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Comment on Automakers must build cheaper, smaller EVs to spur adoption, report says
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 9 months ago
They need to just build hybrids until batteries advance further. Either ones that will last 25 years with 80+% capacity remaining, or lighter more power dense batteries that can more easily and cheaply be replaced.
A 1500Lb battery that costs $10,000 and requires half disassembling the vehicle in order to replace That goes bad after 15 years is a pretty shit thing.
I have an 08 prius with 240,000 miles on it. The 75 Lb Battery went bad last year. I bought a new one from toyota for $1,900 and installed it myself in an afternoon. If the gas motor goes out on me (they will typically go 400,000 miles if cared for correctly) a rebuilt one with a 5 year warranty is around $1400. That’s not in most people’s “diy” zone but it’s a 7 to 9 labor hour job, so just call it $3,000.
All things much cheaper and easier than replacing an all electric battery, and no range issues.
cedarmesa@lemmy.world 9 months ago
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 9 months ago
Yeah. Car batteries are lead acid and weigh a lot more than the nickel metal hydride batteries in the hybrid battery.
Essentially, the hybrid battery is kind of like 168 rechargeable batteries all wired together in 28 sets of 6.
There’s some after market batteries a website called “Project Lithium” has been selling that use lithium cobalt batteries instead of NMH batteries (lithium batts each have 3.7v as opposed to 1.2v in nmh and lithium batts have a higher storage capacity) that weighs even less at around 45Lbs, but they’ve only been selling them a few years, so how long those last before failure isn’t really a known thing. I knew the OEM toyota battery would last over a decade, so I went that route. Newer prus and other toyota hybrids do use lithium now, but I don’t think they made the switch until around 2015.
Soggytoast@lemm.ee 9 months ago
Let’s just do some checking here to counter your argument
All evs sold in America have 8year/100,000mi warranty on battery, also these are ev top of the line batteries, not the junk that goes into most toys that burn out in a few years, these are good for 300,000mi+ before the 80% capacity
But for your cost of ownership argument, if you drove a Prius for 400,000mi as claimed, at a likely/optimistic mpg of 50mpg, that’s 8,000 gallons of fuel, which over the last decade has probably averaged at least close to 3$/g, depending of course. That’s 24,000$. Just in fuel. Now you have say 40$ oil changes every 6,000 miles, that’s another 2,600$, you did a nicad battery replacement because Toyota was totally fine putting that junk in there, another 1,500$
Totalled up to 28,100$. But that 10,000$ battery is too expensive huh
jmp242@sopuli.xyz 9 months ago
I mean, you’re not counting the fact that the electricity isn’t free either - and KWH costs are just going up. It’s debatable how you ought to cost out the electrical work to put in a charger, and the charger itself. I really have no idea about the lifespan of the chargers, so it might not last a full 15 years out in the elements, it might last 50+ years.
Soggytoast@lemm.ee 9 months ago
The charger is just a few solenoids very simple device, and they don’t get switched with current flowing. So probably last forever, for wall mounted hard wired ones at least.
True I did not count cost of electricity, because it’s extremely hard to guess. Some places are .04$/kwh, some are .45/kwh, some are free.
What if you had free charging at work? Or apartment, or had solar, it could be completely free
jmp242@sopuli.xyz 9 months ago
I mean, I guess work could also just give me a gas credit card and pay that, but I have my doubts that’ll become common. And yea, I left out solar because again, first it’s impractical for a very large number of people (they don’t have property to put up solar panels), and where it is possible it’s another tens of thousands. I’m not even sure I’d call that a capital investment as I see lifespans for the solar panels being near the lifespans of cars, or at most 2x if you take the 20ish year estimate and take 10 years as a car lifetime, both of which seem conservative to me. Then there’s the road taxes that as EVs become more popular, ICE will no longer subsidize completely via gas taxes, so that illusory savings will switch, and as they’re updating the laws and changing mediums, I bet that’s where local governments will find a way to increase that tax to make up for the impossibility of increasing the gas road tax due to politics - with the EV switch there’s enough smoke and mirrors to get that through.
I still believe EVs can be cheaper than ICE, but it’s going to work out to be far less than “advertised” by the early adopters who got all the subsidies, some unintentional.
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 9 months ago
4 qt oil in a prius. I change my own oil every 8,000 miles, so it’s around $25 for me, but most people don’t, I suppose.
Electricity costs money. You skipped that, and for the millions and millions of people living in places like apartments, you can’t charge from home. Charge stations cost almost as much as gasoline, so that gets danged pricey and inconvenient. Poor option all the way around for those people.
Most vehicles have a 100,000 power train warranty, so that’s pretty irrelevant.
I already stated the failure of the batteries is closer to 15 years. That is the good batteries used today. I’m well aware of the lifespan of the lithium ion batteries used in today’s EV’s. They’re generally Lithium Cobalt Oxide or Lithium Nickle Cobalt Oxide and they can go 300,000 in theory. The “in theory” is that they won’t last that long if it’s spread over the course of 15 years and you keep them always close to fully charged or close to discharged. To go 300,000 miles you’ll have to not use any of the extra fast chargers and keep the capacity between 30 and 80 percent all the time. The batteries used have a lifespan of about 1400 charge cycles, if age is not a factor. You can go beyond that by keeping them at 30 to 80 percent, and it will be less than that if you use a level 3 charge station.
Also, look at tesla. There’s an entire industry that’s developed to keep their batteries up and going. They use barrel style batteries. There’s around 3,000 battery cells in each of their teslas. Some of those individual cells start going out quite quickly. The manufacturing of them isn’t flawless to the extent that 3,000 can all last over even 5 years. Tesla designed their system to be able to operate as the cells go bad, but it’s a nice slow deminishment of capacity and power. It’s turned into an entire business of tearing into those tesla batteries, finding and replacing out the bad battery cells, and then re-selling the packs as refurbished to people, which is a terrible idea, really. Replacing a hundred of the worse cells and calling good, when the other 2800 cells have a decade on them and will also fail soon is a short lived stop gap that takes advantage of people ignorance about what a remanufactured battery actually is.
Lastly; to your comment about toyota being “totally fine putting that junk in there”: LOL. You obviously don’t know much about batteries. NMH batteries have a longer duty cycle rate than any lithium batteries that have been developed. It’s why a little 75 pound battery in a non plug in lasts 14 years as it did before wearing out. Also, the “junk” batteries are Panasonics. Go check into it. They’re regarded as making the best mass produced batteries in the world.
Also, fyi: teslas 8 year battery warranty only kicks in if the battery has degraded below 70% capacity. So they think it’s OK that the car you bought to go 300 miles on a charge may only go like 225 miles after 8 years.
Then, finally, look what happens to a plug in when it’s winter and below freezing. An electrics range is tested and claimed when it’s around 70 degrees outside. That’s when your 300 mile electric can go 300 miles. If it’s 15 degrees out real world expectations put your range down to 60%. So your 300 miles goes to less than 200. That’s not just from capacity and discharge rates being effected. A large reason is running the all electric heater.
Soggytoast@lemm.ee 9 months ago
True I did not count cost of electricity, because it’s extremely hard to guess. Some places are .04$/kwh, some are .45/kwh, some are free. What if you had free charging at work? Or apartment, or had solar, it could be completely free.
Of course there’s going to be a market for ev battery repair, and they’ll work on Teslas the most/exclusively not because they’re bad, but because they’re the only significant ev so far. They’ve sold millions, when the next highest has 200k. Shit can break on anything at any time from any manufacturer.
All Toyotas for years have had 3yr/36,000mi, 5yr/60,000mi powertrain warranty.
Nimh is junk, it is guaranteed to die due to age. It cycles really well but the chemistry inside literally dries out and stops working, 8-10 years. That’s probably where a lot of the FUD about lithium batteries come from, lithium batteries degrade slowly. You can check this old blog that gives stats for 10 year higher mileage Teslas, looking at 18% to the high end but usually 8-12%. And those are the early batteries where Tesla was probably cutting as much cost as possible, today’s batteries are a bit better.
And Toyota absolutely does put junk into their cars, they put weak engines, weak hybrid motors, bottom tier infotainment, minimum legal warranty. They’ve been riding their 1980-2000 reliability reputation hard. Not saying they’re unreliable, but that reputation is the only thing that sells their cars.
Range does decrease in winter for evs, but it does for gasoline cars too, they don’t show the mpg difference on the window sticker either. Tesla has really good thermal management so it generally Loses about 15%, not your 40% claim
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 9 months ago
Dude. You’re living in your very own special zip code.