Electric cars

buglawton

AdrianC wrote: »

There aren't laws on parts availability - there are "gentleman's agreements". And they say everything for 3yrs, parts required for roadworthiness for 10yrs after the end of manufacture.

They're widely ignored.

This French law sounds a little firmer that a gentleman's agreement:
https://www.connexionfrance.com/French-news/More-information-on-spare-parts
Wonder if it'll get rolled out EU-wide.

Gloomendoom

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Not sure if you are doing this deliberately or not, but the issue of 'moving parts' is extremely important as it is moving parts that wear and typically fail needing replacement.

That's why PV with no moving parts has extremely low OPEX and can balance out the higher capacity factor but also higher OPEX of wind turbines to achieve similar costs of generation when all factors are considered.

In the case of EV's 'moving parts' is something that gets mentioned one hell of a lot when discussing the reason behind the far, far lower cost of maintenance and servicing v's an ICE.

You

Moving parts - none I think.

Also it depends on your definition of a battery, since putting two batteries together gives you one battery, so you may argue that a battery is one item, or thousands of items (cells), and I suspect you will argue whatever ........ ensures an argument.

You could do the same with an IC engine. One component or hundreds?

My post was in response to bugwalton's bewilderment that the cost of EVs is not decreasing as fast has he(?) expected given that the drivetrain part count was so low. What he seems to have overlooked is that the total part count, moving or static, of an EV is probably no lower than the equivalent IC powered vehicle. Those parts need to be assembled into a car.

buglawton

I'm expecting there to be one tenth as many of the expensive to assemble moving drivetrain parts in an EV.

That parts need assembly into a car, now who'd have thought it?

Martyn1981

Gloomendoom wrote: »

You could do the same with an IC engine. One component or hundreds?

Yes you could, but only if you were absolutely desperate to maintain a failed argument or make a complete fool of yourself.

You do understand the difference between a battery with many cells, and an ICE engine with many moving parts ..... don't you?

Perhaps a simpler way to consider this is to look at wear and tear / maintenance. So, can you point me to any articles showing/proving that EV's suffer more than ICE's on wear and tear, and have higher servicing and running costs than ICE's?

[This string of posts brought to you by the spinning corpse of Mark Twain.]

buglawton

Ok so lets take the [STRIKE]trollbait[/STRIKE] trolls bait and consider the design of an EV battery. It could typically have 300 cells in it. Or 7,000 in a Tesla. But... they're all identical. The scope for automated, cheap per-cell manufacture and automated assembly is huge. So Gloom, you're comparing a segmented bar of chocolate with a Swiss watch.

Gloomendoom

Martyn1981 wrote: »

This string of posts brought to you by the spinning corpse of Mark Twain.

You are probably correct there. I ought to take heed my own sig.

AdrianC

buglawton wrote: »

This French law sounds a little firmer that a gentleman's agreement:
https://www.connexionfrance.com/French-news/More-information-on-spare-parts

Not really. Manufacturers get to say how long parts will be available - with no minimum specified - and then have to be able to supply within two months, inside that self-specified period.


Oh, and the maximum penalty is €15,000.

Wonder if it'll get rolled out EU-wide.

Not before March, that's for sure.

almillar

Another problem with the Smart for4 is that most quick charge points around here do not have the same charging plug.
Why?

There are 3. THREE quick charging plugs. Chademo, CCS and AC. The Smart uses AC, but can only go up to 7kW, or optionally, now I think, 22kw. Those quick charge points should be giving 43kw AC. If they're not, it's short sighted of the network to cut out a large part of the market (Renault Zoe).

All this talk of getting rid of different plugs - it's not that hard, there aren't that many. We're able to navigate between diesel, petrol and super UL, why not 3 plugs?!

I'll simply repeat, EV has a small fraction of drivetrain parts. And as I already said, battery is a well known cost element hence the battery leasing deals. Logically the manufacturing costs should be as low/lower than ICE. Are EV manufacturers factoring into the price the lost revenue from all the consumables and servicing that won't exist?

You're just making things up though. Manufacturers mostly seem to be LOSING money on their EVs - Renault proudly announced a wee while ago that they were actually making a profit on their EVs. Short answer, batteries are expensive, and the fewer parts involved doesn't make up for that. And ICE cars still benefit from ecomomies of scale. And Martyn makes a good point - You're not getting the car at a lower price, you're getting more battery for the same price. There's a quest for range. Would you rather Renault continued to provide the 22kWh Zoe cheaper and cheaper, in line with battery prices, or introduce a 41kwh battery version, for roughly the same price? People seem to want range.

I've never had an electronic device that has mysteriously broken down no matter how old

You're talking about low voltage circuit boards and chips. Stick some high voltage, relays and moving parts in there, and rattle it around on the road, and of course you can have unreliability. Trying to say that valves are reliable shows how daft your argument is.

To argue that automotive electronics are reliable, is to completely ignore all the electrical problems that ICE cars have. EVs have MOST of those electronics too, plus a whole new high voltage system replacing the mechanical, but mature technology, ICE.

buglawton

almillar wrote: »

There are 3. THREE quick charging plugs. Chademo, CCS and AC. The Smart uses AC, but can only go up to 7kW, or optionally, now I think, 22kw. Those quick charge points should be giving 43kw AC. If they're not, it's short sighted of the network to cut out a large part of the market (Renault Zoe).

All this talk of getting rid of different plugs - it's not that hard, there aren't that many. We're able to navigate between diesel, petrol and super UL, why not 3 plugs?!

You're just making things up though. Manufacturers mostly seem to be LOSING money on their EVs - Renault proudly announced a wee while ago that they were actually making a profit on their EVs. Short answer, batteries are expensive, and the fewer parts involved doesn't make up for that. And ICE cars still benefit from ecomomies of scale. And Martyn makes a good point - You're not getting the car at a lower price, you're getting more battery for the same price. There's a quest for range. Would you rather Renault continued to provide the 22kWh Zoe cheaper and cheaper, in line with battery prices, or introduce a 41kwh battery version, for roughly the same price? People seem to want range.

You're talking about low voltage circuit boards and chips. Stick some high voltage, relays and moving parts in there, and rattle it around on the road, and of course you can have unreliability. Trying to say that valves are reliable shows how daft your argument is.

To argue that automotive electronics are reliable, is to completely ignore all the electrical problems that ICE cars have. EVs have MOST of those electronics too, plus a whole new high voltage system replacing the mechanical, but mature technology, ICE.

I don't recall saying that manufactures are making big, or any profits on EV. Can you direct me to where I 'made something up'?

Now, we all know that current ICE carmakers see wafer-thin profits on many of their volume models. And that's after outsourcing much manufacture to low cost countries and after working within the same mechanical sphere for a large part of a century. They are working with well-known costs and incremental change. They factor in profits from spares and servicing too, to arrive at a total viability equation.

EV carmakers can do their accounting in any way they like, they can put the whole R&D bill into a chosen number of years to write off. There are 'pharmaceutical' and 'start-up' accounting models.

In the 'pharmaceutical' concept a clear number of years to write off R&D is set,,initial prices for a new drug are high, it drops when they decide and when patent expiry draws near.

In the startup model, initial prices are set aggressively low, market share is all, profits will hopefully follow. R&D is funded by venture capital or even crowdfunding.

I have no idea how an EV loses money for it's manufacturer. Of course it's plausible in a young industry. Have they disclosed their accounting model?

I'll stick with my original premise: Logic means that EV prices should drop to below ICE as the industry matures. Cost of long term ownership should drop much lower than ICE.

I think there's room for major disruptors who aren't hampered by fears of cannibalising their existing ICE market to enter the bread and butter EV market. I think these disruptors do see the same lower cost manufacturing opportunity that I do.

Coincidentally, in this mornings news:
James Dyson to invest £2.5bn on 'radically different' electric car
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/26/james-dyson-electric-car-2020

Gloomendoom

buglawton wrote: »

Ok so lets take the trollbait...

Interesting definition of troll bait on urban dictionary...

The term 'troll bait' describes a type of trolling commonly found on the internet. 'Troll bait' is used to describe an internet user who knowingly invites the hatred of a highly reactionary group of trolls. A common characteristic of all troll bait is that they do things that are known to invite swarms of trolls (e.g. Creating pointless and incendiary videos, calling out entire troll communities). They do this because they find the constant anger and hate from trolls amusing, especially since this form of trolling is a form of troll hunting (or counter-trolling). Any type of troll bait usually causes trolls to fall into their own trap (getting annoyed and becoming upset).