Cont: Electric Vehicles II

[Lplus]

Another EV story on the BBC. Nissan are being accused of "Dumping EV pioneers"

I thought it would be about some fundamental technical shortcoming which was leaving drivers stranded but instead it's an issue with their phone-based app:



And how many people are affected ?



The media sure loves an EV scare story

A foretaste of things to come perhaps rather than a total disaster right now.

 

[jadebox]

Although I agree that the article is more of an anti-EV hatchet job than a legitimate story since non-EV vehicles were also affected when 2G (then 3G) service was phased out, it is a bigger problem for EV owners.

When the 3G network shut down, my BMW i3 lost connectivity like some non-EV BMWs. But it was a somewhat bigger deal for the EV owners because the cell phone connectivity provided real-time updates on public charger locations to the car's navigation system.

Of course, there were alternatives like using the PlugShare app and, over time, updates like that became less critical. But the loss of connectivity was still a bigger deal for EV owners than ICE owners.

As much as I loved that i3, I am very disappointed in BMW for not standing behind it's owners. A few people had demonstrated that the car could easily be upgraded to 4G. But BMW refused to offer an upgrade or support those that did it themselves. On top of that, I had prepaid for connectivity and did not get a refund.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

"things stop working on old cars - shock".

But "stop working" isn't the same familiar thing as old things breaking, it's things becoming obsolete and unsupported so they can't be fixed. Cars, products with a 15+ year life, now integrate with tech which has maybe a 5-10 year life. (What do you mean I can't get an updated CD ROM for my car's navigation system?)

Even when you're not talking about integrating with external technology, there are new vulnerabilities, with more repairs so expensive that a relatively young car can get written off. A friend's BMW i3 stopped charging from its range extender. Ultimately the problem will be something simple, but it's not economic to track down that simple thing. The repair procedure (do this test and if it fails change that entire unit) would have cost most of the value of the car. After some time it spontaneously started working again. Now he's crossing his fingers it keeps working so he can sell it, caveat emptor.

 

[The Don]

A foretaste of things to come perhaps rather than a total disaster right now.

If it is, it's a foretaste for everyone, not just EV owners.

Many new cars, irrespective of propulsion system, have features that rely upon connectivity which in turn relies on access to mobile data. Other features rely on receiving updates (whether it's updated maps for the navigation system or firmware updates). If manufacturers choose to no longer support those features then they will become obsolete (like Windows 3.1).

Of course you can continue to run without receiving updates but there's a non-zero risk associated with that.

 

[Agatha]

My current petrol car no longer gets map updates as Mercedes have changed the system, and I don't get Apple CarPlay on that model. I can pay for access to maps on their website, put them on a memory stick and upload them to the car, but it's easier and cheaper just to use Waze on the phone.

Anyway, I ordered a new EV car today - 18 weeks build time - so not much longer with an outdated system, at least until Skoda withdraws access to Apple CarPlay or something.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

If it is, it's a foretaste for everyone, not just EV owners.

This is why I will stick with my 2011 Leaf for the foreseeable future. Who needs all that stuff?

The navigation system on my imported Leaf is stuck in Japan and I can't be bothered paying to get it changed because I wouldn't use it anyway. The car doesn't have any of these fancy 'self driving' features, or even battery thermal management - so there's much less to go wrong. It doesn't need (or can do) over-the-air software updates, so no chance of being 'bricked'. There are some buttons on the steering wheel that I don't touch, and all the car settings are in Japanese so I don't touch them either.

Range on my Leaf is only about 50 miles so I won't be going on any road trips, and the tired old battery can't handle fast charging so I will never do it and therefore don't need to know where the fast chargers are or whether they work. I just take my 2kW cable with me and plug it into a normal mains socket if I need more juice.

Once the battery gets too tired I will replace it with a fresher second hand unit. This will cost much less than buying a new car, and I won't have to put up with all the fancy features they insist on putting in them. Of course this assumes that the car will still be in good condition by then, which is pretty likely because without the vibration and mess of a gas engine and my careful driving it should easily last another 10 years. It also assumes that I will still be fit to drive - which isn't a given when you are pushing 70.

Of course you can continue to run without receiving updates but there's a non-zero risk associated with that.

Just kill all connectivity and then you won't have to worry about being hacked.

Funny thing is I have numerous devices that didn't get the latest software update and they still work fine. This computer I'm typing on right now hasn't had an update in years because they dropped support for 32 bit machines.

I reckon if your car is working fine then you don't need updates. Take the latest Tesla 'recall' for example. NHTSA said they had to make the text larger on the brake icons, so what did they do? Nixed the icon and just made it large text only. Yuk! Can't do that on my Leaf because the icons are old-school illuminated stencils.

 

[lionking]

I have been considering an EV for some time. We have a perfect good (actually better than good) Subaru SUV, but don’t do a lot of miles any more.

With the current state of technology and limited government subsidies in Australia my calculations show a break even point after 8-10 years. Approaching our mid 70s, we will be keeping our Subi.

 

[Mike!]

Dodge is pretty amped up over their all new, high voltage Charger...

 

[The Don]

I have been considering an EV for some time. We have a perfect good (actually better than good) Subaru SUV, but don’t do a lot of miles any more.

With the current state of technology and limited government subsidies in Australia my calculations show a break even point after 8-10 years. Approaching our mid 70s, we will be keeping our Subi.

The next car I buy will almost certainly be an EV but I intend to run my current whip, a 2016 Skoda Oktavia, into the ground before I buy one. Ideally I'll get another 5-10 years out of it and by then we may not even need two cars.

My obsession with minimising our electricity consumption has however clouded my judgement when it comes to using Mrs Don's EV. In the summer we can charge it for free given halfway decent weather but it's a different matter in a Welsh winter. In order to limit our electricity purchases on dark and cloudy days I've been using the Skoda instead.

The stupid thing is that we now have a tariff where we get (for the UK) cheap electricity for 4 hours overnight (9p/kWh vs 28p), the kicker being that we pay a premium (30p/kWh) for the other 20 hours. Even at the expensive rate it costs less than 8p/mile to fuel the EV (as opposed to around 15p/mile). It's under 3p/mile at the cheap rate and - due to our ridiculous electricity supply arrangement at Don Towers - we can get around 60 miles of range into the car during cheap hours.

 

[lionking]

The next car I buy will almost certainly be an EV but I intend to run my current whip, a 2016 Skoda Oktavia, into the ground before I buy one. Ideally I'll get another 5-10 years out of it and by then we may not even need two cars.

My obsession with minimising our electricity consumption has however clouded my judgement when it comes to using Mrs Don's EV. In the summer we can charge it for free given halfway decent weather but it's a different matter in a Welsh winter. In order to limit our electricity purchases on dark and cloudy days I've been using the Skoda instead.

The stupid thing is that we now have a tariff where we get (for the UK) cheap electricity for 4 hours overnight (9p/kWh vs 28p), the kicker being that we pay a premium (30p/kWh) for the other 20 hours. Even at the expensive rate it costs less than 8p/mile to fuel the EV (as opposed to around 15p/mile). It's under 3p/mile at the cheap rate and - due to our ridiculous electricity supply arrangement at Don Towers - we can get around 60 miles of range into the car during cheap hours.

I get this. Cost of electricity should not be much of an issue for us though. We will have solar panels installed in a couple of weeks and it looks like we can charge nearly the whole year. It’s the capital cost. The EV version of the Subi we own comes in at around $A90K, or twice the cost.

 

[jadebox]

Captain Obvious here.

It usually makes better economic sense and is usually better environmentally to keep your current car as long as possible.

But, we often have other reasons for buying a new(er) car. I bought our newish EV during a faux midlife crisis almost exactly 20 twenty years after buying our Mustang GT convertible. And I bought it for the same reason. Chicks dig white-haired guys driving cool cars. (At least that's what my wife says.)

 

[The Don]

I get this. Cost of electricity should not be much of an issue for us though. We will have solar panels installed in a couple of weeks and it looks like we can charge nearly the whole year. It’s the capital cost. The EV version of the Subi we own comes in at around $A90K, or twice the cost.

You're right, EVs are currently considerably more expensive than their ICE equivalents when comparing similar models from the same manufacturer. The comparison may not be quite as bad as it first appears given that EVs tend to be better specified, but if you don't want the extra bells and whistles then that's not really a selling point.

The price differential is expected to close significantly in the next few years and you can currently close it significantly by buying a nearly new car. Neighbours of ours have just bought a couple of months old Skoda Enyaq for a little over £30k which is about the same price as a new large (for the UK) SUV. I certainly won't be buying a new EV - in the same way as I haven't bought a new ICE since 1998.

Regarding your PV panels, are you also getting a battery ? Are you able to sell any surplus back to your electricity supplier ?

We found that, even in the summer when we had plenty of surplus, without a battery we were still typically using 3-4 kWh a day to cover "phantom load" and short periods where demand exceeded generation. We now have a battery installed and we're making better use of the solar (though it's very early days and the weather hasn't been great) and the battery also allows us to buy in cheap electricity overnight if we have little or no generation and use it later in the day.

 

[jadebox]

I've considered installing just enough solar to offset my EV's electrical use - not for economic or environmental reasons but just because it would be cool. But just now was the first time that I sat down and did a rough calculation of how much solar capacity I would need. I drive less than 300 miles a month and average about 4 miles per kilowatt hour. Using an online calculator, I found that I would need panels rated for 700 watts taking up about 45 square feet. The panels themselves wouldn't be too expensive, but the cost for a controller and inverter would make it impractical.

I thought that maybe I could justify it in my situation because our car can act as a battery backup if the power is out after a hurricane and we live in a rural area where hurricanes are not uncommon and it can take weeks for power to be restored. But if my math is right, a small solar setup like that would only add about a day to the amount of time that our car could power our refrigerator, TV, internet, a light, and a fan.

 

[lionking]

Regarding your PV panels, are you also getting a battery ? Are you able to sell any surplus back to your electricity supplier ?.

As with EVs, batteries are not viable for a household of 2. It would cost $A10k for a decent one. Hopefully technology and government sbsidies will make them affordable in future.

In Australia our domestic solar program has become so successful that suppliers simply don’t need any more solar. The feed in tariff is about 4 cents per kWh. Almost nothing. In fact I recently heard the power generator covering our region no longer offers anything, but I will soon find out.

What the solar panels will do, provided we are disciplined about when we use devices, is to drop our bill by about 70%.

 

[bruto]

I just read somewhere that a huge unexpected deposit of lithium has been found in the US.

https://www.techspot.com/news/100117-potentially-world-largest-lithium-deposit-has-found-us.html

Sounds as if it could help the EV industry going forward, though of course it's not simple and has all sorts of drawbacks. But I'm guessing that the automotive industry and the mining industry will somehow prevail.

 

[The Don]

As with EVs, batteries are not viable for a household of 2. It would cost $A10k for a decent one. Hopefully technology and government sbsidies will make them affordable in future.

In Australia our domestic solar program has become so successful that suppliers simply don’t need any more solar. The feed in tariff is about 4 cents per kWh. Almost nothing. In fact I recently heard the power generator covering our region no longer offers anything, but I will soon find out.

What the solar panels will do, provided we are disciplined about when we use devices, is to drop our bill by about 70%.

That low level feed in tariff is quite usual here in the UK and many suppliers simply don't buy excess.

Our finding regarding PV and battery are that PV only reduced the amount of electricity we bought by around 50%. The limitations were:

• The house uses around 5kWh per day to just keep ticking over. On average about half of this was covered by PV but in the winter we often generated close to zero.
• Our oil-fired central heating adds around 400 watts to the demand when it is running. Unfortunately it runs most at night, in the winter, when the PV cannot provide energy.
• Peak usage, for example cooking using the oven and a couple of rings on the hob, exceeded the PV's ability to generate AND
• Our usage didn't necessarily align well with times when a lot of solar was available. For example we would use an electric dryer on cold wet days when there was little or no solar generation

Our investment in a battery will likely reduce our consumption by a further 25% and our expenditure to 10%-15% of what it used to be. Payback will likely be in 8-10 years and there aren't many investments out there with that kind of yield. The savings will come from storing PV generation for later use (like in the past two sunny days) and also by making use of cheap overnight electricity to charge the battery and then use that during the day to run the house when there is little or no solar generation. The case is made better by the UK's ridiculously high electricity costs (25p-30p per kWh).

 

[zooterkin]

If you're in the UK, and have an EV, it's a good time to renew your road tax, even if it's not due. It goes up from zero to £180 in April 2025. If you renew now, you should be able to renew for zero in March 2025. I've done mine; it takes a couple of minutes, you just need your V5 and go to https://www.gov.uk/vehicle-tax

 

[8enotto]

BYD ( of spotty QC according to the internet) is negotiating building three factories in Mexico as the US car industry is preemptively blocking them.

They don't want cheap Chinese electric cars flooding the market before they can manage to figure out how to sell their own.
And I understand some safety concerns over fires too but it screams of just keeping BYD out because they can't figure it out and don't want to hustle to do so.

These cars will have to pass US crash test and all safety standards before being submitted of course.

The ones at the local dealer in town are imported from China now and pass Mexican standards, mostly. They are probably some of the unsold overstock from last year.
I wouldn't judge future factory production if it happens from those. But they are here now.

It's a low effort market test here as the showroom has space for four cars and looks rented out.

They managed to make the three wheeled motorbike based taxis legal here and the cargo trikes. Those are death traps. With any luck a car body with actual safety features can make the cut.

With BYD already in Brasilian markets they may not see the needing investment in Mexico if the northern markets are closed. That would be another hit for the possibility of growth here.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

The Toronto Star takes on EVs in Winter.

Watch: An electric road trip visiting Ontario's cleantech future

Toronto Star photographer Steve Russell and climate change reporter Marco Chown Oved went on a road trip through northern Ontario in the dead of winter. It was cold, blizzarding and icy. They travelled 2,300 km during the coldest week of the year. And they did it in an electric vehicle (EV).

Destroying the cold weather myth.

 

[dirtywick]

That low level feed in tariff is quite usual here in the UK and many suppliers simply don't buy excess.

Our finding regarding PV and battery are that PV only reduced the amount of electricity we bought by around 50%. The limitations were:

• The house uses around 5kWh per day to just keep ticking over. On average about half of this was covered by PV but in the winter we often generated close to zero.
• Our oil-fired central heating adds around 400 watts to the demand when it is running. Unfortunately it runs most at night, in the winter, when the PV cannot provide energy.
• Peak usage, for example cooking using the oven and a couple of rings on the hob, exceeded the PV's ability to generate AND
• Our usage didn't necessarily align well with times when a lot of solar was available. For example we would use an electric dryer on cold wet days when there was little or no solar generation

Our investment in a battery will likely reduce our consumption by a further 25% and our expenditure to 10%-15% of what it used to be. Payback will likely be in 8-10 years and there aren't many investments out there with that kind of yield. The savings will come from storing PV generation for later use (like in the past two sunny days) and also by making use of cheap overnight electricity to charge the battery and then use that during the day to run the house when there is little or no solar generation. The case is made better by the UK's ridiculously high electricity costs (25p-30p per kWh).

the way it works by me is they install a meter socket that can roll back. build your array to overproduce when the sun is up to offset draw off the grid at night. no need for a battery if it’s just to cover the night