This isn't good for EV's

DaveGunter I have a couple of questions..
I have stated before you are an early adapter and the economy needs those..
30+ years ago battery operated screw guns were next to worthless.. today I have several and no idea where my light use corded ones are.

first; You live in the north, one of my concerns is always been that EVs need to burn electricity (battery life) in order to have heat and defrosting.

I realize that you built your home recently and have assumed, you took advantage on home positioning to take advantage of solar energy and have a garage..

I believe you also stated you can charge at work..

The people I know personally that had EVs and had the most negative experience. Did not have garages.. condo/apartment and dense city living.

Therefore, in cold weather, so much battery was used for ice snow removal and heat. Drive range was severely diminished. read less to work and back.

the second is warranty on battery. Yes I have read it’s a 100k miles. What’s small print?
My interstate battery had 7 year pro rated meaning when it died after 5 years they took 20% off new one. Tax is 8% so an expense.

 

A plug in hybrid makes the most sense in many ways. Practically the same impact to manufacturer as ICE vehicles. Produces less CO2 over its life for average and below average milage commuter. Batteries are much smaller and easier to replace when needed. You have a gas engine when range exceeds battery range. Electric motor is awesome at start stop traffic where high torque is needed.

Plug in hybrids are scalable and work from passenger cars to freight trucks. I would benefit from a hybrid truck. Normal daily milage is 60 miles. Sometimes I haul 1500# in the truck or pull #6000 trailer. High start electric torque would be awesome. Weekends I drive 240+ miles for kids soccer games. Then once a month I do a 550 mile trip loaded one way then return.

I agree with the guy in the video i posted on many points. The Fed government and some states are pushing EV as the only solution. As a sole solution it fails. Probably 80% of consumer vehicles would benefit from being a plug in hybrid. From my experience, anytime a government mandates anything it will flounder and cost way more than promised, cause unexpected collateral damage, and should fail except the gov has forced it's pick to be the winner. Free market is the only solution.

A Tesla battery pack costs $12-$20k. A new Rav4 hybrid battery costs $2-$5k. A bad battery pack can total an EV. The plug in hybrid battery costs as much as a deer strike. It still may total a car depending on age. But a hybrid can operate on ICE alone at lower efficiency and still fullfil it's main function.

 

Well, I've got a start - I do walk to work

 

The guy Tree killer mentioned (Tom) seems to be successful re building Prius batteries and selling economical (read cheap) used economical cars here in mid coast Maine. Many of these have 200k + miles.
Is there something different about the older Prius batteries that allow this? Is this possible with the current breed of ev batteries? Is it possible that (the battery) being in a hybrid is simply a better "situation" for battery life?
To me, the hybrid makes perfect sense. We're still going to be pumping oil for the jazillion tons of plastics, lubricants, all the way to cosmetics. A hybrid should satisfy those concerned about being left flat dead on the roadside (out of juice) and it would be a fair first step toward accepting the idea of a full ev vs this current, in my opinion hysterical push for something that is simply not ready yet in many various ways.
I'm not sold on the basic premise that man is the climate influencer boogy man, not by a long shot. It's become a religion and political to the promoters, 2 reasons for me not to believe anything that they say. The "science" is included in this, "consensus" is not a thing in real science, it either is, or it isn't. If a group of mathmatitions got together and declared the consensus was that 2+2=7...... same thing.
By the way, we're not too far away from that chit too.

 

The Amish have taken over

The same group says a man can get pregnant!

 

Nor exactly PG13...

This one is however.... What do you call an Amish lad on the side of the road with his hand and arm up his horse's butt? A mechanic of course....

Gotta tune up that engine...lol

 

When they (Prius) first came out, I seriously considered buying one. Not for the Hybrid aspect but to set up as a road going welder for field work. Easier to add a set of Tweco disconnects and carry my welding cables in the back than loading the engine drive in the pickup truck to do some SMAW welding on the road. The Prius battery has ample capacity current wise to weld withand OCV don't concern me. Problem is, most of the field welding I do is off road and the Prius isn't an off road capable vehicle.

 

I agree Jack, but Canadian border VT's comments about cordless tools is spot on and it's fully reasonable to think that might apply to ev's - one day, environmental impact of battery production and disposal aside not to mention the copper mining although copper is readily recyclable.

 

Guessing they might end up being Walmart parking lots, or, worse just another messy field that no one wants.

 

Thinking they just might be the NEXT pink elephant!! But, they have a 250 mile range now! I don’t see one in our future just yet. What’s the plan on recycling the old batteries? Put them in a landfill?

 

Don't they do that in Australia?... Install solar panels in store parking lots with room for vehicles to park under them? I certainly have no issue with that. I do have a BIG issue with a solar installation covering viable crop land and taking it out of crop production. People have to eat don't they?

 

Good luck recycling the big fiberglass fan blades, thinking this might be another one of those “get rich quick schemes “ of the past, for the “selected” few” that thought them up? Read : big brother! Notice NONE of “them” are suffering or concerned about gas prices? And, where’s the 500,000 charging stations that were promised? As the new roads, highways, infrastructure , joke? One of the few things that have worked is a bottle bill/can thing in some selected states, when you turn in cans, And bottles, where you get a dime for each one? But meanwhile , road side trash is STILL a big problem? Face it it’s all a big joke, bought by us, promoted by big brother. Wake up people! Your being taken, big time. Still Drinking the kool aid. I’m still waiting for a all electric solar paneled Air FARCE 1 heading to the Middle East to broker another “deal”

 

I imagine there will be a core charge on those like regular batteries.. right now here scrap yards are paying $$ for batteries. Example $8 for dead lawnmower battery

 

Apparently they are trying to solve garage frost issue

 

Yeah that's just unacceptable. Need to figure out what to do with the waste before making a mountain more of it...seems like a glaring issue

 

That is an opinion based on your political ideology. While I am sure that you and I could have a real conversation on the subject, I really don't want to and FHC is not the place for it and I'm not trying to sound snarky.

I'll add that video to my playlist.

 

We do not have a garage...yet and dealing with an EV in a northern climate has its challenges. The batteries are not as efficient at giving up their energy in the cold so you loose some capacity just because they are cold and as you pointed out some of the batteries energy needs to be used to heat the cabin as unlike and ICE vehicle there is no wast heat from burning fuel. In general you can expect a 30-50% loss in range due to cold, it really depends on the EV, how cold it is and how you drive. Most EVs are capable of pre-warming the cabin using shore power (power from the plug).

Battery warranty varies by manufacture, but in general they warranty coverage is based on an acceptable %loss in capacity as the battery ages. The Fed regulates the minimum battery warranty as 8 years or 100K miles IIRC.

 

I've got nothing against PHEV, I think they are a great alternative to an EV. I drove a PHEV for a year before switching to an EV. I put 15K miles on it and used 8 gallons of gas, and the majority of that was burned for heat. This was an eye opener for me that the ICE portion was really not necessary and that FOR ME an EV made sense. When the opportunity presented itself and I could sell my PHEV for $4K more than I paid, it was a no brainer for me.

Complete battery failures are relatively rare and come with a pretty good warranty. Just my seat of the pants feeling is that most batteries in EVs will last a long time, this is however dependent on the user because you can abuse them.

 

I'll respectfully disagree with you on the scientific consensus point. Consensus in science is real and while not always ultimately correct it is considered a valid driver of new research especially when the topic at hand is complex and unable to be proven by concise experiments. A scientific theory by definition is not able to be proven they can however be falsified, but when an overwhelming body of evidence points to a theory being correct it is generally accepted and future experiments are based on that acceptance. Einstein's Theory of Relativity and Darwin's Theory of Evolution are a couple great examples that have yet to be falsified. When I started my career 30 years ago their was a consensus in my field that the 80-90% of the human genome (DNA) that does not code for a gene was just “filler” and that it had no purpose in actively regulating bodily function. We now know from thousands of individual results of experiments that this is not true and in fact it is likely that this part of the genome has more to do with bodily function than the small portion that does code for genes. The consensus or theory was falsified.