Featured Is it ethical to purchase a lithium battery powered EV?

"Lowest operating cost" is a relative subject in that it depends on where you live - even in a particular country.

In the United States even with our current gas prices - which are very high for us- in some areas it is still cheaper to use gas as fuel due to the high price of electricity.

In Europe gas is much more expensive and electric mobility can almost always make more sense in most areas.

As many have pointed out before, the initial cost of entry into electric transportation - usually higher price vehicle cost as well as installing charging infrastructure for the electric vehicle at your home does not make economic sense in many areas of the United States. This does seem to be slowly changing.

Sometimes a perceived benefit such as environmental concerns, status, wanting attention etc. can trump economics for some.

For us Electric mobility (PHEV) was an edge case economically. With higher gas prices it is finally starting to make sense. We have always liked the idea of the PHEV giving us a choice of electric mobility or gas powered mobility.

 

Why would you pick a vehicle with upgraded power and bigger wheels to compare efficiency with a much slower vehicle? That doesn't make any sense.

Even so the performance produces 120 g/co2 mile in my grid, versus the prius primes 150 g/co2. As I said I fuel mainly with solar so even if I picked the performance it would be much lower.
https://fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?year=2022&vehicleId=45012&zipCode=78702&action=bt3

YMMV. Yes I use sentry mode. When its hot or cold I turn on the climate control to precondition my car. Lately driving after work it has been around 100 degrees outside so that takes power. I do a little worse than epa, but you can drive the vehicle without doing any of this.

huh? My car has a range of 300 miles. Unless I am taking a long trip I charge it at home. 5% of my charging has been at superchargers. I am on the grid and my solar helps make it more stable (wish the puc actually cared to weatherize) but sure a little of that electricity is wind, natural gas, nuclear - but I displace natural gas during the day. I don't drive 300 miles a day .

How many people buy that solar array to charge a prius prime? Do you use it that way, charging several times a day. I mean my car can take that charge at home in an hour. I have a 9 KW solar power system. Do you find it convient to return home to charge during a long trip?

Lets not heavily invest in strange edge cases. Your prime does much better than the average american car. Use the epa tool to help figure out that a tesla instead of producing much more co2 where you live it likely will produce less. Some places, I am not sure they have many plug-ins will be worse.

There is no reason for this pissing contest. You have a plug-in that you like. Be happy about that. I want as many plug-ins (PHEV and BEV) to help reduce demand for oil. This high world wide demand helps a number of unfriendly countries and if everyone used less then the inflation would not be as bad. I chose a prius because my previous car used too much gas, not to save money. People ought to be able to choose the vehicles they want.

 

Hot take counterpoint: no they shouldn't, they should ban/punitively carbon tax some of these vehicles out of existence.

 

In other markets, the Corolla hybrid is available with the 1.8L or a 2.0L. That larger engine is available for buyers that want more performance, and it does use more fuel. According to what you have posted in this thread, the existence of a more performance oriented option means Toyota did not design the Corolla with a concern for lowest environmental impact.

You had to ignore the more popular versions of the Model 3 to declare it is less efficient than the Prius Prime. The long range AWD model is 1mpge better, and the standard range RWD one is 6.8% more efficient.

Tesla's priority is to make and sell BEVs that can completely replace a family's ICE cars. For those occasional long trips, the BEV needs longer than secondary car range. Of course, that means a large battery, but those are heavy and expensive. So you also good efficiency to keep the battery requirement low, and to make to most of it. For that, Tesla has developed some of the most efficient motors in the industry.

The higher performance was to help sell the cars. Using less powerful motors would still mean a car thousands more than an ICE in price, as most of that is in the battery. So Tesla's don't have much of a price penalty for better performance. Considering less powerful competitors aren't as efficient as the Model 3, there isn't a penalty there. I guess a less powerful Tesla could get better efficiency, but there appears to be a link between motor power and charging speed, or more accurately, the DC-DC converter of the motor. Since replacing the ICE car also requires fast DC charging capability, that loss would be a cost for going lower performance.

Now, let's consider this. Assuming Toyota is more concerned than Tesla over environmental impact. Why is it that the bZ4X couldn't even match the Model Y in efficiency? It is less powerful. You decry that as Tesla's mortal sin, so the Toyota should have an edge in efficiency then. Its battery is even smaller. The bZ4X FWD does best the Model Y Performance AWD, but then, the Lexus sibling is the performance bZ4X.

PS: I'm pretty sure performance Tesla models get chill mode. Like the Prius eco mode, that isn't something that will change official test results.

 

[QUOTE="Trollbait, post: 3262532, member: 12239" I guess a less powerful Tesla could get better efficiency, but there appears to be a link between motor power and charging speed, or more accurately, the DC-DC converter of the motor. Since replacing the ICE car also requires fast DC charging capability, that loss would be a cost for going lower performance.

[/QUOTE]

There is a link between battery capacity and charging speed. The bigger the battery pack, the faster you can feed it energy, thus charging faster. A more powerful motor will not necessarily contribute to faster charging except in some regenerative braking scenarios. It has nothing to do with fast DC charging except in cases where the DC-DC converter used for charging is the same one that is used to supply power to the motors to spin the wheel.

 

Why add the weight and expense of a charging DC-DC converter when there is already one on the car for the motor? It appears to be what Toyota did, and is the reason why the AWD bZ4X has a slower charging rate.

But forget that. Why didn't Toyota match Tesla in efficiency? The bZ4X has a smaller battery and less powerful motors. You keep claiming the big battery and powerful motors are the reason Tesla's aren't efficient BEVs.

 

I’ve wondered why the traction battery electronics are not used for plug-in charging. Certainly regeneration power rates and cooling are much greater than typical charging circuits.

The risk is faulting would brick the car.

Bob Wilson

 

The price of SiC AC/DC converters are fairly low compared to the price of the vehicle. Why not have a dedicated efficient circuit in the BMS for AC charging? Sometimes going cheap is not the best way ;-)

 

Cost is important but extra weight taxes the car over its lifetime. Still our BMW i3 fast DC charges just under 50 kW making the REx a great bargain.

Bob Wilson

 

I think Renault Zoe has such AC charger it uses inverter and motor together. Search Renault Zoe chameleon charger

 

The name refers to the onboard charger being able to handle Level 1 to the old Level 3 charge rate. The Zoe and Leaf are twins, and came out at the same time. Back then, faster than Level 2 AC charging was being considered before DC charging took off. There is even some such public chargers still around in Europe. The chameleon charger could do up to 43kW rates. Which is probably the fastest you'd want to charge a Zoe battery.

 

It really depends where you want to recharge as to whether you take the AC to DC charger with you or leaving it plugged in where you would normally recharge.
The DC charging networks is great if you have a battery and system that can handle the high current charging, these things are voltage and current minimum limited as well as max limits.
Trying to feed a single phase AC sipply through a 3 phase VFD inverter is really asking for trouble, it could certainly handle a 3 phase supply or a device that could split the single phase into 3 phases with the correct spacing to break the pulses up to simulate the 120* separation to mimic a 3 phase supply .... not sure if the single phase supply would be happy with that though ..... Then of course you need to run all the bits to keep the VFD and associated parts cool ..... it all can be done, some manufacturers do it now but ...... They have a lot of very qualified people working in labs to sort of that out.

T1 Terry

 

My point was that Zoe doesn't have dedicated on-board charger, it uses inverter and motor as the charger (not sure about last generation and all variants). The benefit is obviously no need for extra hardware and high AC charging rate, the downside is charge efficiency, particularly at low charge rates (<3 kW).


Source: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/eng/research/grouplist/electricalpower/vesi/meetings/demo3.pdf

 

I don't really know how much it weighs but the size is what is of main importance. It is not big in the tesla. Weight of the bigger battery in my car is a lot more than the AC/DC converter. From the pictures of the circuit board I'm sure that if I had 4 passengers, a heavy dinner would add more weight than that part of the circuit.

When you mention fast charging, that is DC and could easily use most charging components in the car.

Interesting. For 43 KW AC the component looks quite large but for now 11 KW seems to be max which is a much smaller component. This is especially true with SiC AC to DC converters where energy consumption and thus heat is much smaller. The efficiency graph was informative with much greater losses if a DC to DC converter was used than if the change in voltage was from the ac to dc conversion alone.

I don't know how high it is on the zoe, but on the tesla the car consumes 300 W just to keep the computers active and battery conditioned for the charge. This makes high speed dc most efficient and 110V charging least efficient as the time is much longer.

 

Looking at the script associated with the Zoe 3 phase motor being reversed as a DC charger, it mentions the dc negative connected through the neutral point of the 3 phase motor wiring. Not all 3 phase motors are wired in the star configuration where a neutral point is used, many are in Delta where each phase connects to to junction between the windings of two phases, 3 phases, 3 winding and no neutral point so each phase delivers equal torque and requires each phase to be equal as far as power delivery. Star can use the neutral point to balances the phases but a e phase motor connected to a 3 phase supply with nothing else connected should be a balanced load ....
If you really want to do your head in, here is an explanation between the two types of connection Infinispark

Basically, unless there is also a single phase 240vac being pulled from one phase, the Delta connection gives a lot more torque. The old days of starting a motor in Star and then switching to Delta is a forgotten requirement because a VFD (variable frequency drive) is used for motor speed and control, that is the "inverter" used in 3 phase electric drive vehicles.
i won't even attempt to describe about how the phase angle is changedto improve the torque etc, just accept that this is part of the smoke and mirrors thing an VFD does :lol:

T1 Terry

 

But if smoke and mirrors interest you, see this post, which has a bunch of links for you.