Featured Americans insist on 300 miles of EV range. They’re right

All Good points....Which is why this is a dream garage....IMHO..

Something for every drive that pops up....LOL So Far I only own one.

 

My original opinion remains unchanged, "Don't get an EV because you are not bright enough to understand it:" Yes, owning an EV means being bright enough to understand and exploit the differences. Not everyone is up to the challenge. EVs are different but if your thinking is unable to adapt, don't do it.

Bob Wilson

 

Thank you for sharing your opinion. Obviously, I don't agree with you. There seems to be absolutely nothing in common in our values. I have learned a lot of technical know-how from you, especially early days when I first joint the forum and I was a total novice about the Prius, hybrid, and electric vehicles. I appreciated your analytical skills and experimentation and data presentations. But there is no longer anything I can learn from you. I am putting you on the "ignore" list.

 

We will both be happier.

Bob Wilson

 

I have just read this long discussion on the viability of EVs for all. I would not be able to have an EV as my only vehicle. My significant other gets nervous whenever our Prius (the long trip car) gets down to half a tank and requires me to fill up even before the biologic needs trigger a stop. She would be a nervous wreck if we drove an EV. Our second car (her Subaru Crosstrek) would be a good candidate for an EV replacement as it seldom needs to drive far in a day, but she will not consider one. So I, a confirmed 80 year old techie, will probably never have an EV in spite of our governmental edicts.

JeffD

ps. She also nixed getting solar on our roof. We've been married 55 years so there are compensations.

 

I'm not sure how to connect the two parts of that.

I'm thankful there are service members purporting to protect me against military threats. It's probably just as well they don't do that by giving their weapons and equipment to me and then marching into action in their socks.

I'm thankful for people here who purport to protect me against unsafe water supply. They send me a report every year about what's in the water. That's probably going better with them doing it than it would be going if they gave their test equipment and supplies to me and then tried to do their jobs without it.

But a person purporting to protect me against economic threats can only be doing so by giving her wealth to me?

She's got $12 mil, ok, that's more than me (I don't have 11 published books) and would sure go a long way on my budget (I live in one cheap part of the country, instead of having a job requiring me to live in two expensive ones). I'm not sure how much of that of that is enough and how much is too much, for her situation.

Meanwhile, leeching money out of financially struggling people (where do we start counting the ways? payday loans? non-amortizing mortgages? retroactive insurance rescission? surprise billing? ...) is way more than a $12 million business. Having somebody stay on the job protecting the "poor downtrodden" (or me) from that kind of nonsense is worth a lot more than the $12 million drop in the bucket she could make by flaming out and giving it all away.

 

You may be outsmarting yourself.

 

You may be dodging a pretty straightforward question. When you write

are you saying that giving away your own wealth to people facing economic threats is the only way, or even an especially effective way, of protecting those people against those threats?

 

Sounds like it's that, or pay the same increase in the form of higher costs for fossil fuels. What the utilities are paying to these community solar companies is what they would pay to get the same amount of electricity from a natural gas plant.

Be nice if the lower actual cost got passed on to the public. How much solar would have been installed without this incentive? Would the utility company actually pass on the lower costs for solar they pay to their customers? Seems like the people are going to be paying more for electric no matter what.

With the lack of grid metering, I'm thinking this blaming of solar for prices is really the utility company scapegoating them. They could be losing out on profits for using their own NG plants, but the fear of decentralized power generation is enough for power companies to sabotage solar in other states.

Whataboutism?
Attack the messenger?

 

Do you actually drive over 275-300 mi before having to stop to eat &/or pee &/or stretch? If not, then what's the point.
btw ..... our 2016 model S & 2018 x were charged off our fully amortized pv - so each 280ish mile range refill was free .... a $40 savings e/ refill time. Hard to beat free .... unless the station is actually paying you $$ to take their gasoline.
.

 

Relevance to EVs?

During our off-Interstate sightseeing / exploring / hiking adventures, most of that is decoupled from refueling, happening at places lacking even gas stations, let alone any EV charging, rapid or slow. Restaurants are typically an infrequent evening splurge, taking place after checking into lodging, and after grocery shopping to cover the next few days. Meals are usually prepared and packed in the evening for the next driving or outdoor activity day.

Even when going point-to-point on-Interstate, pee & stretch breaks take only five to ten minutes. Eat? Passenger eats while driver drives. Or both eat while out for better exercise at a roadside point of interest or short hiking or interpretive trail selected for scenic or historic interest, almost never situated near a gas or charging station. Apart from overnight lodging, grocery shopping (after checking into lodging), or skiing at developed (not back country) venues, there is typically no block of time where we are parked anyplace long enough for common EV charging, that actually has any kind of refueling service available, fossil or electric.

People who stay near Interstates or other major highway corridors, and always buy and eat their meals in restaurants or other eateries, or have casinos as their primary travel activity, are reasonably likely to make the existing Supercharger network fit their needs. But for us, that would be a very major change to our travel style, precluding much of what we currently do. At least until major Inflation Reduction Act infrastructure upgrades actually get implemented. Which, at the typical speeds of government bureaucracy, may well not be soon enough for our aging senior bodies. As retired seniors, we need those now, or in the next couple years, not after our outdoor activity years are curtailed as we start scouting out assisted living facilities or nursing homes.

PHEVs can very nicely cover our short drive days fossil-free, while allowing us to still keep up our current off-grid activities. And have a true BEV that stays closer to home. With decent range, it can even cover half of our day hikes from home.

 

None.

300 miles is 4 hours more or less.
---mostly less if you have a three-digit IQ because what sane person on a road trip intentionally stops to load fuel at DTE=0?

SO....

You can stop, dump bilges, grab a snack or beverage, and be back on the road again in 20-minutes OR you can do all of those things AND add as much as (X=a lot less than 300) miles in that same time period.

If you're on a vaca and you're not especially worried about how often you stop or how long each event lasts?
No big deal.

Just remember.
Liars may figure but figures don't lie!

L2 chargers operate at 208-240 V or MAYBE about 20kW, and this gives you the ability to stuff amps in the can at about 30 miles per hour - optimally, according to my back of the envelope math.
That's 10 hours to get 300 miles.

or?
You can use Fast DC Charging on a trip.

HOWEVER (comma!!!)
There's a price for that.
Battery Degradation.
According to the Googles....
A car battery charged exclusively by DC will have 70% of its original capacity by 50,000 miles. In contrast, a car charged exclusively by AC will have 75% of its original capacity by 50,000 miles. Therefore at 50,000 miles of use, there’s a small 3-5% difference in capacity change between exclusively AC charged and exclusively DC charged batteries in controlled tests. However that difference is dwarfed by the overall drop of both by 25% capacity over 50,000 miles.

Notice anything about that article?
More Specifically, do you notice anything MISSING?
How about the word "fast?"

A 30% (or 35%) percent battery degradation @ 50,000 miles may not mean that much to some people.
OTOH, it might be a deal-breaker to others.
This means that a car with 50,000 miles on the clock will be much easier for older drivers to own, since that 300 mile biologics break will have diminished to a little over 200 miles...FOR SOME.

Others, who are "bright enough to understand and exploit the differences" may be able to slow that decline.

There are advantages and disadvantages to being an EVangelist.

 

The exact voltage and power varies but my Tesla gains 28 to 31 miles per hour on an L2. Less efficient EVs get less because of their relatively poorer efficiency.

My Tesla NMC battery chemistry locks up part of the lithium in normal operation but it locks up more lithium as the internal cell voltage increases. For example, my 106,000 mile, 4 year old, NMC battery pack is down about 9%, 215 mi, versus the original 240 mi. The key is never charging at home over 75-80% unless going out of town the next day.

There is a newer LiFePO battery chemistry that probably has lower rates of losing lithium at full charge. I'm open minded but have one nagging doubt. The exceptionally flat discharge voltage curve would make going to 100% charge a crude workaround for predicting range.

Bob Wilson

 

... a very Procrustean response to our vacation travel style.

 

I don't have any lithium in the game, which is why I cited the Googles.
Looks like they nailed it on L2 charging.

Yep.
Best practices...really ARE, sometimes.
You beat the house's battery degradation guestimates by a wide margin because you have the good common sense not to live in inhospitably cold places, and your use case, which DOES include sojourns to the home sod, lends itself to a vehicle with a 200 mile tank range more or less.
Even with gas well below $3 you're probably doing so more cheaply than somebody rolling a $20,000 car that gets 30 real-world mpg.

@ LiFePO
Lithium iron phosphate looks VERY promising for power walls.
Not sure how it will scale up to frequent deep charge/discharge cycling or temperature swings.
They're (non-trivially?) less energy dense than Li-Ion and more expensive (for now) but also more chemically stable.
Claims of 10,000 charge-Discharge cycles (vice 3,000) and a longer calendar life look interesting.....so we will see.

 

I thought heat contributed to degradation, not cold

 

All things in moderation.....

Remember..Li-ion batteries are different than the cells in a wireless G3.
YOUR battery is a 4.4kWh lithium ion array, while the standard model has a 1.3kWh nickel metal hydride battery pack.
SO...
Nickel–metal hydride cells can operate in the temperature range of –20 to 45 °C. But above 45 °C, the charge efficiency falls steeply, and this will shorten cell life. The optimal temperature range for lithium – ion battery operation is between 15 to 35°C and I've seen papers with operating ranges well beyond 40 °C What this means in the real world is that even while we're suffering through the effects of AGW, it's much more likely that lithium packs will be degraded by local weather that is below 0°C than above 45°C

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327966044_Review_Of_Comparative_Battery_Energy_Storage_Systems_Bess_For_Energy_Storage_Applications_In_Tropical_Enviroments#pf4

 

Whenever government asks for all to change there will be problems. plug-in buyers as a whole are younger than hybrid buyers. That isn't really a problem if you want to get to 50%, but going past that we get a lot of stickyness. Your mariage happiness far outweighs getting a plug in. Incentives are also their for phevs and that solves the nervousness factor, but again pricing and availability put these out of reach for many.

BEVs and even BEVs and PHEVs aren't for everyone. In 20 years maybe there will not be a need to sell any new non plug-in ice vehicles, but there will be those that want an engine and government should not restrict them.

 

Oka

, but is that degradation, or just reduced capacity?

 

Li-ion at or below 0C can be damaged by charging. They can be discharged then, without any problems beyond the reduced efficiency. -20C seems to be the limit for discharging. Discharging will lead to the cell warming up though. Which is why taking a Tesla not charging because of the cold for a short, fast drive will let it start charging.

This is why nearly all plug ins have some type of battery heater, and some will refuse charging when too cold.

Cold will cause a temporary reduction in capacity. Charging at that those low temperatures can lead to lithium plating on the anode. That can result in the battery malfunctioning. Specifically what the malfunction is depends on how the metal deposits. It could be degradation of permanent capacity, or a short that just kills the cell. The plating can't be reversed.