Featured The Problem(s) with Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs)

As far as I know Nissan Leaf, warts and all, is very hard to find on a used market. I looked. Very hard. People tend to hang on to them, even with degraded ranges. If Nissan knows what's good for it, it will establish a good battery replacement program for those cars soon or loose the customer base to Tesla, Chevrolet, etc.

So I am not sure where the 22% resale comes from. From what I see there is practically zero supply of used Leafs on the market, which will suggest that the real market prices for them are relatively high. Again, no availability near me, so this is pure conjecture.

 

it comes from the same Fudd mongers that keep saying the Prius batteries are creating toxic waste dumps.
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Awesome rebuttals...

How many decades have fossil fuel mob interventions slowed advancement of something as simple as electric cars developing at scale?

Today's anti-EV opinions using early leaf as a baseline for future BEV are the last faint cries of a dissolving and soon departing fossil fuel empire?

Likewise, we are at close of third quarter and historic game-changing quarterly production numbers being announced and it's no suprise that cronies beholden to big oil at the SEC are going to make the absolute most of an opportunity for a publicity stunt/lawsuit to tank the stock 5 days before Tesla's quarterly earnings reports. Sure is a strange coincidence don't you think?

 

I got my figures from Motor Trend's IntelliChoice 5 year retained. For cars, it is posted in their guide for cars in the September issue; and SUV's and trucks in the October issue.

Retained value aside, I can't see how a Nissan Leaf or any other BEV would be fully functional like a 2003 Toyota Corolla. My husband's uncle has a 2003 Toyota that his grand dad left him on his passing. It has only 20k miles and full functionality with nearly no repair and maintenance costs

 

i only wish used tesla's depreciated. and batteries are lasting longer than engines and transmissions.

 

Many of the statements I see against BEVs succeeding seem to overlook that PHEVs are an option, and that BEVs aren't trying to be a solution for everybody.

Those would be based on national averages. Locality has some effect of used car values for the individual. In California, where federal and state incentives can be over $10k, the Leaf has steep depreciation. It is less in states without the additional incentives, and dealers are shipping used BEVs to those states now.

 

Yes, for me, as casual shopper, the choice in EVs ... not good to me i.e. Tesla Model 3, expensive: Not even adaptive cruise control unless you tack on $5,000 for Autopilot. Trunk appeared bit small with a 'slot type' of opening.
I've casually shopped Bolt to find a $39k sticker price tag. Whuuut??? The damn thing is essentially the size of a $18k Honda Fit. The value proposition, not there.
Leaf? I sat in it. It's a stinking pile of cow dung interior designed by incompetent chumps, pathetic seating ergonomics and some nerve of them to skip putting in telescope steering wheel.
Nothing else worth mentioning at this point, imo.
No brainer choice, what suits me .... Honda Accord.

 

short answer: PHEVs really are the best of both worlds, and if all of my cars disappeared today, I'd buy all PHEvs tomorrow. I wish Lexus made something like a Prius V PHEV. I really REALLY like the Niro PHEV and might buy one.







EVs are far less reliable than other vehicles. Fullstop.



The reasoning for this is twofold:


1) EV technology, manufacturing, and assembly is very much in its infancy. Failures can and will occur in any vehicle regardless of its propulsion system; however, the collective knowledge base for EVs and their components is limited not just at the manufacturer level, but also the supplier level. This effect is multiplicative, if not exponential.


2) EV methods of failure are binary and without failsafe. When a gasoline engine misfires, or a hybrid traction battery fails or is disconnected or the main fuse is blown, the car is still functional in limp mode. Most of the time you can drive it to the mechanic -- though it's not recommended, you can even delay this for weeks or months. Even in the absolute worst of cases, the wheels still spin and you can safely pull over to the side of the road, lock/unlock doors, and ingress/exit.




This is not so with EVs. The car either receives electrical power or it doesn't, and without electrical power there is no limp mode, neutral, lock, or unlock. Unless you happened to put the car into neutral before the failure occurred, the wheels are locked. This is inherent to electric motors, and no EV model with a mechanical override or disengage currently exists -- the vehicle must be repaired. In my opinion this is a major oversight and numerous groups such as SAE and NHTSA are to blame.





For these reasons, I posit that you absolutely, positively, MUST have a non-EV form of transportation available to you at all times -- this can be public transit, a bicycle, or another car. PHEVs come with this alternative built-in




The entire car industry is at turning point. I save TONS of money by driving the i3, but the car is not something to hang onto long-term. In fact, the car industry as a whole is unfortunately treating EVs much more like disposable tech gizmos and ownership as increasingly short-term.






Final thought: safety isn't necessarily less in EVs, but it is different. I keep a window smasher in my i3. I strongly discourage the ownership of these devices otherwise, as they are fully unnecessary in other vehicles and pose a significant safety risk if not properly secured, but I consider them to be an absolute must-have for EV drivers.

 

The one lesson with EVs is heat and cold are the traction batter enemy and active, strong thermal management is required. Air cooling is inadequate.

Bob Wilson

 

Eventually, to bring the price down and to allow wide availability fore servicing, the batteries need to be standardized and basically a "plug-in" replacement that can be used over a wide variety of makes and models. The same goes with the charging systems. There are no different and incompatible gasoline fueling systems. The only difference is in the grades and types of gasoline and diesel fuel, but the nozzles and pumps are similar.

 

The EV market remains like the early 1900s, still in flux with competing technologies. We are voting with our wallets and our descendants will have to live with it. Choose wisely.

Bob Wilson

 

If the Honda Accord is more to your style, check out the Clarity lineup, such as the PHEV trim. It’s quite nicely appointed.

 

from what i understand, ev's are more reliable than gassers. they may be binary, but they rarely fail.

 

Works for me.

 

I dispute this. First, I think it is wrong to think that all EVs will behave the same in blackout conditions. There is enough diversity in the designs out there to guarantee that they can't all fail the same way as you describe. This isn't a complete solution to the problem of course. I recognize that it is easy to harbor a wary attitude towards EVs due to the "all or none" performance they deliver, but I don't think it's fair to suggest that the actual frequency of breakdowns is that high.

Moving on, I separately dispute the idea that the wheels lock up in blackout circumstances. While this could possibly be true for some EV out there, it's nearly unthinkable for most of what's on the market now. There would be a bit of drag, but the car would freewheel reasonably to an eventual stop, and the driver would have the option to pump up the hydraulic brakes in all the EVs I know of.

 

ignore the noise

 

Electric motors and batteries have been around for over a century. The suppliers for these and other components for EVs aren't going to be a a company that has never made them before.

And these components are in hybrids. If they are prone to failure as you allude, then hybrids would be breaking down more frequently.

First, power split hybrids like the Prius can not move with a dead battery. Without it for a buffer, M/G1 can't work with the engine to provide the variable gear ratios.
The failures are no more binary than the failures in an engine. There is actually more that can go wrong in an ICE.

The wheels aren't locked. In fact, there isn't even a physical disconnect between the wheels a motor when the car is put into neutral like most ICE cars. Motors can be spun when they aren't energized.

Guess what, ICE cars can't move on their own when out of gas either. A hybrid might be able to, but this is very bad for its battery.

PHEVs are a workable solution for many, but they aren't without drawbacks. They have higher costs in that an ICE hybrid drivetrain, with all its add ons, has to be installed with the EV one. Their lower price in comparison to BEVs is because they have smaller batteries with the corresponding shorter EV range. For those that do all, or a large portion, of their driving within that EV range, the costs of ICE maintenance are wasteful. You can put 100% EV on a Prime, and still have to pay for an oil change for the ICE.

The industry wants to sell cars. They've want cars disposable whenever they can; remember before the Asian brands came to the US. Also take a look at hydrogen tank lifespans.

People are leasing BEVs because it is the sure way to get all of the federal tax credit. They are moving on to the next car, because the technology for EVs is improving faster than it currently has in traditional cars. But the off lease cars aren't getting tossed like an out of date phone. Other people are buying them.

Window smashers existed before EVs because all cars can end up in a lake or river, and ICE cars catch fire just as often, if not more, as BEVs do.

The power tool segment doesn't seem to be hurting from having prorietary battery packs, and those are even easier to swap out tha an EVs is.

There actually is different fuel pumps. The nozzles of the high speed ones for commercial trucks won't fit in personal cars. And the Level 2 plugs for EVs, that is used for the majority of car charging, are standardized.

 

I'm sorry but your posting confused me.

In 2016, I paid $29k + $28k ~= $57k for two plug-in hybrids.

Until there is a SuperCharger in Fort Worth AR, I'm not really interested in a Tesla.

As for the Tesla pretenders ... I've been to the Manchester, Electrify America charging station three times and I won't risk my family on them. Your family, sure thing, but I love my wife.

Bob Wilson

 

Small battery packs are easy and simple to transport and so are small components and accessories. A sizeable inventory of large and heavy batteries is a large investment to carry for even large chain stores like Walmart. They would be likely to carry one or two batteries types that become fast movers.. These could be swapped out in less than 30 minutes.

The telephone system in the prior century was so successful, because components made by one manufacturer like Western Electric could be replaced by one made by Kellogg or even Dean Electric.

The C, D, AA , AAA and 9 volt battery system has great advantages for logistics. The original No. 6 dry cell, a standard for telephony and even car ignition for many years has disappeared from misuse.

 

My pardon. I forgot all the pumps and extruders at work are powered by ICEs, and my TV remote is plugged into the outlet.

The claim that EVs are less reliable because manufacturers aren't experienced making motors and batteries is FUD.

The cells within those power tool packs are mostly standard sized ones. There are DIY instructions for replacing them. The cells used by the first Honda hybrids, Ford hybrids, and even initial the gen1 Prius were off the shelf cells. The Model S and X use the same cells as in a laptop. The Model 3 uses an improved version of it.

I'm sure the pouch Li-ion cells used by the others were being used for other purposes before this wave of EV cars came along. The chemistries might be tweaked for a specific job, but that doesn't entail changing the production line.