Electric Vehicles

[Fast Eddie B]

EVs sold in 2023 will have even greater range. By the beginning of 2024 Tesla will be selling a vehicle with 750 mile range.

Not dissing more range. All things being equal, more is better.

For us, we felt we needed 300+ miles, and our Model 3 Long Range nominally has 358 miles of range. I say nominally, because it’s not currently recommended to charge more than 80% to 90% on a daily basis, and temperature, wind, rain, speed and terrain can all decrease the maximum rated range.

Our 300 mile minimum was based on our specific use case. We often drive roughly 100 miles between 2 homes. We could imagine a case where we had just driven to our GA home, done some running around, and then gotten some sort of emergency call back in TN. A range of 240 miles, let’s say, would leave us very low on battery at the end of that, especially since there’s about a 1,000’ elevation difference between the two homes. And when we’re in GA, the nearest Supercharger is 67 miles away in Cleveland, TN, and well out of the way. None of this is an issue if we spend one or more nights and can charge while there.

So, sure, 750 or even 1,000 miles of range would be great, but at what cost? Batteries are heavy, and expensive. On most road trips, 240 miles of range would easily allow 3 hour legs, about where we’d be stopping anyway for coffee, snacks, and potty breaks for us and the dog. No doubt future battery tech will allow for more range, but for right now the current range is more than adequate - for us!

 

[acbytesla]

Not dissing more range. All things being equal, more is better.

For us, we felt we needed 300+ miles, and our Model 3 Long Range nominally has 358 miles of range. I say nominally, because it’s not currently recommended to charge more than 80% to 90% on a daily basis, and temperature, wind, rain, speed and terrain can all decrease the maximum rated range.

Our 300 mile minimum was based on our specific use case. We often drive roughly 100 miles between 2 homes. We could imagine a case where we had just driven to our GA home, done some running around, and then gotten some sort of emergency call back in TN. A range of 240 miles, let’s say, would leave us very low on battery at the end of that, especially since there’s about a 1,000’ elevation difference between the two homes. And when we’re in GA, the nearest Supercharger is 67 miles away in Cleveland, TN, and well out of the way. None of this is an issue if we spend one or more nights and can charge while there.

So, sure, 750 or even 1,000 miles of range would be great, but at what cost? Batteries are heavy, and expensive. On most road trips, 240 miles of range would easily allow 3 hour legs, about where we’d be stopping anyway for coffee, snacks, and potty breaks for us and the dog. No doubt future battery tech will allow for more range, but for right now the current range is more than adequate - for us!

Range anxiety was a justification for not going EV in the past. My point is that this reason is quickly becoming history.

 

[Trebuchet]

I guess the idea is that as soon as Congress turns red, gas will become almost free, all environmental legislation will be swept away and the government will actively discouraged EVs.

The first is nonsense, but I can definitely see the second two happening. The oil and auto lobbies are very well funded.

Biden will still be President.

 

[The Don]

Biden will still be President.

I'm sure a GOP controlled House and Senate would try and do something about that.

 

[Fast Eddie B]

For those who may be curious, here’s my TN to GA use case…

Yesterday I drove to 90 or so miles between homes. I arrived in GA with over 200 miles remaining, in spite of a 1,000’ elevation gain. At the GA house, we have an outdoor 120V/20A receptacle. With the right adapter it allows charging at 16A, giving about 8 miles per hour of charge. By this morning…

The app shows how much each charge cost:

Looks like roughly $1 to charge. This at about 11¢ per KWh (thanks TVA!). You can also see how much more Supercharging costs. We only use that on trips, and it’s still substantially cheaper than gas in any of our other vehicles.

 

[theprestige]

For those who may be curious, here’s my TN to GA use case…

Yesterday I drove to 90 or so miles between homes. I arrived in GA with over 200 miles remaining, in spite of a 1,000’ elevation gain. At the GA house, we have an outdoor 120V/20A receptacle. With the right adapter it allows charging at 16A, giving about 8 miles per hour of charge. By this morning…

[qimg]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52171671513_758ec12056_z.jpg[/qimg]

The app shows how much each charge cost:

[qimg]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52172151925_67d539a380_z.jpg[/qimg]

Looks like roughly $1 to charge. This at about 11¢ per KWh (thanks TVA!). You can also see how much more Supercharging costs. We only use that on trips, and it’s still substantially cheaper than gas in any of our other vehicles.

That only works as long as the TVA is a going concern, turning a profit with cheap energy to spare for the occasional electric vehicle. See what the TVA charging rates are, when you get rid of fossil fuels, and all that foreign energy production falls on them to keep millions vehicles running all day every day.

 

[acbytesla]

For those who may be curious, here’s my TN to GA use case…

Yesterday I drove to 90 or so miles between homes. I arrived in GA with over 200 miles remaining, in spite of a 1,000’ elevation gain. At the GA house, we have an outdoor 120V/20A receptacle. With the right adapter it allows charging at 16A, giving about 8 miles per hour of charge. By this morning…

[qimg]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52171671513_758ec12056_z.jpg[/qimg]

The app shows how much each charge cost:

[qimg]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52172151925_67d539a380_z.jpg[/qimg]

Looks like roughly $1 to charge. This at about 11¢ per KWh (thanks TVA!). You can also see how much more Supercharging costs. We only use that on trips, and it’s still substantially cheaper than gas in any of our other vehicles.

I'm glued to battery development and energy production. The oil industry might be making a killing at the moment, but its end is not far off. Twenty years from now EVs in the US will make up fifty percent of new cars purchased. It won't shock me that the percentage of electric commercial trucks is even higher.

 

[acbytesla]

That only works as long as the TVA is a going concern, turning a profit with cheap energy to spare for the occasional electric vehicle. See what the TVA charging rates are, when you get rid of fossil fuels, and all that foreign energy production falls on them to keep millions vehicles running all day every day.

TVA is government run. Tennessee Valley Authority. By the time EVs make up 50 percent of the cars, we should be able to more than make up for fossil fuels with solar, pumped hydro storage, nuclear and wind. I have a friend in Northern California who has two Teslas and 90 percent of his electricity needs for his house and the cars is provided by rooftop solar.

 

[bruto]

TVA is government run. Tennessee Valley Authority. By the time EVs make up 50 percent of the cars, we should be able to more than make up for fossil fuels with solar, pumped hydro storage, nuclear and wind. I have a friend in Northern California who has two Teslas and 90 percent of his electricity needs for his house and the cars is provided by rooftop solar.

Nearly all the electricity here in Vermont is from renewable resources - quite a large percentage from Hydro Quebec, which at this point has a fair amount to spare and a willingness to sell it to us.

Aside from the fairly obvious issue of electricity coming from increasingly non-fossil sources, "when we get rid of fossil fuel" seems rather absolute, and I'm not aware of its being an immediate threat, especially if, in conjunction with the increase of electric cars, we get a decrease in IC cars, and a commensurate increase in the availability of fuel for other (and more efficient) uses.

If we have something to worry about here, it's not the source of electricity but the capacity of the infrastructure to carry it.

 

[acbytesla]

Nearly all the electricity here in Vermont is from renewable resources - quite a large percentage from Hydro Quebec, which at this point has a fair amount to spare and a willingness to sell it to us.

Aside from the fairly obvious issue of electricity coming from increasingly non-fossil sources, "when we get rid of fossil fuel" seems rather absolute, and I'm not aware of its being an immediate threat, especially if, in conjunction with the increase of electric cars, we get a decrease in IC cars, and a commensurate increase in the availability of fuel for other (and more efficient) uses.

If we have something to worry about here, it's not the source of electricity but the capacity of the infrastructure to carry it.

I'm from Washington State. The amount of hydropower in this state is almost absurd. I'm pushing the state to add pumped hydro and floating solar on the many reservoirs. We can use the solar to pump hydro during the day and use the hydro during peak hours.

Right now, we're letting the oil companies screw us. We need to fight back and create as many alternatives as possible.

 

[acbytesla]

CATL's new EV Battery Pack.

CATL makes its 620-mile EV battery official with 10 minutes charge to 430 miles range

CATL says that its direct cell-to-pack technology that eschews the module design has achieved the world's highest volume utilization for an electric vehicle battery. The whopping 72% of the total pack size are individual battery cells that can hit an energy density of up to 255 Wh/kg, giving the battery "a range of over 1,000 km in a breeze."

That's an easy 620-mile range for the electric vehicles of CATL's future clients that will sign up for the Kirin battery, but the pack also has a superior large-surface liquid cooling technology which "increases the heat transfer area by four times, cuts thermal control time in half, and supports a hot start in 5 minutes and fast charging in 10 minutes."

https://www.notebookcheck.net/CATL-...nutes-charge-to-430-miles-range.631578.0.html

 

[Fast Eddie B]

That only works as long as the TVA is a going concern, turning a profit with cheap energy to spare for the occasional electric vehicle. See what the TVA charging rates are, when you get rid of fossil fuels, and all that foreign energy production falls on them to keep millions vehicles running all day every day.

This is pretty much the first time I’ve heard anyone diss the TVA. It provided work to thousands to help lift us out of the Great Depression. It brought electricity to wide swaths of rural American that had none before. Plus flood control, fertilizer production and more.

“The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is mostly known as a power supplier and as an experiment in regional development. It was founded in 1933 to fight the most devastating effects of the Great Depression and the longer-term problem of “underdevelopment” in the South. It provided thousands of much needed jobs for the region, boosting agricultural outputs, and offering people a more modern way of life that included electronic lightning and fridges. Initiatives ranged from electric power plant construction, fertilizer production, and afforestation to fight against erosion, but at its core lay a concept about how to manage and use a river: A system of dams turned the river into a series of reservoirs which turned surplus water that risked causing floods in the watershed downstream, which includes the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, into resources that could be used for irrigation and hydroelectric power. The Tennessee, which hitherto had flooded almost 11,000 square miles a year (or 28,000 square kilometers, roughly a quarter of the region), was equipped with seven dams between 1933 and 1944, while nine dams were built on its tributaries and an additional five dams were acquired from other companies. In total, these created fourteen million acre-feet (over 17 cubic kilometers) of flood storage. In 1944, the TVA produced 83 percent of its total electric production by hydroelectric plants (8,424,935,000 kilowatt hours), while serving 550,000 private and industrial consumers.
The TVA was far from the first project to use dams for the purpose of producing electricity and boosting agricultural output, but it became a successful blueprint for river management all over the world.”

Source: https://www.anthropocene-curriculum...goes-japan-a-rivers-way-into-the-anthropocene

The gift that keeps on giving, much like the Interstate Highway System.

 

[Filippo Lippi]

Review of the Lightyear 0

Where they talk about a $250k car and the company's stated intent to port that tech into a sub $30k car. I think the line is, "this is a fundraiser."

All of the solar panels and the drag co-efficient make it very interesting.

 

[Filippo Lippi]

Our own experience. Recap - we sold the diesel and took delivery of an e-Niro at the start of April. My wife was a little nervous at first, but has adapted well and enjoys the effortless driving. We try and use the Leaf more, because it's ours and the Niro is leased, so has a limit on the number of miles we can drive without paying more. Still only had to rapid charge on that initial long run down to Southend, but did charge at home outside of the economy zone because we're doing hospital visits and I became a little nervous.

Had a "race" with an electric MG (I had a load of shopping in the back so wasn't racing), where he burned me off at the lights. I know that feeling mate, nice

 

[Fast Eddie B]

Where they talk about a $250k car and the company's stated intent to port that tech into a sub $30k car. I think the line is, "this is a fundraiser."

This was effectively Tesla’s business model: design, produce and sell a quite expensive performance car, the Model S, and use the proceeds to gear up for a more affordable $35k car, the Model 3. It took them a long time to become profitable, but hard to argue with their success to date.

Yes, the $35k Model 3 is a lot more expensive now, but what isn’t!

 

[The Don]

Review of the Lightyear 0

Where they talk about a $250k car and the company's stated intent to port that tech into a sub $30k car. I think the line is, "this is a fundraiser."

All of the solar panels and the drag co-efficient make it very interesting.

There are basically two ways to increase EV range, increase battery capacity or use the installed capacity more efficiently. Lower drag body shape, low rolling resistance tyres and better battery technology all contribute to the latter.

Mrs Don has now done over 1,000 miles in her Fiat 500e and is absolutely loving it. Yesterday was unusually warm and she was able to pre-cool the car before we got in it, what a great feature. I still haven't driven it, I'll wait until after it gets its first blemish.

 

[jadebox]

I realized the other day that, at this time, I am spending more in gas for my lawn tractor than on electricity for my EV.

I am working from home and not driving much at all right now. And it's Summer so I have to mow my lawn more than once a week (and our yard is about two acres). I considered getting an electric lawn tractor, but I don't think it is practical for me yet.

 

[Filippo Lippi]

Mrs Don has now done over 1,000 miles in her Fiat 500e and is absolutely loving it. Yesterday was unusually warm and she was able to pre-cool the car before we got in it, what a great feature. I still haven't driven it, I'll wait until after it gets its first blemish.

Cooling the Niro as I type

 

[Dr. Keith]

I realized the other day that, at this time, I am spending more in gas for my lawn tractor than on electricity for my EV.

I am working from home and not driving much at all right now. And it's Summer so I have to mow my lawn more than once a week (and our yard is about two acres). I considered getting an electric lawn tractor, but I don't think it is practical for me yet.

Saw an Ego zero turn riding mower at our overpriced Ace True Value that was almost $6000. That’s a lot of gas/diesel.

 

[bruto]

I stopped at a local, very vermonty, which is to say lots of lawn and stuff, shopping center the other day for some ice cream, and the grounds were being mowed by an electric walk behind mower with a stand-on sulky. I imagine it was pretty expensive too, but so are the pro quality gas ones, and this one was nice and quiet, and of course, simple. No idle, no noise at all when moving, until the rotary blades started up.

I suspect that it will take some time to pay off, but not so long if there was a need for a new mower anyway. With the cheap power, and essentially no maintenance other than sharpening the blade, I bet it works out pretty well.