Not seeing EV savings

Battery cooler is for safety reasons, not for increasing the cycle life. Cycle life is not negatively affected when charging or discharging a hot battery as far as I know. Lithium batteries don't like low temperatures at all as far as cycle life is concerned, neither for discharging nor for charging. However, the battery should eventually self-heat during charging or discharging. Nevertheless, you are taking a good chunk out of your battery's cycle life until it self-heats if you charge or discharge it without heating it at cold temperatures.

 

I repeat. I will have nothing to compare to and I will not likely know the difference since I have no plan to keep the car longer than a few years. And again, there is absolutely no documentation on the manual that says you must use the battery heater set to ON during a cold charging session. My car came with the battery heater set to OFF from the dealer. I am sure there are many owners of PP out there who do not even know there is an owner selectable setting under the menu to turn ON this functionality.

 

For the PP, it reduces the charging time when temperatures are that low. I agree it isn't vital to the packs life. Otherwise, letting the owner turn it off is like letting them turn off the engine radiator.

Someone here once speculated that the battery cooler was more about cabin comfort, as heat from the charger applies to the cabin.

First off, of course heat is bad for battery cycle life. It was heat that was killing early Leaf packs, and the reason why the model still sees more capacity loss compared to other models

You've been reading too many QuatumSpace papers on the disadvantages of Li-ion.

• Yes, Li-ion does have drawbacks.
• These drawbacks are known.
• How to mitigate them is known.
• The BMS is programmed to apply those mitigations.

The warnings about not charging 'frozen' Li-ion batteries is mostly given in relation to applications in which there is no BMS system; just the basic protection circuit to ward of fires.

 

I think you mean "prolongs" the charging time? Or maybe you wanted to say reduces the charging rate? Without the battery heater on a cold day, the charging PP takes very long, presumably because it is dropping the charging rate to slowly increase the temperature of the pack?

But the battery cooler function is turned on only during charging when no one is occupying the cabin. It may be used to reduce the cabin heat prior to departure similar to climate pre-conditioning, but unless the battery is plugged in immediately after the end of the drive it is not activated. I don't see the warning often enough on my car because the car never gets that hot. But even if I see it, I will never use it. I do charge only after the pack has cooled down.

 

No, no, the heat killing the Leaf batteries was a myth. What killed them was DC fast-charging. It is the lithium-metal plating on the anode that is accelerated by fast-charging. There is a discussion here:

IRC 30D phase-out | Page 4 | PriusChat

No battery likes the cold. Battery life will greatly degrade if charged or discharged when cold.

 

The charge rate of the PiP when the pack is that cold was really slow from what I recall of charts posted here. The charging process makes heat, but it is a by product of the chemical reactions taking place in the cell. Charging too fast at those temps leads to negative reactions. So charge rate is kept to a minimum until things get warm enough, which means minimal heat generation. The heater gets the pack warmed up for normal charge rates faster.

Of course, this depends on specific conditions. Electricity going to the heater is energy not going into the battery. There could be sessions in which the heater running could mean delays in charging.

Now, if you are thinking of the list of reasons in the owner's manual for why charging can take longer, those are cases of longer than charging under mild temperatures.

The message only comes up if the battery or air temperature is above a certain point. You likely would choose no to it if done driving for the day. The manual recommends charging before your next trip, and the pack will cool down before charging takes place for the next day. Choosing yes means, to the designers, that you will be driving again soon. The cabin is going to warm up from sitting in the sun. Charging will add more heat to that. So the cooler function is more about keeping the cabin from getting hotter than expected for the returning person.

I didn't agree with the speculation myself, but how it is implemented seems almost useless for actually cooling the battery.

How many CHAdeMO chargers were there in Arizona when the Leaf first went on sale there?

Fact #795: September 2, 2013 Electric Vehicle Charging Stations by State | Department of Energy
In 2013, there was just 800 public chargers in the entire state. DC chargers would have been just a subset of those. Some could have been just Level 1. The only CHAdeMO a Leaf owner might have seen was the one at the dealer.

I think some Priuschatters actually went out there to help determine what was happening to the packs.

 

High temperatures are causing lithium-ion battery degradation, at least in older batteries:

https://www.nature.com/articles/srep12967

I wonder if newer batteries handle higher temperatures better.

The Leaf survey:

http://www.pluginamerica.org/surveys/batteries/leaf/Leaf-Battery-Survey.pdf

 

The Leaf got a chemistry that would handle heat better in 2013; the 'lizard' pack. LFP is also heat tolerant.

There are trade offs. LFP is of lower energy density and specific energy than traditional Li-ion chemistries. Formulations that retain that while gaining heat tolerance cost more.

 

LFP refers to the type of cathode active material used. Lower energy density will usually translate as longer life in all conditions because the current density tends to be smaller as well, reducing the lithium-metal pileup rate on anode's surface.

Apart from that, higher-quality cathode materials are probably more heat-tolerant, depending on how they are prepared, their precise structure, etc.

 

Um no

2011-April 2013 Leaf batteries are extremely frail and age at extraordinary rates in hot weather even if you never quick charge.

myNissanleaf has thousands of data points on this issue

 

Um no

2011-April 2013 Leaf batteries are extremely frail and age at extraordinary rates in hot weather even if you never quick charge.

myNissanleaf has thousands of data points on this issue

 

Not true. Many utilities charge a flat “billing fee” or “service fee” which you pay even if you use no electricity. So unlesss you only use the electric to charge your car (separate meter) then the billing or service fee is immaterial. You would be paying that cost wether you charged your EV or not. So to find the cost per kWh you add up the charge for the kWhs of electricity used plus any corresponding per kWh delivery charges then divide that figure by the kWhs used. That will give you the actual cost per kWh.

 

why break out the cost for charging a car. You don't break out the cost for your electric stove, or refrigerator etc. Not that any particular fuel cost calculation method is right or wrong when figure costs, but if you have an electric oven or water heater - you are blessed to be able to utilize/split the utility company's hookup/use/tax fees among many different appliances - including your car.
.

 

If the additional charges putting electricity into your car are cheaper than the base charges and cheaper than gas you are misleading yourself into believing gas is cheaper.
In my case I many times pay a dollar per kwhr. But the additional costs of power for my EV are 10 cents a kwhr.

If it costs me an extra $20 a month on my bill to power an EV but the equivalent gas is $50, why would I include the massive fixed fee in my EV costs? I would draw the wrong conclusion saving $20 of electric cost to pay an extra $50 for gas. -$30 in the hole

Calculating a large fixed cost into fueling costs that way doesn’t work for comparison gas to electric .

It’s similar to including insurance into your price per gallon to compare to an EV but not including insurance on the EV, you would draw the wrong conclusion.

Now the registration fines on a plug in do calculate into the TCO and many times drive the cost of operation above a gasser.
But that is TCO and your fixed electric costs aren’t apart of TCO, unless you only have power to your house for the BEV, if you wouldn’t cut the cord the EV isn’t driving utility fees and taxes.

 

see post #45

 

Because one's daily or weekly choice to plug in, or to use gasoline instead, doesn't change that base charge. The base charge does not contribute to the incremental cost of plugging in, so should be left out of that decision calculation

Usually, at least. In some places, one needs to pay for a separate account or meter for the car, so then that separate charge is part of the upfront decision to go EV or not. But most plug-in car customers don't face that requirement.

When figuring the overall cost of having electric service, that is fair. Allocate the fixed charges among the appliances as you please.

But when making a choice to unplug the electric range OR water heater OR car OR other items, but NOT all of them, the base account charge doesn't proportionally drop. Or drop at all. So it doesn't figure into the decision calculation. It figures in only when choosing whether or not to completely drop and cancel all electric service, saving the full base charge.

 

Not to belabor the point but - if I use 1,000kwh/month - & there's a $20 monthly fee for the privilege of getting the juice - what's wrong w/ all/any appliance sharing what I pay for getting the juice at home. If our kilowatt "costs" are 7¢ .... and spreading $20 over 1,000kWh works out to an extra 2¢ per - it seems valid to say we are spending 9¢ per kwh for charging.
If you buy gas at the convenience store, you don't factor out the cost of the slurpee machine, the electricity to run the store, insurance for the gas pumps, employee salary etc ... you pay the profit price which includes all the overhead costs - as it's all skrunched together.

.

 

My monthly fixed fee is $50 and I use very little electricity for my home (under 50kwhrs monthly in many cases)

If I “divide it out” it makes it look extremely expensive to use my car when in reality it isn’t more expensive than gas.

The op is in a very similar scenario

 

Shouldn't that be a bigger or longer Buttttttt?
@bisco already commented that It's the Interwebs - buttttttttt !!!!!

 

California here, I pay $0.13kw summer and $0.11/kwh winter.