BEVs deals and information

JKenH

Quite a lot of interesting stuff in this article.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/an-inconvenient-truth-about-electric-cars-sc2mxgghx


It typically costs £400,000 to build a four-pump high-power electric charging station, not including the land and cabling to connect to the grid.


How do you cope with drivers being forced to queue at service stations for fill-ups that take 30 minutes instead of five? In Norway, where some refuelling stations have removed pumps and installed chargers, drivers queue at peak times in scenes sometimes reminiscent of petrol rationing. Nearly two-thirds of Norwegian drivers report having to wait to recharge.

joefizz

Martyn1981 wrote: »

The 'real' UK prices were suggested as being from £35K for the base model, so £38k for the SR+ seems almost spot on.

The UK car was never touted at £25k, so your claim suggesting the price went from £25k to £45k is at the least wholly misleading, but bordering on entirely false.

Martyn, you must have missed my earlier posts where I linked to the info given out at the time they opened uk deposits...
You could just ask anyone who put their deposit down when they first opened to uk purchasers what they were told...

Martyn1981 wrote: »

BTW, it's a very long time since I was looking into US imports, but I seem to remember an additional cost suggesting your import figures are not complete, though I may of course now be out of date.

Im sure if you bought a Tesla US car and imported it personally to the UK then your rationale would work. However, they had always planned to sell cars directly in the UK with uk retail pricing. Sort of save you the bother to fly to america, buy one, get it to baltimore, put it on a ship, file customs documents,get it shipped ro-ro, pay HMRC and get it released to you in Southampton...
Just order it online, pay in pounds and pick it up at the dealers, plus its right hand drive.
Pay your grand deposit in 2016, pay the extra 30 odd k when you pick it up in 2018... no real need to pay import taxes etc because it will be partially assembled in holland,like the model S...

ohh wait...


Of course thats not to say that all of the above wont happen next year once the initial delivery phase is done. By all means get the cars made and shipped from the US to meet the long lead times people have already experienced and to get the good news coming in, but its not exactly green or ethical to have them shipped across the planet (no matter how little it costs). Purely from a cost reduction point of view that would make more sense, particularly as earlier models sales are dropping in favour of the model 3.
They need to really get a grip on the dealers, no dealers, dealers thing as well.



Im generally interested in why people think EVs will get cheaper, although once anyone uses the word 'assume' or 'assuming' I'll stop reading ;-)

ABrass

Why will EVs get cheaper? It's a type of economy of scale. One of the technical terms for it is the experience curve which states that if you double production then costs decrease by about 20%. It shows up in almost all sectors. In the green world look at Solar panels, wind turbines, battery prices and even nuclear power stations in China (oooh controversial!).

The actual underlying savings always varies, machinery to produce things gets better tuned. The underlying technology improves, more automation, lower fixed overheads etc.etc.etc.

For EVs the obvious savings are in the battery and powertrain. Battery chemistry is always improving by small increments. Those mount up. The power electronics used to drive motors are expensive in no small part because they haven't been mass produced. Electric motors are constantly being revised and improved etc.

The alternative is, why given all this is why do you think the price might increase? The only theory I've heard is increased raw material costs, but those make up a small part of the total costs and even given huge proportional increases they are expected to be less than the decreases above. There a detailed analysis in one of the Bloomberg reports if you're interested.

I'm assuming you read to the end?

joefizz

ABrass wrote: »

I'm assuming you read to the end?

I did, yes ;-)


I dont think the prices will go up but I dont think they will fall either. I agree with you that economies of scale will kick in and I'll partially disagree about the powertrain and control cost savings because motors and control electronics have been going for eons.
From my discussions with battery people in the summer I think that batteries are currently there or thereabouts with the likelihood that they wont get cheaper (fast extraction means they are currently getting dearer). so unless theres some sort of breakthrough that nobody I spoke to can forsee in the next few years then we are pretty much there.
Input costs will for the forseeable track fuel costs and whilst I do think FF costs will increase in the long term, they may well fall in the short term but with companies hedging the input costs years in advance we may not see any short term advantage.


Like the latest Tesla 3 updates I do see improvements in functionality, management, range etc but when you compare figures for EV production and how most are currently making a loss I would see a lot of the cost savings going into profits/paying down debts rather than being passed on to us mere mortals.


I may have mentioned this over on the home battery thread where I could see some small improvement in prices but nothing drastic until development costs are recouped and profits start being made. By then we could be into larger FF costs or larger penalties for using FF in production, hoisted by our own petard as it were.



Just interested on other peoples takes, particularly with a view on Bristol banning diesels, if and when we get a government it could be the first of many and without reasonably priced replacements it will get interesting...

ABrass

From my discussions with battery people in the summer I think that batteries are currently there or thereabouts with the likelihood that they wont get cheaper (fast extraction means they are currently getting dearer).. so unless theres some sort of breakthrough that nobody I spoke to can forsee in the next few years then we are pretty much there.

There haven't been any major breakthroughs in the last three years in battery technology yet the prices have dropped by around a half. That's even while the raw material prices have risen. Big breakthroughs are misleading, it's the small constant iterative improvement that makes the biggest difference. That comes with scale.

Not moving to solid state batteries, but reducing defects on the production line.

joefizz

ABrass wrote: »

There haven't been any major breakthroughs in the last three years in battery technology yet the prices have dropped by around a half.

This might be a case of six of one half dozen of the other but are we talking about the same thing?
Ive no reference to your point about battery prices dropping other than the bloomberg data you referenced but will that manifest in decreased prices, increased capacity (form factor will be a limiter) or increased profit?



Clarification would be great as I can give you an example of what I paid for my pylontechs 18 months ago, a year ago and what they are now. I dont think they were available 3 years ago but appreciate that if they were they would have been considerably more than I paid for them 18 months ago.
In the course of 18 months they went up 3% in six months and the current price is 10% less than I last paid a year ago.... ...the cost to ship them from England to NI has doubled in the same time (weight, prices, regulations), so effectively as far as getting them delivered to my house goes the prices have stayed pretty much the same in 18 months.


Im not disagreeing the prices for notional kwh supply unit have dropped but how much of the overall cost does this make up and will any reduction be passed on, although it may be once form factor becomes the ultimate limiting factor for a given technology.


Going by our last couple of comments, assembling for example tesla model 3s in holland would have had more of an effect on pricing than any drop in battery prices?

almillar

Most the world is urbanised and is becoming more urban not less

The context of this being that you think a hybrid, but not the ones currently on the road, are the answer. Well, if we accept the sweeping statement above, why don't we just drive round in BEVs instead - what's the point of the engine? Oh, you think it's cheaper. Please remember the cost of the gearbox, catalytic converter etc. It's not just a block you have to pay for.

This is just confirmation bias

Confirmation bias? I've just told you I refuel both a petrol and electric car. I haven't forgotten how to pump petrol!

For the average user visiting a petrol station for 5 mins once every 3-4 weeks is perfectly convenient

No. You said it was MORE convenient. I say LESS. Now you're saying it's perfectly convenient.

ABrass

For a SR model 3 with aprox 55kwh battery at $150 a kWh. That makes up $8000 odd in costs for just the battery. If you drop that cost by 10% that either means $800 more profit or lower price.

As the EV market is so supply constrained there isn't much incentive to drop prices. However the improved margins will drive more production which in turn drives down costs and eventually you should see some actual competition on price.

GreatApe

ABrass wrote: »

Why will EVs get cheaper? It's a type of economy of scale. One of the technical terms for it is the experience curve which states that if you double production then costs decrease by about 20%. It shows up in almost all sectors. In the green world look at Solar panels, wind turbines, battery prices and even nuclear power stations in China (oooh controversial!).

The actual underlying savings always varies, machinery to produce things gets better tuned. The underlying technology improves, more automation, lower fixed overheads etc.etc.etc.

For EVs the obvious savings are in the battery and powertrain. Battery chemistry is always improving by small increments. Those mount up. The power electronics used to drive motors are expensive in no small part because they haven't been mass produced. Electric motors are constantly being revised and improved etc.

The alternative is, why given all this is why do you think the price might increase? The only theory I've heard is increased raw material costs, but those make up a small part of the total costs and even given huge proportional increases they are expected to be less than the decreases above. There a detailed analysis in one of the Bloomberg reports if you're interested.

I'm assuming you read to the end?

20% decrease for a doubling of production is nonsense
It would mean 1 million EVs going to 100 million will seven doublings.
Reduce the price 20% each time and you get a price 80% vheoaer than today
So an e gold will go from £23k to £4,600..... Nonsense

A better metric is to say manufactured goods are roughly proportional to mass
A 1kg kettle is £15 a 1200kg ford is £18,000
A decent range BEV will always be at least 300-400kg heavier than an ICE so is likely to always cost more than a ICE

joefizz

ABrass wrote: »

For a SR model 3 with aprox 55kwh battery at $150 a kWh. That makes up $8000 odd in costs for just the battery.

Not directly related to our discussion but this is where it all gets into the lies, damn lies and statistics parts for me.


Whilst a kWh is a stated unit of measurement, the costs per kwh, is that nominal or delivered?
How much nominal KWh does it take each manufacturer to deliver their measured kWh.
Its probably not just enough to say that a 55kWh tesla has 10% to stop it bricking (like our house batteries) so is 62ish kWh nominal (at 150 a kwh). Or is there battery management software such that they need 20%? Who knows, they certainly wont publish.
What if their batteries (or any manufacturer, not singling out tesla) are crap and only deliver a percentage of the nominal power before heating/degrading etc etc. Who knows, they will never tell, they only care about rated power.
Form factor will limit this but as we saw with dieselgate it wouldnt surprise me to see a boost in range by just running the batteries hotter/higher chance of bricking. After all, how many people actually run cars to 250k never mind 500k (figures are published ;-))


Who is to say (again not wanting to single out any manufacturer here) that the 60kwH version of a car isnt the 90kwh version that failed qc for kwh delivered but ok software limited. Yes its a lower nominal and meets the spec but it cost just as much to put batteries in it as it did the 90kwh version (and more than 90kwh).



I could say I can produce batteries at 50 usd per kwh nominal but if the things are so crap they only actually deliver half a kwh before being knackered or drop off in half the cycles then whats the point.
Most people didnt see the point in eneloop batteries because after all 1.2v 2000mah is the same as any other 1.2v 2000mah... right?
At least with eneloops it only took about a year to work out why ;-)