Electric Vehicles - pros and cons, but mainly battery life
- Thread starter Gordon Gekko
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lledlledlled
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In fairness, I don't think demonstrating its difficulties in competing against a traditional car is an effective way to plug.
It certainly would have been a more interesting experiment, had they used a Kona or eNero. The ranges these batteries are capable of really is the game changer many people have been waiting for.
It completely removes range anxiety for most drivers, assuming you have a charger at home or in work.
It's giving their brand name the free air time I was pointing out, the fact that there weren't convenient charge points is hardly any car manufacturers fault, nor is the fact that some charge points didn't work. The whole exercise in my humble opinion shows quite convincingly how unready this country is for the changeover. It's being pushed in the media, the goverment are taking brownie points for the exercise of promoting it, the public are being conned into believing the diesel is finished. I'LL TELL YOU THIS, WHEN PUSH COMES TO SHOVE AND ANY GOVERMENT START TRYING TO FRIGHTEN FARMERS AND OTHERS WHO NEED DIESELS WE'LL SOON FIND OUT WHO THE BOSS IS. It won't be electric cars, electric jeeps, or electric lorries. The EV will be nice and popular with princes and princesses, tree huggers and similar, but for people who need to do some work and get from A to B without having to spend half an hour to an hour filling up it'll never catch on. Might take a while for that to sink in so I guess the media will continue pressing for the €10 grand battery dinkies until the penny drops.
lledlledlled
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I don't think it's about showing who the boss is.
Yes, farmers will probably need diesel for a long time to come. Maybe the expected increases in taxation of diesel won't apply to agricultural diesel.
It strikes me how emotionally charged this topic is for some people. Is it not likely that EVs will be extremely suitable for many people (most people live in cities, and this won't change) , whilst remaining very unsuitable for a significant group of other drivers?
I wouldn't agree that EVs are being overly pushed by media or promoted by government. In fact I don't think there's half enough done to demonstrate to people that affordable long range EVs are here now. A lot of drivers are completely unaware of this, yet completely disregard the option of buying an EV due to range anxiety.
I scanned this thread looking to spot the obvious deficiencies in the EV paradigm the EV stake-holders, city-dwellers and EV fan-boys are trying to sell us and I don't see all of them. I wonder why? Here are a few that seem to have been missed:
Connectors & Stuff:
Think you had problems with the plethora of USB (and other) connectors for your laptop/phone/printer/music-player/tablet? Welcome to the EV Plug-Type wars. If you include "our" 13-amp 3-pin granny-plug mentioned above, there are at least *seven* different connectors used by car-makers and charger-makers right now. So not all public charging facilities will suit all EVs as there is no such thing as the universal connector.
Think that's bad? A problem reported in the UK which has led to EV early-adopters (this year) going back to ICEs is the incompatibility of firmware between the car and the public charger. They've discovered that even if the number of pins and the arrangement of them in the plug looks good, out of sync firmware revisions means no elections will flow from source to the destination battery.
Going on your holliers "out foreign" with your car on a ferry? Will you be able to top up your EV on your trip and will you have the right connector and the proper firmware? Who knows but I know a German filling station can fill my Toyota with diesel just like the two in the village here at home and the next nearest a mere 2 km out the road. And don't forget to pack adapters for your 3-pin granny lead, just in case.
Lithium & Cobalt:
This is the stinking woolly mammoth in the room. Both of these elements are critical to the manufacture of batteries for EVs, mobile phones, laptops, etc. The principal sources are in the Congo where up to 100,000 miners, a lot of them children, meet 60% of the world's cobalt demands. There is evidence of death and injury to miners who operate using only hand-tools in harsh conditions and who live hand-to-mouth, most of them in grinding poverty with serious health complications from their work.
Most of the lithium on Earth is in South America, specifically in the Andes Mountains that run through Chile, Argentina and Bolivia., There are also deposits in China and the U.S., some of which are mined from rock, but in other jurisdictions, the vast majority of lithium is produced by pumping brine from depth and letting the water evaporate in the sunshine. None of this mining activity is powered by green electricity or green fuels of course; it requires the usual trains, planes, ships and trucks using fossil fuels to move raw materials, lithium carbonate, to be transported to processing plants to produce lithium, which is then shipped to battery manufacturers who in turn ship to car-makers, who in turn ship their cars to markets worldwide.
While the mining, moving and production of lithium and cobalt have huge environmental and human costs associated with them, the biggest cost is in the production of copper and aluminium which are also needed to produce the batteries for EVs. And all the costs are new costs with the advent of EVs and the volumes of these elements needed to support battery production.
The mad assumption also seems to be that unlike fossil fuels, there will be enough supplies of the elements, like going forward, as an elderly millennial like Leo might say.
Cost of EVs, even 2nd-hand ones.
If like me, you exist at the bottom of the motoring market, the cost of EVs will effectively end our motoring careers. For me, even the cost of replacement batteries for an old EV is close to the cost of a new-to-me car. €5,000 would see me well kitted-out with a close-to-death ICE-powered car (diesel for preference) like my current ex-UK Toyota Avensis hatch. The cost issue, plus all the others will see me off the road unless I can persuade my darling daughter to do me a deal on her Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV, her current Mammy-mobile, when she has no further use for it, e.g. 23 year's free babby minding.
Where will all the charging stations come from and who will pay?
In the UK a 4-bay high-power EV filling station will cost £400,000 to build and outfit, excluding the cost of the site which of course is location dependent, and also excluding the interconnect, sub-station and cabling costs to get it on their national grid. Based on our experiences with current capital projects, I estimate it'll take twice as long to build, cost three times as much and probably won't work as designed and spec’d. Let's say €1.36 m per 4-bay. How many will we need to meet Leo's target of a million EVs by whatever date he plucked out of thin air? Does anyone know? How much will it cost? Norway is currently investing the equivalent of €1.06 bn annually to create the infrastructure for EVs - about 440,000 vehicles and 11,000 public charging points to the end of last year. Despite this investment, mare than 60% of Norwegian EV drivers report having to queue for fuel at peak-times, petrol crises all over again, again.
Those are just a few, but I think that'll do from me, as a starter. Mind you I believe the issues around EVs need a forum of their own with individual threads for the topics raised so far. Mods?
Sources, The Washington Post, The Examiner, The Telegraph, The Sunday Times, BBC TV and many, many more.
Connectors & Stuff:
Think you had problems with the plethora of USB (and other) connectors for your laptop/phone/printer/music-player/tablet? Welcome to the EV Plug-Type wars. If you include "our" 13-amp 3-pin granny-plug mentioned above, there are at least *seven* different connectors used by car-makers and charger-makers right now. So not all public charging facilities will suit all EVs as there is no such thing as the universal connector.
Think that's bad? A problem reported in the UK which has led to EV early-adopters (this year) going back to ICEs is the incompatibility of firmware between the car and the public charger. They've discovered that even if the number of pins and the arrangement of them in the plug looks good, out of sync firmware revisions means no elections will flow from source to the destination battery.
Going on your holliers "out foreign" with your car on a ferry? Will you be able to top up your EV on your trip and will you have the right connector and the proper firmware? Who knows but I know a German filling station can fill my Toyota with diesel just like the two in the village here at home and the next nearest a mere 2 km out the road. And don't forget to pack adapters for your 3-pin granny lead, just in case.
Lithium & Cobalt:
This is the stinking woolly mammoth in the room. Both of these elements are critical to the manufacture of batteries for EVs, mobile phones, laptops, etc. The principal sources are in the Congo where up to 100,000 miners, a lot of them children, meet 60% of the world's cobalt demands. There is evidence of death and injury to miners who operate using only hand-tools in harsh conditions and who live hand-to-mouth, most of them in grinding poverty with serious health complications from their work.
Most of the lithium on Earth is in South America, specifically in the Andes Mountains that run through Chile, Argentina and Bolivia., There are also deposits in China and the U.S., some of which are mined from rock, but in other jurisdictions, the vast majority of lithium is produced by pumping brine from depth and letting the water evaporate in the sunshine. None of this mining activity is powered by green electricity or green fuels of course; it requires the usual trains, planes, ships and trucks using fossil fuels to move raw materials, lithium carbonate, to be transported to processing plants to produce lithium, which is then shipped to battery manufacturers who in turn ship to car-makers, who in turn ship their cars to markets worldwide.
While the mining, moving and production of lithium and cobalt have huge environmental and human costs associated with them, the biggest cost is in the production of copper and aluminium which are also needed to produce the batteries for EVs. And all the costs are new costs with the advent of EVs and the volumes of these elements needed to support battery production.
The mad assumption also seems to be that unlike fossil fuels, there will be enough supplies of the elements, like going forward, as an elderly millennial like Leo might say.
Cost of EVs, even 2nd-hand ones.
If like me, you exist at the bottom of the motoring market, the cost of EVs will effectively end our motoring careers. For me, even the cost of replacement batteries for an old EV is close to the cost of a new-to-me car. €5,000 would see me well kitted-out with a close-to-death ICE-powered car (diesel for preference) like my current ex-UK Toyota Avensis hatch. The cost issue, plus all the others will see me off the road unless I can persuade my darling daughter to do me a deal on her Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV, her current Mammy-mobile, when she has no further use for it, e.g. 23 year's free babby minding.
Where will all the charging stations come from and who will pay?
In the UK a 4-bay high-power EV filling station will cost £400,000 to build and outfit, excluding the cost of the site which of course is location dependent, and also excluding the interconnect, sub-station and cabling costs to get it on their national grid. Based on our experiences with current capital projects, I estimate it'll take twice as long to build, cost three times as much and probably won't work as designed and spec’d. Let's say €1.36 m per 4-bay. How many will we need to meet Leo's target of a million EVs by whatever date he plucked out of thin air? Does anyone know? How much will it cost? Norway is currently investing the equivalent of €1.06 bn annually to create the infrastructure for EVs - about 440,000 vehicles and 11,000 public charging points to the end of last year. Despite this investment, mare than 60% of Norwegian EV drivers report having to queue for fuel at peak-times, petrol crises all over again, again.
Those are just a few, but I think that'll do from me, as a starter. Mind you I believe the issues around EVs need a forum of their own with individual threads for the topics raised so far. Mods?
Sources, The Washington Post, The Examiner, The Telegraph, The Sunday Times, BBC TV and many, many more.
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The EU standard connector is CCS, all new EVs except the Leaf come with it, all charging stations in Ireland have it, vast majority across Europe also. This was an issue a few years ago, it is sorted now.
The extraction of oil has caused and continues to cause many hundreds of thousands of deaths across the world. While we need to aspire to no deaths at all, there’s a fair distance between the numbers killed in mines vs conflicts over oil. If you add in the pre-mature deaths being caused by then burning those fossil fuels (estimated at 350,000 per year in the EU alone!) the balance sheet of human life is massively stacked in-favour of the electrification of transport.
The requirement for Cobalt is also being reduced constantly and will eventually be solved.
There are countless papers comparing the life cycle emissions of EVs vs ICE cars, any not funded by the Oil&Gas industry confirm that EVs are better on virtually every metric.
Yes right now nobody is catering to the lower end of the car market, this is a perfectly normal technology evolution cycle, cheaper EVs will come.
Firstly it’s worth saying that for driveway owners 95% of charging will be done at home, no more standing in the wind pumping dirty diesel into your car, instead it will be full and pre-heated every morning. As for other use cases, the likes of Ionity (VW/Merc/BMW JV) are rolling out thousands of chargers across Europe to support their car sales and will continue to do so. You’ll find them in Gorey, Cashel, Kill, Gormanston etc already. ESB also expanding their network this year. But honestly I think the market will respond to this challenge, sure why wouldn’t it, thousands of customers passing your charging station daily and hanging around your shop for half an hour needing sustenance.
For me the only things holding EVs back in Ireland are price and availability, both will be solved with time and then we can stop living in highly polluted cities
Seems as we're doing sources, here are a handful relevant to the points above:
Irish Times: the State’s overall air quality fell short of the WHO guidelines
Reuters: U.N. warns of millions of premature deaths by 2050 due to environmental damage
Irish Times: estimate suggests 350,000/annum deaths in EU attributed to air pollution from burning fossil fuels
Guardian: Greenspan admits Iraq was about oil, as deaths put at 1.2m
Financial Times: Most carmakers are moving towards batteries that use more nickel and as much as 75 per cent less cobalt
MIT UCS: How Electric Cars Beat Gasoline Cars on Lifetime Global Warming Emissions
Financial Times: miners can meet the challenge given that lithium is abundant in the earth’s crust
And many many more
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At first glance, this looks like a decent family car choice on the nissan.co.uk website:- NEW 40KWH NISSAN E-NV200 COMBI BATTERY UPGRADE, the words NEW and UPGRADE given prominence in the ad. One wonders what the current state-of-the-art is.
Prodding around below the headline reveals the following:
My car will available to drive 24/7 at the turn of a key - an EV will need to stay attached via the umbilical cord for some considerable time and if disturbed mid-charge will have an awkwardly unpredictable range depending on the out-door temperatures and the time of day, All mileages for EVs given by manufacturers assume moderate outdoor temperatures and no accessory use. All batteries re-charge more slowly and operate less efficiently in low temperatures.
Practicality, or downright uselessness outside cities if you prefer, is the biggest stumbling block for the widespread uptake of EVs, followed closely by cost, ridiculously low ranges, a lack of charging infrastructure and standardisation.
EDIT: ZapMap and PlugShare, two EV route-planning apps gave me the real bad news about Nissan's NEW UPGRADED 40KWH NISSAN E-NV200 COMBI:- the real-world range of this car is between 80-85 miles, only 45% to 68% of what Nissan claims in their ads. They must be using Leo's Strategic Communications Unit.
Prodding around below the headline reveals the following:
- Range, mixed motoring 124 miles
- Range, city motoring: 187 miles in Econo mode, with no accessories running (A/C, heater, audio, wipers, headlights (or sidelights or DRLs), phone charger, etc)
- from 20% up to 80% charge takes "from" 40 minutes to 60 minutes on a so-called rapid-charger. Not only time for a leisurely coffee, but a round of pitch-and-putt and a massage afterwards while your new-improved Nissan 2020 EV charges
- on a wall-box installed at home that'll take 7 hours and 30 minutes (drive-way charging)
- on a 13-amp plug at home, that'll take 21 hours and 30 minutes
My car will available to drive 24/7 at the turn of a key - an EV will need to stay attached via the umbilical cord for some considerable time and if disturbed mid-charge will have an awkwardly unpredictable range depending on the out-door temperatures and the time of day, All mileages for EVs given by manufacturers assume moderate outdoor temperatures and no accessory use. All batteries re-charge more slowly and operate less efficiently in low temperatures.
Practicality, or downright uselessness outside cities if you prefer, is the biggest stumbling block for the widespread uptake of EVs, followed closely by cost, ridiculously low ranges, a lack of charging infrastructure and standardisation.
EDIT: ZapMap and PlugShare, two EV route-planning apps gave me the real bad news about Nissan's NEW UPGRADED 40KWH NISSAN E-NV200 COMBI:- the real-world range of this car is between 80-85 miles, only 45% to 68% of what Nissan claims in their ads. They must be using Leo's Strategic Communications Unit.
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lledlledlled
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The range offered by the Hyundai Kona Electric would appear to solve most of the issues you have with EVs.
Yes, they take longer to charge than filling up your filthy 2L Avensis. It's simply a matter of getting used to plugging the car in when you arrive home in the evening, or plugging it in for most/all of your working day when you arrive at work.
Hyundai Kona Electric is one of those mini-SUV cars, more of a fashion statement than practical, family-orientated transport, https://www.hyundai.ie/home/kona.html
The Nissan I picked is newer and an upgrade [broken link removed], a full family plus pets plus shopping/school bags/sports kit with useful and safe side-entry doors, but a pathetic range and massive charging times.
The Nissan I picked is newer and an upgrade [broken link removed], a full family plus pets plus shopping/school bags/sports kit with useful and safe side-entry doors, but a pathetic range and massive charging times.
The Nissan is newer and an upgrade from the previous version of that car, but is in no way the state-of-the-art, the polar opposite in-fact. It was released 10 years ago and Nissan have made little progress on their battery technology - in-fact they tried to sell their battery business off last year because options in the market from LG/Samsung/Panasonic are so far ahead. Nissan have also made no real effort to improve the efficiency of their EVs, you just need to compare the range of the 60kWh Kona with the 60kWh Leaf to see how far behind they are. And as I highlighted above, every other EV manufacturer uses a single charging connector which every single charge point in Ireland supports, except Nissan who have not bothered updating their EU/US models.
For the state-of-the-art in larger family-moving EVs you need to look to the likes of the Tesla Model X, Jaguar iPace, Audi e-tron or Mercedes EQC. All very expensive cars and not accessible to the average person, but these show the art-of-the-possible.
Again for me the only things holding EVs back in Ireland are price and availability (quantity and options in categories such as family movers), both will be solved with time. I’m the meantime, there are options there for a large percentage of drivers which could make a noticeable difference to air pollution.
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Most cars are parked >90% of the time. Plenty of time to charge cars.
Useless outside of cities? Does everyone outside of cities drive more than 100km per day? 36500km per year? For the average user that drives 30-40 km per day an electric car is more than sufficient.
Yes - there are draw backs to some electric cars and as things currently stand they are not suitable for all use cases but your post is exaggerated FUD.
I'm glad you noticed the key point and made it for me. My diesel Avensis uses energy when it is moving and for the 7 minutes, it takes to fill the tank. The Nissan I highlighted above consumes energy when it is driven *and* when it is connected to a charging point. The motive energy it uses and the energy it stores when charging all come primarily from fossil fuels in this country. With EV's all the fossil fuel usage is in addition to the fossil fuel used to produce ICE-powered vehicles. Where's the saving?
Worried about the pollution in cities? Here's an idea, put battery production and the fossil /wind-farm/solar energy generation plants in the cities which will benefit from EVs. The NIMBIES will surface quickly talking about the impracticalities of such a move and will continue to demand to pollute the scenic amenities and food-producing centres in the country-side for city-dwellers' benefit.
Outside the cities, cars are often used as secondary utility vehicles. Not only do they transport people, they tow trailers containing small animals, animal feed, gates, gate-posts, wire, tools for making temporary animal enclosures they also carry domestic fuel, turf, timber and so on. [/QUOTE]
The only exaggerations you'll find are the claims made by manufacturers and others for the EVs. All I did were a few simple sums. My posts are Just reality checks to counter the propaganda of vested interests and city-based fan-boys.
lledlledlled
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The only exaggerations you'll find are the claims made by manufacturers and others for the EVs. All I did were a few simple sums. My posts are Just reality checks to counter the propaganda of vested interests and city-based fan-boys.
[/QUOTE]
Ok, we get your opposition to EVs. They clearly aren't suitable for you.
But you are insisting on focusing on one make & model which nobody is recommending, to prove your points.
Whether you like it or not, most people live in cities. This trend is only increasing. EVs already suit lots of these people and will suit more as technology improves.
You hardly think we should base policy on those who want to carry turf and gate posts??
This point is VERY well covered by MIT's USC in studies as referenced here - https://blog.ucsusa.org/dave-reichmuth/new-data-show-electric-vehicles-continue-to-get-cleaner. If you've got genuine concerns about the work and evidence these scientists lay out then by all means post them and lets discuss it!
FWIW Ireland generates 30% of our electricity from renewables today, it will be 40% by 2020 and will keep getting cleaner. ICE cars bought today will produce the same amount of pollution until they are taken off the roads, EVs are getting cleaner and cleaner.
So firstly the saving comes from the fact that an internal combustion engine is using 100% fossil fuels, whereas an electric is only using 70% fossils today, 60% by 2020 and so on. The other aspect is efficiency: when an internal combustion engine burns fuel very little of it actually turns into motion (15-25%) while the rest is wasted as heat etc, whereas centrally generating electricity at a power station can be 65%+ efficient and when that electricity reaches an electric car they are typically 90-95% efficient converting that it to motion. Very roughly:
ICE: 100 units of fuel gets you 30 units of motion
EV: 100 units fuel at the power station gets you 65 units of electricity plus another 28 units from renewable sources (at the Irish mix of 30% renewable) so 93 units of electricity. You'll lose 10% of that in transmission lines, then another 10% in the EV converting electricity to motion, for a final output of 75 units of motion
This is why EVs that may take more CO2 to manufacture produce less CO2 over the lifetime of the car. And of course for an EV bought today you would use 28 units of renewable energy in the calculation above, but for 2020 that will be 33 units (for a motion output of 80 units) etc. as the grid adds more renewable.
Where pollution is created is also an important factor. It doesn’t matter for CO2 and global warming, but for the likes of NOx and particulate matter which only affect people very close to the source, the difference between a power station out in the country side and cars passing within feet of you is very significant.
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City dwellers pollute themselves and each other so let's pollute the country-side to give them an auld dig-out.
If this is true, then why did city-dwellers allow Dublin City Council, for example, to fell so many mature, healthy plane trees in the city? Apart from the usual functions of trees in the environment, CO2 in oxygen out, massive water storage, sun-shade and their amenity value, the bark of mature plane trees is unique; it grabs and stores particulate pollution from the atmosphere, which makes them especially useful in city-scapes. In fact, it is probably the reason they were chosen to adorn city centre parks and the centre-islands of some beautiful wide streets. If opinion was they weren't working that's simply because they weren't planted in sufficient numbers or allowed to mature.
I see that my fans have been feeding my thoughts to Sunday Times readers via their Behaviour & Attitudes survey published on page 4 of today's ST. Well done the pragmatists, propaganda rejectors and the minds of reason outside the cities. These cars offer rural dwellers nothing but expense and inconvenience.
Page 5 of the ST has some plans to help city-dwellers in their massive Mammy-mobiles to avoid them polluting Clarence and Clarinda outside the school gates. Long over-due.
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RichInSpirit
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Interesting article in Daily Mail. Much longer range battery invented. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...-drivers-1-500-miles-without-charging-it.html
Doing a bit more reading, the battery is not rechargeable, so you’d need to take it out of the car and replace it each time it is emptied. Could be a good battery for torches etc where you do replace the batteries, but I suspect talking about it in context of electric cars is them just trying to tag on some buzz terms to raise more money. I’d also suspect there are already batteries out there with much more energy capacity than Li-ion that are not rechargeable as it’s an easier thing to achieve.
And doing even a bit more reading, of the same article, answers your question :-
" Instead of a vast network of charging points, all that is necessary are stores where cells can be swapped, just as people already swap propane gas bottles.
Swapping a battery, says Jackson, takes about 90 seconds.
He and Corcoran say they are in 'advanced discussions' with two major supermarket chains to provide this facility. "
From the article they're suggesting each replacement cell would cost £5k, that works out significantly more expensive!
There is a lot of work underway on increasing battery energy density. Innolith are claiming 1kWh/kg, ~4-5 times that of Tesla batteries and fully rechargeable with a longer life.
Don't think so @Leo, my understanding is that if you weigh up the cost of replacing a Li-Io battery at EOL compared to the same amount of 'Fuel cells' over the same time period then the new technology is considerably cheaper.
"Meanwhile, the raw cost of a new aluminium-air cell is much lower.
In a Tesla, Jackson says, the battery costs about £30,000. An aluminium-air fuel cell that would power the same car for longer would cost just £5,000."
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