Electric Vehicle Thread!

[Albuquerque]

Rented (www.turo.com) a 2021 Tesla Model Y to drive from Memphis TN to Benton Harbor MI over the 4th of July week. A few notes from my trip:

• I left town at 100% charge, as the guy I rented from knew I was taking it on a road trip. He asked me to put it back to 85% max charge when i got to my destination, to help with battery longevity. Being my (and my wife's) first EV experience, we had at least some range anxiety.
• The Tesla charging network is pretty damned amazing to me. Using the inbuilt navigation system, it knew where the chargers were, how many of the chargers were in use, how fast the chargers would go, and how long I'd need to stay there before I could leave and go to the next stop. Twice during our trip the inbuilt nav "rerouted" us to a different charger under the auspices of it saving time because less people were there.
• Charging is never to "full", it's always to some incremental step -- enough to get you to your next hop. This works really well actually, as it minimizes your time waiting, also ensures the battery fills fast (a battery at 25% charges faster than a battery at 75%.) Also if you're using the inbuilt nav, the battery is already preheated when you roll into the charging location -- so another few minutes chopped off the total time you need to be there.
• By the time we made it to our destination, it was obvious that range anxiety wasn't real. Our trip was near-entirely through serious "middle of nowhere" areas -- I55 north out of Memphis, over to I57 north to Chicago and then across to Benton Harbor on some local state road. There are no big cities anywhere in the route between Memphis and Chicago, it's praries and farm land as far as the eye can see. We left at 100% and stopped to charge at around 25%, never charging again beyond about 75% to make to the next hop. We stopped a total of four times; the 2nd stop was us staying overnight at a hotel to break up the 650 mile one-way trip.
• Each of the stops was somewhere adjacent to a store or a restaurant or a tourist attraction where we the kids could pee, we could grab a snack, and we could comfortably stretch our legs.
• The entire 1470 mile trip cost us $114 USD for charging. That's 7.75 cents per mile, or a gas-equivalent (assuming $4.50/gal for the cheap stuff where we live) of 58mpg.

The car was really easy to drive, the autopilot functions were pretty fun to play with, the acceleration is fast and eerily smooth unlike any car I've driven before. The one-pedal driving did take a bit of extra brain cycles to understand at first, but after a few starts and stops it became intuitive enough.

 

[wco81]

I would never buy a Tesla but the charging network advantage is going to be hard for other brands to overcome.

That's one thing you have to worry about, whether the place where you'd stay overnight has a way to charge the car. But with a strong network, you charge nearest your accommodation and then don't have to worry about it.

 

[Albuquerque]

Yup, wife and I agree with you. The Tesla itself could easily be replaced with an Audi eTron Q4 or Ford Mach-E or the upcoming Polestar 3. The real hangup is the shite state of the non-Tesla EV charging network in the US. Some day, someone is going to solve it and that will be the end of Tesla's hegemony.

As a multi-vehicle homeowner, an EV makes perfect sense for my wife's typical use case of running errands all around town. We'll probably end up with the Q4 or the Polestar by the end of this year, and then we'll drop a NEMA L14-50 recepticle into the garage. It just so happens our garage is also where our main power panel lives, so the electrical work will be cake.

 

[iroboto]

Yup, wife and I agree with you. The Tesla itself could easily be replaced with an Audi eTron Q4 or Ford Mach-E or the upcoming Polestar 3. The real hangup is the shite state of the non-Tesla EV charging network in the US. Some day, someone is going to solve it and that will be the end of Tesla's hegemony.

As a multi-vehicle homeowner, an EV makes perfect sense for my wife's typical use case of running errands all around town. We'll probably end up with the Q4 or the Polestar by the end of this year, and then we'll drop a NEMA L14-50 recepticle into the garage. It just so happens our garage is also where our main power panel lives, so the electrical work will be cake.

The best part of EV. Is the charging at home. Get out. Plug in. Close garage. Never worry about the price of gas. Never need to line up. No more oil stains. No annual fluid changes. Never need to worry if you left your kids in the car while the garage closes. The AC turns on by itself to keep pets and people alive if a temperature threshold is reached. Lots of huge benefits for a family especially for young children who typically nap in the car.

 

[orangpelupa]

The best part of EV. Is the charging at home. Get out. Plug in. Close garage. Never worry about the price of gas. Never need to line up. No more oil stains. No annual fluid changes. Never need to worry if you left your kids in the car while the garage closes. The AC turns on by itself to keep pets and people alive if a temperature threshold is reached. Lots of huge benefits for a family especially for young children who typically nap in the car.

And electric cars are available in all kinds of design. Whether people want normal looking or unique/eye catching looking electric car or anything in between.

I personally overly bored with the design of ICE cars. They are too samey

 

[wco81]

The best part of EV. Is the charging at home. Get out. Plug in. Close garage. Never worry about the price of gas. Never need to line up. No more oil stains. No annual fluid changes. Never need to worry if you left your kids in the car while the garage closes. The AC turns on by itself to keep pets and people alive if a temperature threshold is reached. Lots of huge benefits for a family especially for young children who typically nap in the car.

In theory, it's very convenient.

But there are some caveats, like the possibility of rolling blackouts in some places this summer. For instance, TX just warned that there might be blackouts this week because of very high temperatures. People are being asked to dial down their AC and commercial users are also being asked to reduce their electricity use.

Hell even bitcoin miners have said they will pause their mining.

The other thing is, some cars have had problems with defective batteries and there is increased chance for cars catching on fire so I think it was GM that advised customers not to park inside or near their homes for awhile while the Bolt was being recalled for problematic batteries?

Some of these are teething pains so EVs will eventually become reliable.

 

[AlphaWolf]

In theory, it's very convenient.

But there are some caveats, like the possibility of rolling blackouts in some places this summer. For instance, TX just warned that there might be blackouts this week because of very high temperatures. People are being asked to dial down their AC and commercial users are also being asked to reduce their electricity use.

Hell even bitcoin miners have said they will pause their mining.

The other thing is, some cars have had problems with defective batteries and there is increased chance for cars catching on fire so I think it was GM that advised customers not to park inside or near their homes for awhile while the Bolt was being recalled for problematic batteries?

Some of these are teething pains so EVs will eventually become reliable.

Rolling blackouts could actually be a significant perk of an ev. If you're wired for it you can run your home during the brownout off the ev and recharge during off peak.

 

[orangpelupa]

with solar cell getting cheaper and cheaper, when V2X standard is finally widely implemented, black outs will be much less of an issue.

but how many years for V2X to flourish? currently there's only IONIQ 5 with V2L that designed to not power a home, but does allows you to power a home, but its cumbersome to setup

IONIQ 5 also use NMC (or NCM?) battery instead of LFP, so it will add more stress / reduce life span to the battery, dunno how much.

 

[wco81]

The big one is the Ford Lightning F-150. That has an option to let you plug things in, not sure about powering up the home though.

 

[AlphaWolf]

The big one is the Ford Lightning F-150. That has an option to let you plug things in, not sure about powering up the home though.

I think many of the new evs have built in inverters to plug stuff in. The lightning does shine in that respect as it has a pile of outlets.

The lightning is also actually better at powering a home as it home charges at 80amps meaning electric appliances won't be off limits.

 

[iroboto]

In theory, it's very convenient.

I would say in application it's very convenient. Outside of emergency charging, I've not had an issue with it. That being said, leaving a EV out in -40 over night is a sure fire way to toss away your battery power.

There are pains with the early adoption of EVs it doesn't have as many years as ICE vehicles in terms of R&D, but we're getting there quickly, hopefully over the next 5 years the major issues are addressed, ie cold battery. But over time we would see just better battery safety, ie Fires.

 

[iroboto]

I think many of the new evs have built in inverters to plug stuff in. The lightning does shine in that respect as it has a pile of outlets.

The lightning is also actually better at powering a home as it home charges at 80amps meaning electric appliances won't be off limits.

That's huge

 

[wco81]

Sales are accelerating.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1546840559133794306

 

[orangpelupa]

I would say in application it's very convenient. Outside of emergency charging, I've not had an issue with it. That being said, leaving a EV out in -40 over night is a sure fire way to toss away your battery power.

There are pains with the early adoption of EVs it doesn't have as many years as ICE vehicles in terms of R&D, but we're getting there quickly, hopefully over the next 5 years the major issues are addressed, ie cold battery. But over time we would see just better battery safety, ie Fires.

i wonder if its more about scales?

like... making a good battery is good for worldwide, but making a battery that work good in low temperature would only good for some part of the world. so more r&d on overall battery improvement, less r&d for specific improvement for low temperature

 

[Albuquerque]

Pretty much all of our battery technology is chemistry-based, and every chemical reaction slows in colder temperatures. The trick will be to find newer chemistry which is affected "less" by the temperature swings we humans expect to live in. This is also why nuclear batteries make a lot of sense in space, because the heat itself becomes the energy source against the nearly-absolute-zero temperature of the surrounding space.

Can't imagine using nuclear pile batteries for cars anytime soon

 

[iroboto]

Pretty much all of our battery technology is chemistry-based, and every chemical reaction slows in colder temperatures. The trick will be to find newer chemistry which is affected "less" by the temperature swings we humans expect to live in. This is also why nuclear batteries make a lot of sense in space, because the heat itself becomes the energy source against the nearly-absolute-zero temperature of the surrounding space.

Can't imagine using nuclear pile batteries for cars anytime soon

Yea I think having some sort of heating element would also help. Of which I understand are in the newer EVs. The older ones have to deal with the cold.

 

[Albuquerque]

Yes, the newer EVs (at least the Teslas) have heating elements in them. The challenge then becomes: how much offset exists between the cold temperature killing the battery output, versus the battery running a resistive heating element to heat itself to keep the output up. Made up example:

Warming the battery: +40% power output?
Powering the battery warmer: +40% power consumption?

Obviously it depends on the temperature outside, insulative properties of the battery shell, total surface area of the battery exposed to the cold temperatures, other power draw on the system competing against the heating power draw, etc. At some temperature point it just doesn't make sense any longer.

 

[orangpelupa]

Yeah like the dilemma NASA faced with their helicopter on Mars. IIRC in the end they decided to allow the battery to go down to much lower temperature than originally planned

 

[tuna]

This is pretty impressive (new Tesla structural battery pack):

 

[Jawed]

I'm deeply impressed by the design detail in Lucid's Air.