The Electric Car Thread

[redleader]

I would rather go full-ebike after driving a Leaf.

ahahaha

Regarding range extenders, I'm not so sure. From my point of view I already have a great range extender: my other car. I don't need another. As long as EVs are expensive, they're going to primarily appeal to people who live in multiple car households. That won't be true eventually, but short term, I think it will be given the economics.

 

[redleader]

I would rather go full-ebike after driving a Leaf.

ahahaha

Regarding range extenders, I'm not so sure. From my point of view I already have a great range extender: my other car. I don't need another. As long as EVs are expensive, they're going to primarily appeal to people who live in multiple car households. That won't be true eventually, but short term, I think it will be given the economics.

Problem is that current cars with range extenders aren't that attractive.

That is actually the point I was making. Range extenders aren't attractive if you have a second car that runs off of gasoline because you are unlikely to ever need two unlimited range vehicles at the same time.

 

[redleader]

So buy a $50k car to be limited to trips of about 30 miles each way?

What fraction of people buying a $50k car only own one vehicle? If the answer isn't relatively close to one, there isn't much of a market for people who will care.

 

[redleader]

When she accelerated out of one intersection after the light turned green, I saw bluish smoke shoot out from around the rear bumper, all the way across. Or where the rear bumper would be, not sure if it had a traditional bumper.

What was that, batteries overheating?

Burning rubber probably.

 

[redleader]

That doesn't sound right.

There are a lot more cars costing around $20k or less on the road than there are cars costing $40k or more.

FWIW, that isn't how an average is calculated. The average selling price is just the sum of all the money paid divided by the number sold. If the average were 33k, you could have way more under 20k cars sold than over 40k sold so long as at least some people bought really expensive cars. Each 100k sports car or tesla for instance will cancel out five 20k cheap cars for instance.

You're probably thinking of something more like the median selling price.

 

[redleader]

those tesla dashboards are awful and i won't go near it even if the reliability of the car were a better known quantity (i need 10-15 years of data at least for the car itself and batteries so i won't be going ev for a long time). but damn that dash. so silly. just so so bad.

10 year data on Roadster batteries were quite encouraging, as were the 200k+ mile Model S packs.

that's good to hear.

the more companies to get this data/release it the better. i don't want a tesla but a 300 mile electric car sounds nice in theory.

If I were looking to get 10-15 years out of a Tesla, I'd be much more concerned with the body than the batteries. Tesla is very, very good at making reliable batteries and motors. It is the boring mechanical parts that are a bigger challenge for them. Then again, things are improving so fast, if I was buying for 15 years, I'd lease for a couple more years and then buy later when my money would go a lot further.

 

[redleader]

It's not clear how much of those purchases represents investment in new capacity, but the headline numbers look good. Will probably encourage others to start seriously investing in capacity, which will accelerate capacity growth and probably technology development.

 

[redleader]

So if the ASP of new cars is closer to $20k or under it,

viewtopic.php?p=34932751#p34932751

It has been less than 3 months since we went over why this is not true.

 

[redleader]

Paying per mile will be the normal I guess.

It is the old normal too, fuel taxes were always meant to charge people in proportion to their use of the road network. EVs will just force governments to be more direct in how they assess usage.

 

[redleader]

Syonyk (and others) may be particularly interested in this dive into the battery/BMS on the Model 3: http://evtv.me/2018/05/tesla-model-3-gone-battshit/

I did not know they had gone to SiC FETs for the Model 3. That is great, can't wait to see that technology take off.

 

[redleader]

Meh, with the advent of CoolMOS, SiC has only a very limited application niche where it outcompetes traditional silicon. It'll always stay a technology for high voltage, high speed switching.

I'm not an expert in high voltage power electronics, but I don't think SiC and silicon superjunction transistors even compete. The alternative silicon transistor to SiC for an EV is probably an IGBT. SJs are mostly used at lower voltages (couple hundred volts) where IGBTs aren't needed.

 

[redleader]

We went from 7 to 8 billion in under a decade.

Pretty sure you mean from 6 to 7 billion. The world population won't hit 8 billion until sometime in the 2020s.

I expect 9 billion within five years, and 10 billion before 2030.

Is your expectation based on anything? The UN projects that the world population will be 8.6 billion in 2030, and they have historically tended to over-estimate.

FWIW, I don't think overall population much matters. Most of the oil in the world is not cheap to extract, so only the rich world can pay for it. As long as the population of the developed world is flat or falling, the amount that can be spent on oil is flat or falling. The world may end up with more poor people in central Africa, but they're not going to pay to extract $50+ per barrel of oil, so they are not viable customers for oil companies.

 

[redleader]

we can create as much renewable clean electricity we want

What? OK, I'll call my local utility and tell them to switch on all the solar panels and wind generators they have sitting around on idle. Renewable energy on the US grid is still in limited supply. IMO, emphasis and incentives should presently be on cleaning up the grid, producing more electricity from renewables, followed by electrification of transportation and other dirty sectors.

One obvious way to increase renewable capacity is to increase total capacity, since new capacity is much heavier on renewables than capacity installed in decades past. Electrification of transportation requires more capacity, which means it drives adoption of solar/wind. Plus the falling price of batteries for EVs is increasing the ability of renewables to substitute for gas.

I'll repeat what I said, not as a criticism, but simply as a fact. An electric car produces not one watt of green energy.

Calling that a fact is a stretch. In reality, plenty of green energy was generated specifically because EVs made it economical to produce.

Plus it's the wrong way to think about the problem. You need to consider the big picture.

 

[redleader]

32% coal here
Decent nuclear though.
Still, it’ll get cleaner over time.

If you're bothered by that enough to post about it, why don't you opt in and buy from a renewable supplier? Google says that should be available in the DC area.

 

[redleader]

Yeah you also have to figure the US is absolutely massive. Boston to San Diego (Roughly corner to corner) is like 3000 miles. Even if you did have a ton of chargers (which we don't), they are unlikely dense enough to get low range EVs to the next one.

This is one area where Tesla is winning hard, just due to the large batteries.

Plenty of charging in the SF Bay Area, though.

Yeah, there are plenty of chargers in Urban environments, but outside of cities? Good luck.

This is why a solar panel system for cars would be a good idea. I get that it wouldn't give you much range...but it could theoretically prevent problems like dead batteries after airport storage (assuming parked outside) and for city-dwellers without garages it could give some range. Since the average car is parked for the majority of its life.

This is about as realistic as suggesting that they put a peddle option so that you could self power your car like a bike. You're not considering the relative scale of the energy required vs what would be available.

 

[redleader]

I apologize for spamming the thread, but I was surprised by this tidbit in the Tesla Q2 2018 vehicle production and deliveries press release:

The remaining net Model 3 reservations count at the end of Q2 still stood at roughly 420,000

I assume they added this to quash rumors that people were withdrawing reservations at a high rate, but I'm still kind of shocked it's over 400,000. At 5000 average a week (which will rise, I know), that's still a year and a half before they're through the backlog. I also would have thought the long wait times would have had more downward pressure on reservations.

They're probably gaining new reservations as the cars get out there and the early adopters show them off. Probably a lot of people out there who ordinarily wouldn't think of getting an EV.

 

[redleader]

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.

Well, there could potentially be massive cost reductions in future battery technologies, whereas short of 3D metal printing being able to produce engines, I don't think there's any cost reductions envisioned for ICE drivetrain production.

FYI 3D printing is and always will be insanely expensive compared to conventional manufacturing. The advantage of 3D printing is that you can make parts that can't be fabricated using conventional methods like casting. For stuff like engines that we already know how to manufacture, you would never use 3D printing.

You see 3D printing used to make ultra high cost stuff like jet engines because the cost is basically irrelevant and the added flexibility let's you make things that would otherwise not be manufacturable.

 

[redleader]

The global cobalt mining doesn't handle the scales you're talking about, and while it will ramp, it's going to take a long while to get there (and you still have issues with the DRC sitting on half the world's cobalt reserves).

Does that matter? There's going to be pessimistically 2kg of cobalt in a 2030s car battery, and probably a lot less, maybe none at all. Today's prices would make that < $150. Even with the most pessimistic assumptions (no progress in reducing cobalt use, no increase in cell capacity in the coming decades), even a 200 or 300% increase in price doesn't make much difference in the overall cost of the pack because the material costs are such a small fraction of the production costs.

 

[redleader]

But battery production, if scaled to the point that people are discussing (orders of magnitude more), starts to basically dominate global cobalt demand, and that tends to drive prices up quite a bit.

I realize supply impacts prices, but does that actually matter with respect to the point you're making? Even given pessimistic assumptions I think the answer is that no it does not.

 

[redleader]

Article about wave of EVs com8mg from luxury and prestige marques over the next year.

Tesla sales may now be flagging in Europe without govt. incentives, as well as the oncoming competition.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... =applenews

No supercharger network in Europe?

"August 11, 2018, 12:05 AM EDT Updated on August 12, 2018, 1:42 PM EDT"

I'm guessing someone fact checked that afterwards. What did they change?

 

[redleader]

He wants to punish the shorts so much that he’d deal with the devil?

Why not? Seems like a great use of oil money if he can get it on favorable terms.

By the way, in the interest of not mixing metaphors, remember that in Faust's bargain with the devil, he is actually redeemed by subverting evil to do good deeds.

 

[redleader]

Model X isn't that bad. $75k for the base model, and the base model also has AWD. That's only $5k more than the Model S, and is well worth it IMO because of the better visibility.

Saw a gas station with a row of Tesla chargers. Actually annoyed me because they are in a good spot. No Tesla's were there, and a few regular cars were. They really need to put Tesla chargers towards the back of the lot or in the worst parking spots in the lot so that people don't get irritated, especially when gas prices go higher.

There is a practical concern. They can't be taking up prime real estate on the lot because they're likely to be there a long time charging, relatively speaking. Close-in spaces need to be reserved for handicapped and the quick in-out business.

It's really more about wealth inequality and being cognizant of how that will be perceived.

I don't think you understand how marketing of luxury cars works.

 

[redleader]

I don't think you understand how marketing of luxury cars works.

I believe the point is that "good parking spots for people who buy expensive luxury cars" isn't a great idea.

For Telsa or for people who aren't buying Tesla cars? I suspect that Tesla is trying very hard to get as many chargers into as many highly visible locations as possible.

 

[redleader]

I don't think that's a great idea for many businesses, though, as pointed out, if you don't care about anyone but Tesla owners, have fun.

It is probably a very good deal for a gas station, since a Tesla owner won't waste the stations time buying zero margin gasoline, and can't leave without staying at the store for a long time.

I'm probably a bad person to read the feel for that, though.

I don't think this is about your feelings, but rather understanding what the goals of businesses are and why they make the choices they do. Tesla wants to convince people to pay more than they otherwise would for a car, and gas stations want to convince you to buy something other than gasoline. Tesla can do this by putting a network of chargers front and center where people who don't have EVs yet go, and gas stations can do this by bringing in EV owners. The idea that wealth inequality is a problem for Tesla is silly. They depend on it.

I don't think you understand how class resentment works.

At least I understand that it sells cars. Do you?

 

[redleader]

If you bother reading the post, I'm saying that come the next economic downturn and gas hitting $4-$5 a gallon, having EV charging spots in prime parking areas will inspire vandalism and sabatage.

I did read your post and while maybe you did mean to say that, you actually mentioned neither of those things, and instead made a different argument which is the one I was addressing.

 

[redleader]

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 you see numbers quoted near zero pennies/gal, it's going to be net profit/gal which is includes additional fixed costs beyond their cost of fuel. That's not wrong, it's just not a different measure.

Thanks, I'd heard otherwise, but that looks like a great source.

Still, if 20 cents per gallon represents booming margins, they're probably making about as much from gas as they are from soda in the long term

 

[redleader]

digging through it, it looks like I was thinking of "battery saver" which actually limits performance, not charging. I could have sworn I'd seen a charging profile option...but I guess I was mistaken.

You can certainly hack an android phone to do that, but its not a stock feature, and probably not worthwhile. FWIW, I changed my Nexus 5 battery out for a new one (with relatively recent manufacture date) after 4 years and surprisingly the new one had essentially indistinguishable capacity to the old one. I think you probably have a more bimodal failure curve, with some batteries failing early and being replaced under warranty, and other batteries lasting out the full 1500-2000 partial cycle lifetime, which is longer than most people can keep a phone with breaking the screen or dropping it in the toilet. Which makes the analogy to cars a little off, since a car really is expected to last long enough that some parts will wear out from normal use and need repair.

 

[redleader]

Also, Washington Post just had an article on recycling electronics and how hard it is to get the batteries out without them catching fire: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technolo ... atch-fire/

They... pretty much said the same things I just finished saying.

Apple and many other manufacturers don’t provide instructions or analysis software to recyclers like Cascade. Handling this stuff is tricky even for its makers: Apple stores in Switzerland, Spain and the Netherlands have all experienced battery fires in 2018.

That does seem like a pretty dumb situation. Seems like it could be fixed by requiring the manufacturer to assume responsibility for recycling or at least disarming their own products. Would certainly incentivize them to come up with less idiotic designs.

 

[redleader]

Changing the subject slightly, some interesting developments in battery packs.

Lion AG has released a video of a 100kWh battery back squeezed into a BMW i3. The video contains some interesting details of how they manage it. Wireless comms, sophisticated cooling etc.
https://electrek.co/2018/09/07/bmw-i3-1 ... ion-smart/

Then Aston Martin is releasing a EV version of the Rapide, with a claimed 65kWh battery pack, which is pretty impressive for an electric powertrain shoehorned into an ICE.
https://electrek.co/2018/09/12/aston-ma ... tem-range/

Looks like there's still plenty of room for optimisation at the pack level. I'm particularly interested in the Lion technology, since it looks like it could potentially be a good fit for EV conversions (assuming cost is no object of course). There are quite a few small firms around the world doing EV conversions commercially, and I wonder if this tech would be of interest to that sector.

There's a pretty good article about investment in solid state batteries. Second half of the article talks about where solid state battery investment has been taking place in general

Yeah, saw that one. Still likely to be a few years before they're commercially viable, AFAICT

The more optimistic forecasts for solid state batteries are in the mid 2020s. The technology is pretty far from commercialization, if it is even commercially viable.

 

[redleader]

Thats a rather unpleasant response and totally unjustified. The article states the interior refresh for Q3 2019.

The mistake was mine as I thought it had already happened, not having a local tesla store or being in model s's ever other day etc.

if this place had an ignore list you'd be on it now.

oh I can mark you as foe, nice work ars!

No, Fred *is* terrible. http://www.thedrive.com/tech/21838/the- ... with-tesla

Am i missing something or is that article really dumb? The guy who founded 9to5google and 9to5mac created another fan rumor site that also hires people with limited technical qualifications to preach to the choir. I kept reading hoping to get to the point where he said something that wasn't completely obvious to anyone who has been on the internet before, but it just columinates with:

In Lambert and Weintraub’s mind, Electrek’s readers understand the site’s biases and just don’t care.

Yes, people self selecting on an EV fan site might be ok with the site being a fan site. I can't tell if that guy is so naive that he is planning an exposé blowing the lid off of Macworld's enthusiasm for Apple products or if he just has some ax to grind in the most ridiculous way possible.

 

[redleader]

Finally, it is worth noting that the blogger who fabricated this issue, which then caused negative and incorrect news to be written about Tesla by reputable institutions, is Edward Niedermeyer. This is the same gentle soul who previously wrote a blog titled “Tesla Death Watch,” which starting on May 19, 2008 was counting the days until Tesla’s death.

lol

When your (anti) fan site fails ... better write an embarrassing article whining about people who do the same thing but successfully.

 

[redleader]

Huh, that's interesting. It's not supposed to do that.

They changed it a couple years back. Definitely used to be the way you're thinking.

 

[redleader]

The ability to charge at home without having to go to a gas station is probably the main selling point for me. Refilling a vehicle makes sense to the kind of people who thought using AA batteries on an MP3 player was a plus.

 

[redleader]

The ability to charge at home without having to go to a gas station is probably the main selling point for me. Refilling a vehicle makes sense to the kind of people who thought using AA batteries on an MP3 player was a plus.

Why wouldn't it be, as long as you could use rechargeable ones? )

Same reason gas is a pain in the ass. You have to remember to do it, whereas lithium ion could charge automatically while you sync.

Proprietary rechargeable batteries on portable gear is a huge annoyance IMO (EVs not included

That's what everyone said back in 2001, but every device that came on the market with AAs flopped because in practice no one wanted to deal with the hassle once they realized they didn't have to.

EVs are going to benefit from something similar.

 

[redleader]

The ability to charge at home without having to go to a gas station is probably the main selling point for me. Refilling a vehicle makes sense to the kind of people who thought using AA batteries on an MP3 player was a plus.

Why wouldn't it be, as long as you could use rechargeable ones? )

Same reason gas is a pain in the ass. You have to remember to do it, whereas lithium ion could charge automatically while you sync.

No PITA necessary.

It was absolutely necessary with respect to the thing we are discussing. No one ever made an MP3 player with the built in AA charger circuit. It wasn't practical in the form factor. Are you even reading the post you are replying to? Because it sounds like you are not.

That's what everyone said back in 2001, but every device that came on the market with AAs flopped because in practice no one wanted to deal with the hassle once they realized they didn't have to.

What hassle?

For the third and final time, removing the batteries and then charging them, which was required to use these devices. Getting back to the analogy to EVs, which you seem to be trying not to address, people care about convenience. A lot. Having a car that is more convenient is a big selling point to a lot of people, and in particular, people with a lot of money who tend to have less time. You can make the argument that consumes will put up with hassle and wasted time for more functionality, but everyone who has made that bet in consumer electronics has lost. I doubt this time will be any different.

(full rant mode ON):

Lounge would be a better place to complain about OT things no one cares about.

 

[redleader]

If you're specing out a garage circuit for an EV charger, whats the recommended spec? 240v/50A?

 

[redleader]

It's not that hard to make a device that automatically connects to a car when it's parked, but does anyone really want to pay what that would cost to save 10 seconds a few times a week plugging in a car? The market for something like that would be miniscule.

 

[redleader]

Inductive charging on an EV is especially strange since if you really want to have automatic charging, and you're willing to mount something under the underside, you could just have actual terminals and charge using spring-loaded contacts like a Roomba. Of all the challenges to the idea, the couple inches of air gap are the least of them.

 

[redleader]

Oh so this is a hard rating on any circuit in the US, regardless of how it's been laid? Interesting, what's the point of circuit and breaker ratings then? Is this clearly marked on every circuit and outlet?

I think it is less a rating on the circuit than the circuit breaker. A typical residential 20A breaker is supposed to trip if there is a sustained load of about 20A for a long period, or in practice, probably a little more. 240V/30A residential work the same way. Therefore you are supposed to limit sustained loads to 80% of that max, even if the plug and wiring can handle it to avoid tripping the breaker.

 

[redleader]

"The gigafactory in Nevada produces more lithium ion than the rest of the world combined." says Elon on the livestream. How are the other companies going to compete? Where are they going to source their batteries? This is just one fact I mention to people who are skeptical about Tesla. I think I also read somewhere years ago that Tesla has the lithium sourcing contracts all locked up for years.

I shall reiterate my assertion that Tesla is a battery company that happens to also make cars. This is an exaggeration, but only slight.

Bragging about cornering a market in a commodity essential to a whole industry is looking for antitrust action.

The commodity you are describing is automotive battery packs. The market in question would therefore be the market for OEM battery packs. Does Tesla even participate in that market to any meaningful degree? I don't think they do? Participation in a market is a prerequisite to monopolizing it.

I think this is probably the wrong way to look at it. Usually antitrust actions look at the effect on market prices as a proxy for anticompetitive behavior. Since they aren't supplying battery packs, but rather finished cars, antitrust action would probably look at the extent to which they dominate the market for cars or EVs (e.g. the market they are participating in). If they ever got to the point where they had cornered the market for cars, I'm sure antitrust action would be a possibility, but Tesla has a few decades of growth ahead of them before that is going to be a realistic possibility. In the meantime I don't actually think it matters if they make 50, 90 or 99% of the world's batteries for integration into other products. So long as they have negligible pricing power in the markets they sell to its hard to see exactly what the antitrust complaint would be.