.

 

[cogwheel]

Really? They're having trouble with the drivetrain? That's what's holding them up? Again, I'm arguing from fundamentals here. Given the same amount of time invested and R&D dollars, an electric drivetrain is necessarily, without a doubt, going to be much cheaper. If you don't understand this point, I'm not going to explain it any further - I'd be basically having to go all the way back to high school physics and build up an argument from there. I'm not wasting my time on that.

What's the cost of a current EV drivetrain, what's the forecast cost, and what's the current production cost of a comparable ICE, exactly? You seem to know the numbers, so sharing them for discussion would be nice.

I don't have any numbers, but to me it seems strange to entertain the possibility that an EV drivetrain wouldn't cost less than an ICE drivetrain, given anywhere close to the same production numbers. For the parts that differ between the two, an EV has an electric motor and some power electronics, while an ICE has an internal combustion engine and a transmission. Those EV components have drastically fewer moving parts (and parts in general) and don't (as far as I know) contain either more expensive materials or more materials in general. Is there something I'm missing that would make the EV components cost more in volumes semi-close to ICE production volumes?

Now the energy storage, on the other hand, also seems obviously tilted in favor of an ICE drivetrain, since we're talking about just a fuel tank and pump, compared to a lot of batteries. I'm sure that batteries will decrease in cost as their production gets perfected and streamlined and their volumes grow, but I doubt that would result in a cost for a battery pack below today's fuel tank assemblies, which look to cost no more than $1K, and that's single replacement part cost instead of manufacturer's cost.

I don't think that an EV's drivetrain is simpler enough that it would offset the significantly higher energy storage system cost, though. The overall cost difference should still decrease to noticeably less than today's difference with time.

 

[cogwheel]

well, the motor/generator contains a lot of copper, and ones with permanent magnet motors use fairly sizable chunks of rare earth metals. Both copper and rare earths are much more expensive than the boring aluminum, steel, and cast iron used to build IC engines and transmissions. and even granting that an ICE has far more moving parts than an EV motor, many of those parts are simple duplicates of each other. The piston/rings/wrist pin/conrod/bearings of cylinder #1 are identical to the ones in cylinder #4. ditto the valves. this stuff just isn't that expensive to make, at least not for your garden variety mass-market car. the most exotic material is likely to be found in the turbocharger, and even then 80-100 grams of high-temperature alloy isn't that expensive.

It looks like an EV car contains about 110 pounds more of copper than an ICE car, and the highest copper has been over the last 6 months is about $3.30/lb, so the EV contains about $363 more in copper. As far as the cost of the rare earth magnets used in an EV motor, that's a lot harder for a layperson to find, though neodymium currently costs less than $100/kg.

 

[cogwheel]

zero margin gasoline,

Average margin on gas is like $0.20/gal or $0.16 after credit card fees in the US. It's lower margin than most in-store goods, but gas is not generally sold at cost.

Do you have a source for that $0.20/$0.16 number? A quick search turns up numbers lower than that.

Still, due to sales volume, the absolute value of the margin isn't very important. There are approximately 111K gas stations in the US¹, and approximately 25M gallons of gas are sold per day², so on average each station only sells about 225 gallons per day.


¹ https://www.statista.com/statistics/525 ... ed-states/ I'm not seeing more recent freely available numbers, but the numbers in that are flat enough that 111K seems a reasonable number still today.
² https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/PET_CONS_R ... ALPD_A.htm

 

[cogwheel]

Do you have a source for that $0.20/$0.16 number? A quick search turns up numbers lower than that.

Various places throughout this edition of the magazine, but see Page 22 for the 2017 average. $0.22 up from $0.20 in 2016.
https://www.cspdailynews.com/print/csp- ... 8-may-2018

When researching before I posted, I ran across this from CSP, which states the margin in 2017 was below the one you linked, and that the margin at publication was well below that.

Er, no. That fuel number is well wrong.

https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=23&t=10

In 2017, about 142.98 billion gallons (or about 3.40 billion barrels1) of finished motor gasoline were consumed2 in the United States, a daily average of about 391.71 million gallons (or about 9.33 million barrels per day).

You're correct, what I inadvertently found was the daily numbers for sales from refiners directly to end users only (e.g. industrial or large scale agricultural users), not including the majority of the sales, which are to distributors. It looks like the correct number is somewhere in between, though your number is much closer: there are approximately 297M gallons per day of sales that are not to direct end users or in quantities larger than a truckload, and since stocks are a fraction of production that should reflect pretty well on actual sales at gas stations.

 

[cogwheel]

I only bring up the exceptions when someone claims there are none

...which essentially nobody has done. It's standing principle in the thread that there are going to be extreme edge cases BEVs don't do. The point is we're approaching 99%, not literally 100%

"What do you think, will the whole world be teslafied one day?" I replied.

That's a first post by a registered (on what was) today poster with a tentative grasp of english, and potentially just a borderline troll, not a regular poster.

I don't think any regular poster has said that people on that far edge of the usage envelope should be covered by today's EVs. I'd personally say that the usage case you've described will never be covered by EVs, and the end game is the nature of his job will change (elimination, tele-presence + automation, etc) instead.

 

[cogwheel]

This is where chemistries like lithium-sulfur and lithium-air (and apparently lithium-CO2) come in. These are orthogonal developments to solid electrolytes and can be combined.

I'm not sure this is true from a practical standpoint, in that while the chemistries work without solid state, they aren't very usable real-world in that form. From some very quick searching, it looks like LiS, for example, needs to be solid state to solve durability issues, since it doesn't have enough durability when used with a liquid electrolyte due to sulfur's solubility.

For silicon-substrate solid-state lithium-ion, it's here right now. You can go out and buy these cells, they have excellent performance and astronomical energy density. The only reason they're expensive right now is a technology maturity thing.

Can you? A quick search for "silicon-substrate solid-state lithium-ion" turns up pages of scholarly publications only, with a lot of them being very recent. Are purchasable cells called something different?

If you're referring to lithium-silicon cells, the wikipedia article states that the "technology maturity" issues those have are related to the fact that silicon increases drastically in volume during lithiation, and the potential solutions are either silicon nanowires (which themselves appear to need development to be commercially viable, and don't completely solve the problem) or solid state. As far as I can tell, the limits of current commercialization for LiSi is silicon being used as a minor component in the anode, not as the primary anode material.

Then there's a whole book I could write about the economics of scale, process energy and competitive edge of incumbent technologies that will undoubtedly keep anything non-conventional priced out of the market for a while. But in a steady-state situation, there is no technological objection to sub-$10/kWh batteries. It will happen, likely not that far into the future considering the building blocks are mostly here.

As far as I can tell, your sub-$10/kWh position relies, either directly or indirectly, almost entirely on solid state batteries. Those appear to have been in development for a few decades now, and do not appear to have hit the market other than some very specialized applications (e.g. the LiI primary cells in pacemakers). I'm not saying your predictions are necessarily wrong, but I do think you are being more speculative than your posts' wording would suggest.

 

[cogwheel]

Calculate the volumetric density of either dram or nand. You'll realize that you are mistaken. Cells have actually been getting larger over time.

This information is very difficult to find for laypeople. Can you link some data, because your position doesn't line up with the general concept of shrinking transistor size?

 

[cogwheel]

Calculate the volumetric density of either dram or nand. You'll realize that you are mistaken. Cells have actually been getting larger over time.

This information is very difficult to find for laypeople. Can you link some data, because your position doesn't line up with the general concept of shrinking transistor size?

Planar NAND was actually the smallest NAND ever got, back in 2013 or so. They did multipatterning to make absolute tiny cells. They were terrible, unreliable and expensive because small cells leak charge like crazy. Since then, 3D NAND took off, which uses (by comparison) absolutely enormous cells which are grown epitaxially, layer by layer and patterned using cheaper, lower resolution single patterning. The fact that the cells are larger hasn't stopped an incredible reduction in the cost of NAND memory since then since it turns out that epitaxy is cheaper than patterning silicon, so it makes sense to make the cells bigger.

DRAM went 3D even before NAND, simply because making a DRAM cell smaller while still retaining the same capacitance requires either better dielectrics (same resistance from thinner materials) or higher dielectric constants (more charge per thickness). Both reached fundamental limits some time ago (maybe ten years back? I forget), so making the cells smaller stopped being possible. We now keep the internal volume of cells constant (to maintain the same capacitance), but increase their aspect ratio (so they become thicker and narrower). In terms of volume consumed, they actually get slightly larger over time since more and more of the cell ends up being the spacer to keep charge from leaking between adjacent cells.

Logic is in a similar situation, where Intel's 10nm process actually make the transistors taller faster than it made them narrower, so volumetrically the actual active area of the transistor got bigger (although volume decreased slightly anyway since they were able to get rid of more dead space between fins): https://images.anandtech.com/doci/13405/CLD%2010.jpg

That is why these arguments are so circular. Moore's law is different because transistors keep getting smaller. And I know that transistors keep getting smaller because GBs keep getting cheaper, so I must be getting more of them in a small area, right? But of course no one actually bothers to look up how big a memory cell actually is. If they did, they're realize that transistors get cheaper the same way as batteries, cars, airplanes, TVs, and everything else does: not by squeezing more of them into less silicon, but by exploiting larger and larger economies of scale to make each unit cheaper than before. Often (and going forward, more often than not) that actually means making things like transistors or memory cells physically larger, so long as they can be made more efficiently.

Thanks for the clarifications.

That said, I think the more relevant question isn't about cell size, it's about use of materials. For fabrication before ten years ago (before we hit physical limits), did we progressively get more cells per gram of finished chip, or did it stay the same? If it's the latter, why have DRAM packages and modules not skyrocketed in size since the 70s? For more recent fabrication, have we likewise been improving the number of cells per gram or not?

 

[cogwheel]

Bytes of storage per gram has been steady or actually slightly worse (depending on assumptions about density that I am not informed enough to make), that was my point above about volume actually increasing.

To clarify, are you talking about within about the last ten years or so, after fundamental limits were hit as you mention in an earlier post?

In trying to find some DRAM info quickly, I'm coming up with a 4Kbit die in 1974 being about 15mm², a 4Mbit die in 1988 being about 100mm², and a 256Mbit die in 1995 being about 300mm² (source). For the finished die volume or mass (assuming that the density of fabricated dies hasn't drastically increased over time, which seems like a safe assumption) per bit to have been constant, we would have needed the dies themselves to become drastically thinner (on the order of three orders of magnitude). I don't think DRAM dies in 1974 were much thicker than 1mm, and I don't think today's DRAM dies are around 1µm thick (wouldn't attaching the bond wires destroy the die if it were that thin?), so I'm pretty sure that DRAM bit density has increased pretty significantly, at least before we hit those fundamental limits about ten years ago.

If the difference between then and now is that the DRAM cells themselves have stayed the same size and bits per volume of finished die has increased because they used to be spaced really far apart relative to cell size and are now packed much closer together, that's interesting, and I would say I'm surprised that in 1974 we were able to make cell features that small.

 

[cogwheel]

'crab mode' is awesome.

Looks like the rear wheels' maximum steering angle is only 10°, so crab walk won't be very impressive: a ratio of about 1 unit sideways motion for every 6 units of forward motion. The segment of the intro video showing it is either fake or exaggerated by a distorted perspective - the vehicle looks to be moving at more than a 10° angle without pivoting.

 

[cogwheel]

Well TIL It doesn't do it if I'm not signed in. Maybe an Ars++ feature?

That makes me feel slightly worse, anyway, maybe Syonyk will buy one now that he can get the repair manual

It's at least a signed-in feature, if not a sub feature. I hadn't realized that either.

I'll ask what is probably Syonyk's first question: what does it take to get access to this stuff? Does it require some type of special verified service center account?

 

[cogwheel]

I mean that I fully support (or rather some kind of use tax cost recovery). Gas tax pays for road maintenance, and EVs don't pay that while being heavier than most cars in the same class.

$200 is an insane amount of gas for an efficient vehicle (someone calculated it). It's not the real goal, there. It's more to penalize. Gas taxes haven't even been raised for inflation for years/decades so really EV drivers are paying more than their fair share.

$200/year is right on average overall. Ohio's gas tax is 38.5 cents per gallon; Ohioans drive an average amount for Americans; Americans drive an average of about 13.5K miles per year; and the average fuel efficiency is right around 25 miles per gallon. Multiply it all out and you get the average ICV driver in Ohio paying a bit over $200/year in Ohio gas tax.

If Ohio doesn't use the gas tax for any climate change compensation programs, then since road wear is proportional to miles driven and vehicle weight (and not fuel type at all), you'd need to argue that on average BEVs weigh less than ICVs, BEVs are driven for fewer miles than ICVs, or both, to claim that the BEV road tax is punitive.

 

[cogwheel]

For hardcore fleet vehicles like USPS, you'd need more charging infrastructure

The LLV fleet travels on average about 21 miles per day, and represents around 60% of the miles traveled by USPS vehicles, so even they have enormous amounts of low-hanging fruit that won't involve a lot of infrastructure. At 2mi/kWh and 12 hours of charging, that's the equivalent of just a small block heater per vehicle, not even an EV charger proper.

 

[cogwheel]

Alright, NEC 2017 time. You should buy a copy. You can't just find them laying around the internet.

Better yet, go to the NFPA website, create a profile, and access all of their codes online for free, for real. The only drawback is the UI isn't great, but that's less of a barrier than the structure of the codes themselves. I hate reading NFPA codes, they're somehow worse than the ICC codes for layout, and I say that as a professional that needs to reference the NFPA 101 (and sometimes others) moderately frequently.

Here are the NEC 2017 Rapid Shutdown Requirements, which I believe to have been bought and paid for by Enphase based on conversations with a few people in the field.

The funny thing is that from discussions I've had with local code officials, the ICC has a far worse reputation for this than the NFPA does, which is at least part of why the NEC is the typical electrical code instead of the IEC.

 

[cogwheel]

Did LG also blame GM for the Bolt battery fires? The temporary fix (don't charge beyond 90%) is identical.

Not sure how LG could blame GM for Bolt battery fires with a straight face, considering LG makes just about everything electric on the Bolt, including the motor, charger, power electronics, control electronics, climate control, dashboard, and even infotainment system, in addition to the battery itself.

 

[cogwheel]

Because there's way more to batteries than just the hardware. GM is ultimately responsible for the battery management (as has been discussed before), which is the one and only factor in determining whether you have a good or a bad battery. They decided to go into the grey areas of the safe operating area and paid the price.

BUT WAIT there's more. Battery manufacturers also explicitly disclaim any liability for battery malfunction in the types of contracts you'd have to sign to even get batteries in these quantities. So even if LG is at fault, which I'd wager is unlikely given past experience in this field, they still wouldn't be liable.

Given the extent of what LG supplies for the Bolt, they likely supply the BMS as well. It sure looks like LG supplies the entire drivetrain as a system for the Bolt, not just a series of parts that snap together to become the drivetrain.

It's certainly possible that GM's contract with LG is written such that they can't get anything out of LG, but that doesn't change who screwed up, engineering-wise.

 

[cogwheel]

There are a couple of Renault TWIZY's locally that are capable of 60mph and have a bigger range.

Yeah, but the Ami (or AMI, or ami, Citroën really can't seem to make up their mind, both the french and international english sites have it all three ways) has a heated passenger compartment. Renault expects you to plug in electric blankets in the TWIZY if you get cold!

I'm actually curious what percentage of people can really be served by a 28mph max speed vehicle. Seems like while some people could make most of their trips within that limitation, it's likely to be a problem for at least some trips. The Ami feels more like it's intended to be rented when you go into a dense city where the max speed isn't a problem, as opposed to owned and used as primary transportation.

 

[cogwheel]

Urban speeds are incredibly low in many places around here.

I wasn't thinking about in-city trips, but more that for trips out of the city that are any significant length or need to use higher speed roads, the 28mph car wouldn't be usable.

Though I guess in the actual civilized world you have trains if you want to take a longer trip...

 

[cogwheel]

Police cruisers are absolutely the worst ICE vehicles. They usually loiter with their engines inefficiently idling simply to keep their electronics powered or to be ready in case of an emergency.

Doing some quick research, it looks like cruisers typically are outfitted to supply at least 1.2KW of power for their electronics, though that includes lights and sirens that have very short duty cycles compared to the computers, radios, and radars that are in use for large portions of shifts and which we can assume will get more efficient. I wouldn't be surprised if a BEV cruiser ends up with 33-50% of energy used for things other than trips. It still should usually fit within what can be charged via L2 chargers each day, assuming the cars aren't shared (AFAIK they usually aren't).

 

[cogwheel]

batteries won't be 1000's lbs of shit.

There's no reasonable expectation this will change massively. Even halving the battery weight for a given capacity over the next eight years is pretty unlikely and would require tech that's only in labs now, but would still be far heavier than a full gas tank (roughly an order of magnitude lighter than the equivalent range battery).

I guarantee one won't find 90 year old Teslas rolling around without some serious heroics.

That's not really saying much, though. The amount of maintenance and restoration put into a Model A to keep it driveable would certainly fit my definition of "heroics". Over that timeframe, even Tesla's crypto shouldn't be a problem.

 

[cogwheel]

That's not really saying much, though. The amount of maintenance and restoration put into a Model A to keep it driveable would certainly fit my definition of "heroics". Over that timeframe, even Tesla's crypto shouldn't be a problem.

A basic machine shop gets you most of the stuff you need for something of that era. I own one and am part of a family that owns plenty of old stuff. They're far simpler and there's far less that goes wrong in ways you can't easily solve. They're easy wrenching.

Yes, but you're comparing 90 years ago's construction to today's tools. 90 years ago, you probably wouldn't have had electricity due to your rural location, and the machinery was far more expensive. You would probably have had a small blacksmithing shop instead. Things like 3D printers and CNC routers didn't exist at all 90 years ago, but today they're quite within your reach for a home shop. Even something as basic today as a battery-powered handheld electric drill didn't exist. Why would you assume that in 80-90 years the tools available to someone like you won't be similarly advanced beyond today's?

 

[cogwheel]

Being able to be repaired in rural (and I mean rural) turn of the century America was a chief design feature of those early Fords. Its just not a design consideration on a Tesla or any modern car that's sold in 1st world countries. But you can see that in a lot of vintage machines. You can go to an airshow and still see all manner of WWII piston powered planes flying around but hardly any vintage jets. When's the last time you saw an F4 fly around in an air show? The only ones I ever see are basically rolling scrap used for target practice at great expense to the government. Certainly no private owners are tinkering away at their Vietnam-era jet in their hangar. The level of complexity of WWII era planes vs a jet built just 10 years later is staggering. You just can't expect to see anything that complex to be kept in operating condition 70-100 years after it was built that isn't a B-52 again at massive expense to the US government.

Military hardware cannot in any way be used as an analogy for consumer hardware, for many more reasons than just the major one Quarthinos mentioned, and WWII military hardware specifically adds its own unique reasons.

I seriously doubt we'll have vintage Tesla car clubs where our grandkids rebuilt Grandpa's old Model 3 just for fun. If they do it'll be with modern components and would be more accustomed to guys who put a brand new crate engine, wheels and suspension into a 1970s muscle car. You'll see plenty in museums but they'll be long stripped of anything that will make them move.

If a 90 year old Model 3 isn't interesting enough to restore to original, then a 90 year old IS300 or A4 has even less chance of being restored.

 

[cogwheel]

People here are speculating about Tesla batteries but you can watch a tear-down and repair video and see that, while they tend to be a ton of glue holding cells together that some asshole engineer never intended anyone to ever dismantle or reassemble, you can still test and disable failed cells. What’s the mystery?

No mystery. The point isn't that you can't, it's that it is expensive. Either you spend a lot on labor tearing apart that not-made-to-be-serviced battery pack and putting it together again, or you spend a lot on parts because you buy the entire pack as a single unit. Since the market is so small right now, there's no real remanufactured pack industry, and so no economies of scale to bring down the replacement pack cost for owners of older EVs.

 

[cogwheel]

But if one is scared of large vehicles I'd be more comfortable next to a CRV over something like a Sienna or an Avalon.

It's bias plain and simple. Most SUVs are CRVs, CX5s, Escapes, Ravs, etc. Not Excursions and extra long Suburbans. Shit I see more box trucks than large SUVs and those are even worse to drive around.

It's prevalence, plain and simple. It only makes sense to talk about the vehicle class that makes up over 50% of the cars on the road, and not the one that's less than 3%.

Except all of you are lumping together multiple vehicle classes and treating them as one. SUVs ≠ CUVs. SUVs are things like Suburbans. CUVs are things like CR-Vs. CUVs amount to around 40% of the market, pickups at around 15%, and SUVs around 10%.

Talking about what amounts to a taller station wagon as if it's the same thing as a monster like the Escalade does no one any favors.

Note, the article also says that SUVs with third rows are the biggest subset of SUVs which excludes all CUVs.

No it does not. It says that 3-row CUVs (which aren't really SUVs, i.e. the truck platform based monsters) are more popular than they used to be, and are displacing minivans, but in no way does it say how popular 3-row CUVs are in relation to the overall CUV segment.

Fun fact: the popular 3-row CUVs that article mentions? They're minivan relatives! The Telluride and Palisade are related to the Sedona, and the Pilot is related to the Odyssey.

 

[cogwheel]

The Explorer is an CUV and is not body on frame. Neither is the Pathfinder, Durango, Grand Cherokee, etc.

Sure, you get pedantry points, but only the very largest SUVs are body on frame, while a Durango can still top out over 5,700 in.

They are also all heavier than semi-equivalent minivans, taller, handle worse, and are more dangerous to cars and pedestrians.

Comparing like to like, a Telluride is actually on average slightly lighter than a Sedona, shorter, and the same width and height.

A Durango is, when you compare the equivalent model, only slightly heavier than a Telluride or Sedona, and about 3" narrower and taller. The really portly ones (e.g. the 5,710lb SRT Hellcat) are the very high spec ones with the huge engines (the Hellcat has a 710hp 6.2L V8), and you see the same weight results when you shove huge engines into other classes of vehicles.

About the only time there's a significant height difference is when comparing compact CUVs with their compact wagon relatives.

Handling I'll give you, though I doubt there's a large difference between modern CUVs and modern minivans.

As for more dangerous to pedestrians, got any recent data? The stuff I'm remembering is from years ago, and since then the front fascias between minivans and CUVs have converged such that the pedestrian roll-under difference between the two classes has probably also shrunk quite a bit.

The point is that when people say "SUV", the mental image is of stuff like the Suburban, when the actual mass market designs are CUVs of various sizes that are pretty close to their platform relatives (wagons, minivans) in size and weight. If you want to argue for smaller vehicles, you need to demonize the minivans as well as the CUVs.

 

[cogwheel]

Forbes columnist says Model 3 far and away the EV best seller in Western Europe.

The Model 3’s overall market leadership is surprising, given it is much pricier than the number 2 VW ID.3, and sometimes 3 times the price of the little Renault Zoe.

According to Schmidt Automotive Research, in the first 7 months of 2021 Tesla sold 66,683 Model 3s, almost twice as many as the 2nd place VW ID.3’s 35,481 and 27,881 Renault Zoes.

https://apple.news/A2f9nGDj-SvGXh4ted8T3Ag

So Europeans opting for much more expensive car because it has the highest range claims, preferring it over European marques despite the price delta compared to the second and third place models.

Does Tesla have a charger network advantage in Europe as well?

I guess traditional customers of premium Euro brands would stick with models from those brands or stay ICE.

Or do Tesla’s get rebates or tax advantages in Europe?

Ultimately you’d think models under €45k would have to carry the volume for BEV penetration to eat into Overall car sales and installed base.

That article is misleading (and mostly about claimed vs real world range, not market share). The Model 3 may be the highest selling single model, but when you look at European market share by manufacturer, the picture is very different. Looking at the last two years:

• Tesla started at 31% of the market, went into freefall for 2019-2020, but has been roughly stable at ~12% of the market for 2020-2021.
• VAG is superstar #1, doubling its market share from 13% to a Tesla-doubling 25% over the last two years. Trend-wise they've seen pretty consistent growth.
• Stellantis is superstar #2, rising from nothing to edging past Tesla at 13%. Trend-wise they've also been consistently growing.
• Hyundai is Meh #1, holding roughly steady around 12% over this time period.
• Renault/Nissan is arguably the worst off. They started as #2 at 23%, but have steadily dropped to 14% with no end in sight. They'll probably drop back behind Tesla soon if they don't come up with something quick.
• BMW is a relatively small player, but they have fallen from 9% to 6%, though the last year has been steady instead of a decline.
• Daimler has seen modest growth in their small share, and are now at 7%.

We're likely seeing the market expanding significantly, so Tesla's drop isn't entirely due to fewer people buying Teslas.

 

[cogwheel]

With new models from VW, one would think overall shipments are increasing as well as percentage of new car sales?

They really have. VAG sold 165% more BEVs worldwide in 1H2021 (~171K) than in 1H2020 (~64.5K), and Europe represents 75% of VAG's BEV sales.

 

[cogwheel]

This is the root of the misunderstanding: No, it's not! It's not about packaging mass, it's about actual active material, actual stuff that costs a lot of energy to produce. This is all due to C-rate; the gravimetric energy density of a PHEV pack is typically around 100-130Wh/kg, while the typical BEV energy density hovers around 210-270Wh/kg, almost exactly a 2:1 difference. Likewise, per e.g. the environmental stewardship reports of Nissan and Mitsubishi, the energy required to produce said batteries is about 900-1000kWh/kWh for PHEV batteries (e.g. Yuasa LEV40), against about 400kWh/kWh for a BEV (AESC NMC 100Ah). So if you include ancillary systems, producing a much smaller PHEV battery will result in just as much resource utilization and emissions through energy use as a much larger BEV battery - at about a 1:2 difference as a rule of thumb.

Again population level numbers comparing a variety of different techniques and supply chains.

Do you have any counter-data? demultiplexer's argument here (PHEV batteries are different from BEV batteries due to regenerative braking needs, and PHEV batteries have more embodied energy than BEV batteries due to the differences in chemistry and construction required by the first point) is both logically compelling and backed by the reports he references (and for this argument, population-level numbers are entirely valid), and is an entirely separate point from the charge efficiency point you've countered with data.

 

[cogwheel]

Their second hypothesis wrt batteries - Most of the more reasonable PHEVs out there are using similar type pouch cells to their BEV counterparts - example would be the Volt's cells. He handwaves that with the 'longer ranged PHEVs uses BEV style batteries' .. but that's pretty much the case, it's the same batteries.

Comparing the 2nd gen Volt to the 1st gen Bolt (same time period), the batteries are definitely different in some ways. The Volt has 96Wh cells, while the Bolt has 208Wh cells. The Volt's pack is 101Wh/kg, while the Bolt's is 138Wh/kg. At a minimum, the cells must differ either in physical specs (size, weight, shape) or in performance (voltage, current delivery, energy density); as such, they aren't interchangeable to the point you can take a Volt cell and put it in a Bolt pack. There may also be other differences (e.g. chemistry), but that isn't public so we can't make claims either way.

 

[cogwheel]

Their second hypothesis wrt batteries - Most of the more reasonable PHEVs out there are using similar type pouch cells to their BEV counterparts - example would be the Volt's cells. He handwaves that with the 'longer ranged PHEVs uses BEV style batteries' .. but that's pretty much the case, it's the same batteries.

Comparing the 2nd gen Volt to the 1st gen Bolt (same time period), the batteries are definitely different in some ways. The Volt has 96Wh cells, while the Bolt has 208Wh cells. The Volt's pack is 101Wh/kg, while the Bolt's is 138Wh/kg. At a minimum, the cells must differ either in physical specs (size, weight, shape) or in performance (voltage, current delivery, energy density); as such, they aren't interchangeable to the point you can take a Volt cell and put it in a Bolt pack. There may also be other differences (e.g. chemistry), but that isn't public so we can't make claims either way.

According to GM, 101 Wh/kg (2016 gen 2). The contemporaneous Spark had 88 Wh/kg. By contrast, the contemporary Leaf had 132 Wh/kg, albeit with passive cooling. The 2017 bolt is at 137 Wh/kg

It's hard to argue that there's a significant difference in cell density there, with the Volt pack sitting right between the BEVs, and accounting for minimum sizes for ancillary equipment.

The 2016 Spark probably used the same battery generation and chemistry as the Gen 1 Volt, which had 87Wh/kg.

The roughly 33% difference in energy density between the Gen 2 Volt and Gen 1 Bolt is significant, and suggests different chemistry choices for different applications to me. Both are stressed members, so the Bolt's improvement can't be explained by fewer structural parts. The Bolt's pack is much flatter than the Volt's, so the Bolt probably has at least a little more weight per kWh in the frame (it's a less structurally-efficient shape). The vehicles came out within a year of each other, so it isn't just generational improvements in the same chemistry family (33% is way too big for that).

Given that, I suspect that PHEVs still use battery chemistries that are, while not as power-optimized as classic hybrids, still not the same chemistry as the energy-density-optimized chemistries used in BEVs.

 

[cogwheel]

The 2017 Bolt changed chemistries so the spark is a more direct comparison.

The Bolt didn't change chemistries, the Bolt was new for 2017. As I already said (maybe you misunderstood), the Spark almost definitely used the same battery chemistry as the Gen 1 Volt. There are three apparent chemistries, the Spark/Volt G1, Volt G2, and Bolt. The Volt G2 is closer to the Spark/Volt G1 in energy density than it is to the Bolt, but was introduced much closer to the Bolt than the Spark/Volt G1.

I'm trying to find more about the more modern PHEVs (I suspect they're pretty similar/identical to BEVs) but they're mostly in the same ballpark. You can also explain some of the Wh difference in that a smaller pack has a lower amounts capacity to split the fixed mass (BMS, cooling system, etc) between.

33% isn't the same ballpark. The difference between a Volt G2 and a Bolt is far larger than between a Bolt and a Model 3 LR. Non-cell mass can't explain the difference. BMS weight is trivial. Casing/frame weight can't explain it because the Bolt's pack is a less structurally efficient shape so we'd expect it to have more mass in the frame per kWh. Cooling system could only explain it if the Volt G2's system was the exact same size and capacity as the Bolt's despite the Bolt having a pack about triple the size (which would be stupid); further, the Bolt supports charging at over twice the rate of the pre-2019 Volt G2s (0.83C vs 0.4C).

I also think that the vehicles can be a little more cell/supplier agnostic than you're presuming - see Tesla using LiFePo in some of their China vehicles.

I agree that the vehicles can be moderately cell agnostic, but to go back to what appears to be your initial claim, one of two things would need to happen to redirect production capacity from BEVs to PHEVs:

• The pack would need a pretty significant redesign. LFP cells are significantly different in size between PHEVs and BEVs (see the Volt G2 vs Bolt, the Bolt's are twice the energy capacity, so if we go with your claim of the same chemistry, then they're twice the size).
• The cell production line itself would need to be retooled for the different cell size and the likely somewhat different chemistry, to prevent pack redesign.

Both of these have engineering and time costs (which could also be expressed as embodied energy costs) that make switching over not free.

If you want to argue that instead of building BEVs at all, we should be building only PHEVs that can use the exact same chemistry as current BEVs, so that there's no production switch-over, then I think we'd be looking at PHEVs with pack sizes around 30kWh. That's probably not enough extra EVs to make a significant difference, since embodied energy per vehicle would be similar (and a bit larger than an ICEV) and production numbers would still be battery constrained instead of demand constrained.

Side note: the embodied energy of a modern ICEV is surprisingly low, roughly on par with one year's worth of fuel. EVs still overcome their higher embodied energy quickly since they're so much more efficient.

Still janky. Audi should be replacing the modules for free imo.

I think free is unlikely, but the upgrade path should be available. Tesla is charging $200 to upgrade Model S cars produced before mid-2015 that don't have a LTE modem.

 

[cogwheel]

If your frame of reference is a boda boda, calling a 250km trip a day's travel isn't going to raise any eyebrows.

Do you mean that as 250km taking a full day (i.e. speeds of 30kph being considered normal) being believable, or 250km being a believable distance to travel frequently enough to need to consider it for EV range?

For numbers, it looks like a typical boda boda trip is ~3.5km, and a typical boda boda driver covers ~150km/day (pre-COVID-times, it's dropped to ~100km/day with COVID).

Yep, for some inexplicable reason (I'm not ironic, this is a genuine thing) nobody is trying to sell... anything e-vehicle in Africa. The continent is like, actively shunned by the likes of Tesla, VW, Nissan, etc.. We've got a couple dozen inquiries from SA, Namibia, Kenya, Nigeria for our own products exactly for that reason.

Seems pretty stupid to me, especially considering how useful EVs of all kinds would be compared to gas cars there.

Possibly because car ownership is pretty low in Africa, to the point that in 2020, the Netherlands alone had over half the volume of the entirety of Africa in terms of passenger car sales (660k vs 356k).

EV motion in Africa is, like Ochre_face said, in two wheelers like Zembo, which despite involving paid battery swaps by Zembo, still end up costing less than gas (top of page 38) for something like a Bajaj Boxer 100.

 

[cogwheel]

Ecmaster76 is correct. Internal hysteresis losses in the tire rubber and belt is by far the majority of rolling resistance. The hysteresis losses are determined by things like rubber composition and tire geometry. A lower profile sidewall will will result in sharper angles in the flexing of the rubber, which takes more energy.

Air resistance is small compared to tread-ground friction, which itself is small compared to hysteresis losses, so the difference will not be significant assuming non-absurd wheel spoke shapes.

Unsprung mass is more of a handling and comfort thing. The difference in mass between a 19" wheel and tire combination and a 21" combination is very small compared to the mass of the entire vehicle, and range testing isn't done on rough roads.

 

[cogwheel]

Internal hysteresis losses in the tire rubber and belt is by far the majority of rolling resistance

That is entirely ignoring mass and diameter, and only focusing on other changes. The potential energy difference is proportional to change in mass and the square of the difference in diameter, with losses being some proportion of that.
So, looking at stock Model Y tire options:
Pirelli 21's 31.35lbs at 28.54"
Continental 18's 24.33lbs at 28.04"

3.5% from diameter and 30% from mass, ignoring wheel, rotor, and that more of the high profile mass is obviously gone to sidewall not the contact patch.

That's still an order of magnitude below the difference in range being discussed. I stand by my assessment.

 

[cogwheel]

You can buy EV crate engines now. Both EV West and Electric GT sell them, and they are drop in crate motors.

Have you actually looked at what those two actually offer? EV West has "drop-in" kits for an extremely short list of cars that pretty much fall into line with what ScifiGeek meant by "heavy nostalgia project", and they don't include the battery system (so not really drop-in for the entire conversion). Electric GT at least has full drop-in conversion kits, but they start at $49K (the $33K 120hp eGT173 kit looks like a bespoke conversion kit instead of drop-in), and their car lists lean very heavily towards that same "heavy nostalgia project" but with different cars (1960 muscle and offroad instead of 1960s Porsche/VW).

 

[cogwheel]

Any legacy manufacturers banking on fossil vehicles still being 65+% of the market in 2030 are going to be screwed.

There's two different things here, though. There's what the manufacturers are designing, and what people are buying. A forward-looking manufacturer could put most of their design resources behind BEVs (so most of the new models are BEVs), but still sell 65+% fossil-fueled vehicles in 2030 due to supply constraints (batteries) and the related price constraints. That said, I don't expect any smart manufacturer would expect fossil-fueled vehicles to stay 65+% even if in 2030 they are still at that point.

To put some numbers on it, 2021 is expected (based on what sold in 1H2021, so not some crusty old prediction here) to be around 9% of auto sales as plug-in vehicles, including PHEVs. Getting 9% up to 36+% in eight years is believable but not clearly obvious.