Electric Vehicle Thread!

[wco81]

Norway has the fastest adoption of EVs of any nation in the world. But the seeds of this transition were planted in the '80s, long before EVs started shipping in volume, just within the past decade.

Norway came to lead the world in electric car take-up. In 2023, 82.4% of private vehicles sold in the country were electric. In January, the figure was 92.1%. The goal is to hit 100% by next year.

Meanwhile, in the UK, a ban on new petrol and diesel cars was recently pushed back from 2030 to 2035. Just 14.7% of new cars registered in January were electric. The situation in the EU is even worse: 10.9% of cars sold there in January were electric.
Why Stavanger? Because, as well as – irony alert! – being its oil capital, Norway’s third city, in the south-west of the country, has been pivotal in its road towards zero-emission transportation. They tried electric buses here in 1994. In 1998, the city was part of a European trial of electric vehicles (EVs) for goods distribution. In 2009, it was the first Scandinavian city to host the biannual Electric Vehicle Symposium.

It’s also where not-the-king Harald lives: that’s Harald Nils Røstvik, an architect who is now an emeritus professor of city and regional planning at the University of Stavanger. He has also played a significant role in Norway’s EV revolution.

Read in The Guardian: https://apple.news/AyqnDodWmRyOB5ycoYezfGQ

Interesting article about how some true believers, including members of the musical group a-Ha, were instrumental in popularizing EVs in the country, a combination of activism and civil disobedience.

But embedded in this history is the fact that it's apparently prohibitive to buy an ICE car because of high taxes, much of it based on the expected emissions of the car.

So people buying EVs don't have to pay any of these emissions taxes. It's not clear if they have other incentives, like tax credits or other subsidies.

 

[Davros]

Heres a question how much range do you lose by being in a cold country like Norway

 

[cheapchips]

Heres a question how much range do you lose by being in a cold country like Norway

I don't know for sure, but I suspect they'll end up stuck with an empty battery at the Foot of the Mountain, Hunting High and Low for a charger, wishing they could Move to Memphis.

A-Ha never released the single ,"-20 temperatures are likely to reduce range by half, but that doesn't matter for most journeys that people make." Odd, as it seems like a sure fire hit.

 

[Albuquerque]

Heres a question how much range do you lose by being in a cold country like Norway

Obviously depends on a few things, like if you let the battery stay outside and freeze and do you allow it to warm up before driving away? Our Tesla Model Y uses a more modern heat pump system for heating, so it's a lot less "hit" from the cold than a resistive heating setup. We also tend to have the car plugged whenever we're home during the cold months, so getting it warmed up before we leave vastly minimizes the range losses.

And to @cheapchips point, if you're commuting less than 200 miles on a given day and can charge at a reasonable rate at home (eg not a simple wall outlet) you probably aren't going to notice the lack of range.

 

[orangpelupa]

turns out hyundai fast-tracked their battery factory with LG for this year for full capacity production, and fast tracked their LFP battery from 2025/2026 in the original plan to this year too. unknown whether this year the LFP will be full capacity production or just pilots.

so this could mean their cheaper cars: hyundai ioniq 3 and ioniq 4, kia EV3 and EV4 would be released in 2024/2025.

their roadmap for egmp refresh is on-track as scheduled, with ioniq 5 refresh this year.

Heres a question how much range do you lose by being in a cold country like Norway

bjorn got lots of tests https://www.youtube.com/user/bjornnyland

Public – Google Drive

drive.google.com

specifically this sheet https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...MzvvWJHrBS82echMVJH37kwgjE/edit#gid=735351678

 

[MfA]

Heres a question how much range do you lose by being in a cold country like Norway

It depends if it's water or air cooled and how warm the battery is when you start.

If EVs start being designed for extreme cold, they will simply insulate the battery packs with vacuum panels. Then the batteries won't get cold under normal circumstances.

 

[Davros]

But then they'll be buggered when the batteries overheat

 

[wco81]

US is making the same mistakes with EV batteries that they've made with solar panels.

Insisting on restoring EV battery manufacturing threatens to make the US fall way behind the world in EV adoption.

CATL of China is now being targeted by Marco Rubio and people of his ilk, demagoguing, useless politicians.

The domestic EV battery manufacturing industry can't come close to CATL's scale or the R&D they've done in more advanced chemistries.

Regardless, experts agree there is no clear roadmap for the US to decarbonise its streets without cheap Chinese EV batteries – most likely from CATL or its main rival, BYD.

Michael Dunne, the founder of Dunne Insights, an EV consultancy, says the US is “years behind when it comes to batteries, battery supply chains, critical minerals. This is where our cupboard is bare.”

Dunne says there is now a “sense of urgency” in the US to build up domestic battery capacity but that it would take between five and 10 years to catch up with China. That may not be fast – or cheap – enough to achieve Biden’s goal of two-thirds of new car sales being EVs by 2032.

Last week, energy secretary Jennifer Granholm told a discussion panel: “We are very concerned about China bigfooting our industry in the United States even as we’re building up now this incredible backbone of manufacturing.”

But Granholm also acknowledged that “we need to understand that it is important for people to buy electric vehicles in an affordable fashion,” something that experts say is impossible in the current market without Chinese batteries.

CATL, the little-known Chinese battery maker that has the US worried

It is the world’s biggest battery maker, it powers electric vehicles for Tesla, Volkswagen and BMW, and its EV technology is miles ahead of US offerings, say experts

www.theguardian.com

Between 2022 and 2023, Chinese overseas investment in the EV supply chain in north America decreased from $4.8bn to $2.7bn, according to Rhodium, “driven by regulatory uncertainty and fears over political backlash”.

Le says: “The national security aspect of it needs to be examined. That’s part of due diligence. But we also know that we don’t want to cut our nose off to spite our face either.”

CATL declined to be interviewed, but referred the Guardian to a statement published in December: “Accusations about CATL batteries posing security threats are false and misleading. As a global technology company, CATL welcomes responsible discourse on important safety and security issues, and we take questions about our business seriously. CATL’s business and products in the US do not collect, sell, or share data, and cannot directly interact with electrical grid or any other critical infrastructure.”

Not that the xenophobes care but they may not grasp the bolded.

 

[nutball]

Not that the xenophobes care but they may not grasp the bolded.

Xenos? Or just can't wean themselves off the $$$s from the oil and gas industry that end up in their campaign funds and off-shore bank accounts?

 

[cheapchips]

Not that the xenophobes care but they may not grasp the bolded.

Batteries will be critical infrastructure though. They might be screwing up the implementation, but US need to have 'battery security', for want of a better term.

 

[wco81]

Batteries will be critical infrastructure though. They might be screwing up the implementation, but US need to have 'battery security', for want of a better term.

Sure but the argument is that other countries aren't in a position to produce at scale nor produce at as low a cost. That means the adoption is slowed down, possibly by over a decade.

China has also locked up key resources like cobalt -- not sure about nickel and some others.

 

[Mariner]

No doubt that the western countries have been lax in letting the Chinese do most of the work on battery development and manufacturing.

Regarding scarcity of important minerals for batteries, I think there is little doubt that Sodium Ion is the solution for many markets, but again, the Chinese companies have been the ones to push forward fastest with this new technology.

It's interesting that interventionism by the Chinese state has certainly helped these companies gain a foothold to develop the ability to dominate the market whereas the laissez-faire of the west (thanks to the nonsensical neoliberal economic consensus), has left companies struggling to match their counterparts. But, remember folks - anything the state does is bad, apparently.

 

[cheapchips]

No doubt that the western countries have been lax in letting the Chinese do most of the work on battery development and manufacturing.

There's plenty of lab research in the West. It's the manufacturing that's the real issue.

Mining as well. It's not like any of the materials required for battery production are rare in the absolute sense.

 

[Mariner]

There's plenty of lab research in the West. It's the manufacturing that's the real issue.

Mining as well. It's not like any of the materials required for battery production are rare in the absolute sense.

It doesn't matter what you know, if you can't do anything with it!

It would take decades to catch up with the manufacturing capacity of the big Chinese battery companies and there doesn't really seem to be the intent for this to happen. Not an enormous problem, as long as the Chinese remain friendly, but we're effectively in hock to them for the foreseeable future for most things requiring batteries, whichever way you look at things.

 

[Sxotty]

It doesn't matter what you know, if you can't do anything with it!

It would take decades to catch up with the manufacturing capacity of the big Chinese battery companies and there doesn't really seem to be the intent for this to happen. Not an enormous problem, as long as the Chinese remain friendly, but we're effectively in hock to them for the foreseeable future for most things requiring batteries, whichever way you look at things.

Maybe we can just focus on recycling then. We'll have oodles of material to recycle soon.

We sort of tried buying an outlander phev, but the dealer was being a dork so we left. Maybe another dealer.

 

[orangpelupa]

Sure but the argument is that other countries aren't in a position to produce at scale nor produce at as low a cost. That means the adoption is slowed down, possibly by over a decade.

China has also locked up key resources like cobalt -- not sure about nickel and some others.

Indonesia is pretty hellbent in becoming the source of nickel and nickel based battery. There are like 2-3 battery plants planned, and 1 by lg-Hyundai is already online.

They target 90% production capacity for export, the BEV that are released locally are mainly using made in China LFP.

 

[wco81]

OTOH, I hear renewable energy generation is very low in Indonesia and they produce a lot of carbon emissions.

 

[wco81]

Tesla just reported a sequential decline of 100k cars sold in Q1 2024.

Also first time year over year numbers are down since 2020, despite massive discounting last year.

Tesla’s year-over-year sales dropped for the first time since 2020

Tesla blames production ramps and overseas delays.

www.theverge.com

Meanwhile, Tesla brand image has been on the decline, at least some of the decline attributed to you know who.

While Tesla continued to post strong sales growth last year, helped by aggressive price cuts, the electric-vehicle maker is expected to report weak quarterly sales as early as Tuesday.

Caliber's "consideration score" for Tesla, provided exclusively to Reuters, fell to 31% in February, less than half its high of 70% in November 2021 when it started tracking consumer interest in the brand.

Tesla's consideration score fell 8 percentage points from January alone even as Caliber's scores for Mercedes (MBGn.DE), BMW (BMWG.DE) and Audi, which produce gas as well as EV models, inched up during that same period, reaching 44-47%.

Tesla did not respond to a request for comment. Musk in the past has blamed high-interest rates for curbing consumer demand for big ticket items like cars.

Caliber cited strong associations between Tesla's reputation and that of Musk for the scores.

Read in Reuters: https://apple.news/A3a-HqLQWS4ehrMc5FwIX7w

 

[orangpelupa]

Still no real news of cheaper cars that are upcoming, whether they are still coming or delayed
- Hyundai / Kia ima (or imv) platform based cars with LFP battery
- tesla model 2
- new citroen

Not sure with the upcoming cars from China brands.

 

[Mariner]

Sodium ion just beginning to enter production, I think, which ought to drop the price for lower-range models. The batteries should be a lot cheaper than even LFP.