2015 PIP to will have a significantly longer range

You can charge them from a 120 outlet, or a 240 outlet. But, I think I actually remember seeing some of those around.

I know what is coming next, 'but it will take too long to charge with those!' With a 20 amp circuit, you might be required to enjoy your destination for more than 3 times the length of time it took to drive there. Sounds like a wise idea to me.

You don't think that as we replaced 200 Million cars with Teslas, that some of those out-of-work oil producers might convert to making electricity instead? Adding Teslas to an overworked grid could well improve its reliability, since they can be used for energy storage.

...then one is an idiot. ...and should probably rent a truck; I wouldn't do that with ANY vehicle I own.

 

Nice bunch of replys since I dropped the "Tesla Bomb"! I still want one, maybe my retirement car, it's not perfect as many have pointed out, but it damn sure is a step in the right direction!

 

Being he who routinely says "one size does not fit all" and is continually pushing "product diversity", that comment has no merit. And with me providing so much support for each of the Prius models, Camry, Highlander, and still looking forward to an Estima-like offering here, I question if I've been mixed up with someone else.

 

Do you have a source for the 300 full cycles? The telsa battery is rated with 8 year warranty (miles depend on pack size 100K on 40kw, 125K miles on 65kw, unlimited on the big pack). See Model S Options and Pricing | Tesla Motors
300 cycles would not last even a few years let alone 8 years unlimited miles.

The Models S, with the twin charger option, can use dual J1772.. the converter is external and does not need any changes in the car. That is the whole point of the twin-charger design.

 

Perhaps I have John, and if so I appologize. The impression I get from your posts though is that the PiP (as an example) has the perfect sized battery/price/utility package and that anyone other than Toyota is a terrible vehicle in comparison.
All I am saying is that the best package depends on the driver, not some universal one size fits all definition.

In my families case, the PiP is a pretty poor vehicle, for other people, it is the best possible car.

 

I think you need to take into account that your commodity batteries don't have a battery management system.
They also tend to get charge to 100% and drained to nothing much more often.

By you calculations (30% discharge and recharge is 1/3 cycle), I have put my Roadster through about 150 cycles. If the pack ha a 300 cycle life (most number I have seen is 70% but let's use your 80%) what would you expect the range to be?

 

DrI, the J-1772 adapter for the Model S is limited to whatever the supporting EVSE's capabilities are, so. If you are on a 30A public EVSE, those twin chargers are not going to be any help to you. Only when the EVSE is larger than the capacity of a single charger (which they seem to say is 50A), would you get any benefit from twin chargers. Are you saying the J-1772 adapter has inputs for 2 separate EVSE's? I find that hard to believe. Again, Tesla does not give a full cycle number, they don't want to scare buyers away... It will be years before its known as well. For the Roadster, they had an option to buy a future replacement pack for a certain price, not sure they are offering that on the Model S now.

Zythyn, most Tesla Roadster owners don't use anywhere near the capacity of their packs, before recharging, so it's difficult to say how many cycles they truly have... owners don't fully go 245 miles, and then recharge. What does your capacity show on your Roadster? What percentage lower is it than 245 miles when it was new? The pack may not show much degradation until it's several years old, and near the cycle life.

I was just looking at eBay, there are at least 6-7 Roadsters up now, many being sold because they have Model S comming soon.

I am a Tesla fan, but putting a significant portion of my retirement savings to buy a car is a little bit nuts, I think the 4th generation Teslas should be more affordable in 2015

 

Mitch, that is part of what I am trying to ascertain.
You said that if someone uses roughly 30% of the battery, then recharges, that is roughly 1/3 of a cycle.
My understanding is that is not the case, but I am no expert.

My understanding is that draining the last 10% or charging up the top 10% of a lithium battery puts the most stress on the battery.
Also, there charging while the batteries are not in a 'good' temperature range shortens their life.

Now, if it is simpler than that and you can simply count a 30% charge as 30% of a cycle, then 300 cycles of a 52kwh pack is about 15000kwh or about 60,000 miles.

I am closing in on 25k miles on mine. There are a number of Roadster owners with more, and quite a few with less I am sure.

My range has dropped about 3%.

I think your comparison to commodity lithium batteries is simply far to simple, and innacurate. And doesn't hold up to the real life experiences so far.

 

Thanks for correcting me I went and checked and yes the J1772 is currently only a single EVSE connection. While I've read blog posts about making custom y-connectors to use dual plugs, that's not a product. The single charger is 10kw, but the J1772 spect allows up to 80 amps@240v and the J1772 adapter is rated up to 16.5kW, so it can use the twin charger, if installed, to charge faster. Its why I was confused. Bt for now whe twin-chargers are only useful if its a high-power charging station (including the HPC at home).

300 cycles of a 160mile range EV would be 48000 miles.. they are warranted for 100,000 miles which sould be crazy if they only expected 300 cycles.

Cycle counts don't really mean anything on these batteries as what really matters is over-charge deep discharge and being charged at high-temp without TMS. Lots of partial cycles in the middle of the pack, don't equal a full cycle.

 

Time is the only thing that will tell the story, let's see how they are doing in a few years.
Some Leafs are experiencing pack degradation in hot environments, such as Arizona.

I hope there are no issues, and these cars can go 200,000 miles+

I hope my next car is a Tesla, when the more affordable 4th gen Model debuts in 2015 or so, by then we should know a lot more about pack life.

 

But we already have real life experience going back a few years. This is why I didn't understand your comparison to commodity batteries.

The Leaf uses air cooling. No management system to speak of. Comparing it to a managed system isn't much better than the commodity comparison.

 

yes time will tell. In fact Lithium systems all age, even if not used..

The single fastest way to hurt a lion battery is either total discharge (no car should let you getclsoe to that), or keeping it nearly fully charged at high temp. The Leaf issues seem to be the temperatures (and 100% charging). The Like the Volt, the Model S has thermal management of the battery, which is something the leaf does not have.

 

Yes, however, many feel the thermal management isn't needed, and in fact results in a lot of wasted power (see www.evtv.me for Jack Ricards opinions). It isn't clear than managed systems do any better than unmanaged, as lithium has a calendar shelf life degradation as well.

BMS systems complicate things, and in fact many of the battery fires are eventually traced to BMS systems malfunctioning. Yes, you need to avoid draining the pack too far, and overcharging as well.

What is the most mileage anyone has put on a Tesla Roadster, on the orignal pack, there are some from 2008, are they running with original packs, or have their packs been mostly replaced at this point? If they have been around for 4 years, this info should be availble.

 

Many?? To my knowledge, no 'in the wild' battery fires have been due to the BMS and only the one in testing resulted in a fire due to the coolant (after days to weeks).

There is a European owner with over 125000 miles on his.
There are quite a few around 30k. I have not heard of anyone needing a new pack yet. However, that is not to say any haven't been replaced, just that I am not aware of one.

There is some data at this blog
Tesla Roadster Battery Capacity Over Time and Miles - Tom Saxton's Blog

From what I have seen, charging (standard vs range) has a much bigger effect than age. Although both do affect capacity.

 

I'm guessing Toyota's design criterion was to get the same mpg on gas as a non-plug-in, and that determined the weight of the battery pack, which determined the range. It's the only thing I can imagine that would justify a 12 - 15 mile range plug-in.

Me, I wanted a Prius, so I'm happy with it compared to the longer range alternatives.

In 3 years my Entune subscription and CA carpool sticker expire, so that'd be about the right time for a longer range model.

 

68% of a typical commute from home to work is 15 miles or less, in the US. I think Prius PHV could appeal to majority, if one can recharge at work. If not, the 50 MPG gas engine can extract as much energy out of gasoline as any hybrid out there.

If I consider the packaging, price, energy efficiency including beyond tailpipe, range (total), refueling/recharging time, list of standard features, etc, Prius PHV is the plugin model that can appeal to more people than any other plugins out there. That's just my opinion. It won't be perfect to everyone, just perfect to more people than any other plugin available.

 

Mitch is wrong, battery life cannot be calculated this way.

USBseawolf has posted a couple of times a graph that shows battery aging as a function of DOD. Life increases exponentially as DOD decreases.

 

It was for NiMH though. It should apply to Lithium-ion battery, to certain extend. I have not seen any data that suggests Li-ion can hypercycle as much as NiMH.

 

Well said, now that I can agree with

As for the 68%, how many of thos do you think can plug in at work? I suspect it is less than half.

 

Thank you Sage, I didn't think so but am no expert and wanted to be sure.