EVs not ready for prime time?

[Hawkmoon]

At least, not ready for exposure to salt water. It seems Florida is seeing a rash of Tesla fires after the hurricane.

https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/transport/tesla-fires-after-hurricane-raises-alarm-for-florida-officials

[HankB]

My neighbor has an EV - I think it's a Hyundai Ioniq - and she likes it. She told me she just plugs it in to regular house current, not a 220 line, and it has plenty of range.

But today she's driving down to San Antonio. We live just west of Austin, so that's a pretty good highway road trip and I expect she'll be using A/C, so when she gets back I'll have to ask her if she made the round trip on 1 charge, or if she had to plug it in somewhere.

[230RN]

She should keep an electron can in her car so she can hitch-hike to the next charging station to get going again.



Small electron can for electric motorcycles:

[Boomhauer]

My neighbor has an EV - I think it's a Hyundai Ioniq - and she likes it. She told me she just plugs it in to regular house current, not a 220 line, and it has plenty of range.

But today she's driving down to San Antonio. We live just west of Austin, so that's a pretty good highway road trip and I expect she'll be using A/C, so when she gets back I'll have to ask her if she made the round trip on 1 charge, or if she had to plug it in somewhere.

Is it a true full EV or a plug in hybrid? See a lot of people buying the plug in hybrids these days where they get 30-40 miles of range on the battery then it runs the engine

[Blakenzy]

Pure EVs are definitely not ready to be the "every day, every man's" type of vehicle. Battery tech has a long way to go until price and convenience matches internal combustion. I know that these  days everything is made (in china) to be disposable, but can EVs even make it to 5 years before they NEED to get scrapped? Battery life and health is still a huge issue in phones, I fear going though the same charade with a car.

[230RN]

Speaking as one whose house doorbell used to be powered by two of those monsters, I am constantly amazed at how many electrons can be compressed at high pressure into even a little AA cell nowadays.

So I'm looking forward to more miracles.

[Fly320s]

Pure EVs are definitely not ready to be the "every day, every man's" type of vehicle. Battery tech has a long way to go until price and convenience matches internal combustion. I know that these  days everything is made (in china) to be disposable, but can EVs even make it to 5 years before they NEED to get scrapped? Battery life and health is still a huge issue in phones, I fear going though the same charade with a car.

Tesla warrants their batteries for 8 years/100,000 miles.  There are many Teslas over 200k miles.

Yes, they can make it 5 years without being scrapped.

[WLJ]

https://everpress.com/the-chieftain/remove-it-2?colour=646e2f&product=N03

[dogmush]

https://everpress.com/the-chieftain/remove-it-2?colour=646e2f&product=N03

The Sherman was a POS, but there's no need to remove it from history.

[Angel Eyes]

The Sherman was a POS, but there's no need to remove it from history.

I'd rather have a Sherman than the POS in front of it.

[RocketMan]

Speaking as one whose house doorbell used to be powered by two of those monsters, I am constantly amazed at how many electrons can be compressed at high pressure into even a little AA cell nowadays.

So I'm looking forward to more miracles.

My Dad and I used to have one of those many years ago.  We used it to fire up the glow plugs in our model airplane motors.

[Big Hairy Bee]

The Sherman was a POS, but there's no need to remove it from history.

Why don't you knock it off with them negative waves? Why don't you dig how beautiful it is out here? Why don't you say something righteous and hopeful for a change?

[HankB]

On my neighbor's EV . . .

She said she started with 85% charge, made it to San Antonio and back to Austin without any additional charging, and still had 15% left in the battery. Used the A/C as well, but didn't take the main highway (I-35) but rather some alternate route.

To say I'm surprised would be an understatement.

[dogmush]

Keeping of of I35 probably helped. (Drag increases with the square of velocity)  but that works out to be about 250 mile range, which is right in the range of a Hyandai EV.

[zahc]

Some applications are much better suited to EVs than others. The ideal use would seem to be local delivery vehicles that don't have go a very far distance, do a lot of stop and go, and have owners who would benefit greatly from saving money. So if EVs really save money, are lower maintenance, etc. why aren't all local delivery vehicles already electric? Why do companies keep buying gas-burning vehicles that rack up fuel bills, have all those terrifying engines and transmissions with the dreaded "thousands of moving parts', need oil changes, etc, when they could supposedly reap a big competitive advantage by switching to EVs? Why haven't EVs completely taken over these applications where the deck is stacked in favor of EVs? And if they are still inferior to IC vehicles at these specialized roles, then how much more inferior must they be for more typical use cases? Why are we trying to get joe average to switch to an electric pickup when there are already applications where EVs would be much more suited, and EVs still haven't gained any market share basically anywhere?

[Hawkmoon]

On my neighbor's EV . . .

She said she started with 85% charge, made it to San Antonio and back to Austin without any additional charging, and still had 15% left in the battery. Used the A/C as well, but didn't take the main highway (I-35) but rather some alternate route.

To say I'm surprised would be an understatement.

What was the distance and driving time?

[Northwoods]

For P&D there aren’t many options on the market yet.  It takes a company like the one I work for 3-4 years to go from identifying a new market like EVs to having a working truck they can market to customers.  Not an ideal, fully optimized truck, but just something they can produce and deliver.  It’ll take 10+ years to get a really optimized EV truck developed.  Those efforts are well underway but we’re only maybe a couple years into that process.  So, when there are EV options that exist in meaningful quantities it will be reasonable to revisit this topic.  In 5 years I expect there will be plenty of such options being marketed, and then we can see if EVs are being adopted in numbers that move the needle by noticeable amounts, and how well they work vs ICE alternatives.

 

Some applications are much better suited to EVs than others. The ideal use would seem to be local delivery vehicles that don't have go a very far distance, do a lot of stop and go, and have owners who would benefit greatly from saving money. So if EVs really save money, are lower maintenance, etc. why aren't all local delivery vehicles already electric? Why do companies keep buying gas-burning vehicles that rack up fuel bills, have all those terrifying engines and transmissions with the dreaded "thousands of moving parts', need oil changes, etc, when they could supposedly reap a big competitive advantage by switching to EVs? Why haven't EVs completely taken over these applications where the deck is stacked in favor of EVs? And if they are still inferior to IC vehicles at these specialized roles, then how much more inferior must they be for more typical use cases? Why are we trying to get joe average to switch to an electric pickup when there are already applications where EVs would be much more suited, and EVs still haven't gained any market share basically anywhere?

[HankB]

What was the distance and driving time?

I don't know exactly where she went in San Antonio, but google maps says about 95 miles (one way) from my suburb to Alamo Plaza, taking about an hour and 50 minutes.

Hyundai claims about a 300 mile range on one charge. My estimate is that she drove (roughly) 190 miles round trip on 70% of a charge, using a/c. That's not too far off the vehicle's advertised capability. I'm not going to grill her for more details.

Of course, being 75 or so, she does drive like a little old lady . . . 

[Calumus]

TFL Truck channel on YouTube has an on going series of tests of electric trucks vs gas and diesel. Usually pretty interesting. They go out of their way to promote the electrics; but pretty much every test they’ve done has just confirmed that battery tech isn’t ready for people who use their trucks as trucks.

As a side note, I was talking to my cousin who has a beef farm in northern Ontario. He said his farm vet had bought a Tesla model X as her work car last fall. She drove it through the winter, then traded it in. Because of the cold temps, there were days when her total range was around 70 miles. She covers roughly a 60 mile radius around her office. 3 times last year she had to rush to an emergency call, then have her husband come pick her up because she didn’t have the range to get back to the charging station at her office.

[AZRedhawk44]

I'm really tempted to try out one of the Sondors Metacycles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVjrt-JCKLg

Top regular speed around 70mph, with a brief burst to about 80mph.  4kW battery, range of about 50 miles.  Under 5 hours to charge at 110v.

It'd keep a lot of routine miles off my Tuareg.  And at $5000 it's not too shabby.  A LOT less expensive than a Zero, that's for sure.

[Blakenzy]

I'm really tempted to try out one of the Sondors Metacycles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVjrt-JCKLg

Top regular speed around 70mph, with a brief burst to about 80mph.  4kW battery, range of about 50 miles.  Under 5 hours to charge at 110v.

It'd keep a lot of routine miles off my Tuareg.  And at $5000 it's not too shabby.  A LOT less expensive than a Zero, that's for sure.

Maybe that's where the market is, and that's all it will ever be.. users that have a very stable routine. You do an exact x amount of miles every day, you have an unchanging x amount of down hours every day to charge... always the same, day in day out. But if you throw in unpredictability and spontaneity everything falls apart.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og9LrExVcno

[HankB]

Electric cars seem to be at about the same point that personal digital assistants (PDAs) were back in the '90s - my employer provided me with a Palm V back then (Just checked - it's still in my junk drawer!  ) and it would do things like link up with our network's message and meeting software. We used to say the Palm Pilot's capabilities made it almost useful, and that's more or less my opinion of today's electric cars. Of course, today's smart phones (even the "entry level" Samsung A11 I'm using today) outstrip the 20+ year old Palm's technology so far it's not even funny, and eventually I expect electric cars to progress as well.

Thing is, electric cars aren't just microchip and software tech - there's physics & chemistry involved; battery technology doesn't seem to advance as fast as software and computer chips, and neither does the grid infrastructure required to keep the cars charged. And everything about cars - from initial cost to upkeep and licensing - costs orders of magnitude more than phones.

[AZRedhawk44]

Maybe that's where the market is, and that's all it will ever be.. users that have a very stable routine. You do an exact x amount of miles every day, you have an unchanging x amount of down hours every day to charge... always the same, day in day out. But if you throw in unpredictability and spontaneity everything falls apart.

Yeah, I did a little more thinking on it and the Sondors bike BARELY gets me to work and back with about 10 miles of ideal charge remaining.  If I throw in my Wednesday routine of going to the dojo in the evening, there isn't enough charge remaining.

I did come across a used 2015 Zero model SR for sale, with a recently replaced 13kW battery still with some warranty on it, for $6000.  It's several hours away over in eastern California.  But this model bike has 150 mile urban range and about 75 mile highway range.  That takes care of my longest planned routine running about, with plenty to spare.

It just becomes a question of if I am saving enough fuel and wear and tear on my new Aprilia to justify $6000 plus additional insurance and registration on the Zero.  I get above 50mpg on the Tuareg.  I've committed that while under warranty (2 years), I'm having the dealership do my 12,000 mile services.  I'll do my own oil changes.  While miles are miles on tires, the Tuareg gets offroad bias tires that don't care for lots of urban miles.  Having street bias tires on a Zero would get better longevity and also better control, not that the east Phoenix metro area offers much to test the side of a motorcycle's tread.  The 12k service on the bike is reported to cost between $750 and $1000.

With all the brewing purchases and the dishwasher as well, I'm a bit short on money for a splurge purchase on a second motorcycle.  Honestly I'd be hard pressed in two years to make up a $6000 difference versus just riding the Aprilia.

[MechAg94]

Maybe that's where the market is, and that's all it will ever be.. users that have a very stable routine. You do an exact x amount of miles every day, you have an unchanging x amount of down hours every day to charge... always the same, day in day out. But if you throw in unpredictability and spontaneity everything falls apart.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og9LrExVcno

Which underscores why gasoline and diesel became the standard fuels.  The flexibility, range, and power are better than the alternatives. 

Give EV's another 50 years of development and things might change.  However, I think if that happens, it will be a market change, not something forced by govt regulations. 

[MechAg94]