Battery Electric Vehicle News / Enjoying the Transportation Revolution

JKenH

Toyota Has a New EV Strategy. 

On the other hand, Toyota is the world’s first maker to guarantee its EV battery will retain 90 percent of its rated range after 10 years. That’s a real plus for first-time buyers concerned about range loss since it’s one of the main concerns of those considering an EV.

https://www.thedrive.com/tech/43978/toyota-has-a-new-ev-strategy-heres-where-we-think-its-headed

Grumpy_chap

JKenH said:

Electric Vehicles Emit Less Carbon, On Average, than Combustion Engine Vehicles

Fuels Institute Releases Research Comparing Life Cycle Emissions of Different Vehicles

Over a 200,000-mile life cycle, 

...
200k miles.
Is that the realistic life of the average car, whether ICE or EV?
Given it is not just the drive train that can cause a car to become undesirable or no longer viable to keep motive.

JKenH

Grumpy_chap said:

JKenH said:

Electric Vehicles Emit Less Carbon, On Average, than Combustion Engine Vehicles

Fuels Institute Releases Research Comparing Life Cycle Emissions of Different Vehicles

Over a 200,000-mile life cycle, 

...
200k miles.
Is that the realistic life of the average car, whether ICE or EV?
Given it is not just the drive train that can cause a car to become undesirable or no longer viable to keep motive.

Perhaps not in the UK bu5 this article suggests it is in the US. (First result when I googled).

In the past, the average lifespan of a car was significantly lower than it is today. Now, you can expect a standard car to last around 12 years or about 200,000 miles. More advanced vehicles like electric cars can go even longer, up to 300,000 miles.

https://cascadecollision.com/blog/what-is-the-average-life-of-a-car/

JKenH

EricMears said:

JKenH said:

Electric car charging postcode lottery: Crawley is one of 21 councils across England and Wales where it is completely free to charge your electric vehicle

https://www.crawleyobserver.co.uk/news/politics/council/electric-car-charging-postcode-lottery-crawley-is-one-of-21-councils-across-england-and-wales-where-it-is-completely-free-to-charge-your-electric-vehicle-3540944

If only that were true !

I expect to be down that way at end of March and would love to be able to top battery up courtesy of Crawley council.  The only 'rapid chargers' I can find on ZapMap are all chargeable (not really surprised at that) and the only free 'fast' chargers (a technical term for a charger of same speed you might have at home) seem to be labelled "customers & visitors only" or are inside car parks where you need to pay to get access to them.

I probably won't be diverting into Crawley on that trip ! 

There I was thinking I had found a “good news” EV story. 

Grumpy_chap

BBC Breakfast News article this morning about Bentley launch of EV.  

Not until 2025 though.

Martyn1981

The interweb got quite excited recently about an interview with Herbert Diess (CEO of VWG). I'll admit to having a bit of a man crush on Herbert as he's really pushing EV's as hard as he can get away with it (some pushback from VWG but he seems to be mostly winning).

This article has a transcript of the interview, which is actually quite interesting. I've copied out some of the BEV stuff, where Herbert talks about the difficulties in transitioning all production. It's a bit disappointing to see him use the word impossible a few times, reflecting the scale of the task in moving faster, and raising doubts over VWG's ability to reach 50% BEV's this decade (mainly because of the need for battery factories).

Also a shame he seems to criticise a BEV transition in areas with higher coal generation, since that will need to fall over time anyway, so better to lock into BEV's asap that get cleaner over time, than an ICEV that will always emit CO2 and localised pollution for ~15yrs (just my opinion). However, it's possible he's talking about VWG pushing their BEV's into regions with cleaner generation first, thus managing the supply shortage.


Starts off with a reasonable assumption that some of the new entrants won't survive.

HOW VOLKSWAGEN CAN REINVENT ITSELF AS AN EV COMPANY, WITH CEO HERBERT DIESS

Q. Your point about reliability as well — you just don’t see a lot of Audi owners making YouTube videos about panel gaps on their cars. Actually making the cars is difficult. That is a competency that other companies have to draw up.

A. You can learn everything now. This American competitor shows that you can do stunning things if you’re really committed. What I’m saying is: don’t expect that you can do this game in one, or two, or five years. Tesla is a case where it took 15 years, and it took a lot of resources — I don’t know, $15 or $20 billion to get to profitability. Don’t believe that just any of these startups showing one car at a motor show will succeed. Some of them we take seriously, but I’m quite sure that not all will have the substance and durability to compete.



Q. This all tracks with what you’ve said: VW will stop selling gas cars in Europe by 2035. Is that data driven by the availability of batteries and infrastructure? When do you think you’ll have enough batteries? When will there be charging infrastructure?

A. Not necessarily. I think this transition into EVs has certain constraints. I think the plan to get to 50 percent EV by 2030 is extremely ambitious. If we own, here in Europe, about 20 percent market share, for that 20 percent market share to maintain 50 percent EVs, we need six gigafactories. Those factories would have to be up and running by 2027, 2028 to be able to deliver on our 2030 goal. It’s close to impossible to do that. I have high respect for our team who is facing the challenge because you have to buy all the machine tools. You have to build the plants. You have to find the locations. You have to train the people. You have to make sure that the supply of the raw materials is safeguarded and is good. This is huge. We are only 20 percent of the market, so six plants. Europe needs 30 of those plants. Each plant is two by one kilometers. Huge quantities of raw materials have to be moved. This will be challenging. Then to let’s say, get from 50 percent to 100 percent, it still will be a tremendous challenge. It’s not just saying, “Let’s switch off ICE cars.” It’s just impossible.

The second thing is that electric cars only make sense if the energy is renewable — only if the energy is really green energy that comes from wind or solar or nuclear. As long as we have nations based on producing electric energy from coal, it doesn’t make sense to sell electric vehicles there. Think about Poland: I believe it’s 100 percent coal currently. Before we sell electric cars, we have to convert the primary sector into 100 percent renewables. It’s already fine in France, in Norway, in Austria, in Europe, in some parts of America, and in some parts of Canada — but this has to go hand in hand with the conversion of primary energy production. This requires time, and this is why two ambitious plans will not work. That will be counterproductive, even, because running EVs on coal-fired car plants is even worse than running gasoline cars.

EricMears

JKenH said:

There I was thinking I had found a “good news” EV story. 

You had !   Alas,  it was only a story 

shinytop

Also a shame he seems to criticise a BEV transition in areas with higher coal generation, since that will need to fall over time anyway, so better to lock into BEV's asap that get cleaner over time, than an ICEV that will always emit CO2 and localised pollution for ~15yrs (just my opinion). However, it's possible he's talking about VWG pushing their BEV's into regions with cleaner generation first, thus managing the supply shortage.

Don't we need to be doing whatever leads to the least CO2 emissions over the next, say, 20 years?  If that means keeping ICEVs going in certain locations a bit longer then why not?  Even though he may have a vested interest, I think Herr Diess is right.  The outcome is more important that trying to stick to the ideology regardless.

michaels

shinytop said:

Also a shame he seems to criticise a BEV transition in areas with higher coal generation, since that will need to fall over time anyway, so better to lock into BEV's asap that get cleaner over time, than an ICEV that will always emit CO2 and localised pollution for ~15yrs (just my opinion). However, it's possible he's talking about VWG pushing their BEV's into regions with cleaner generation first, thus managing the supply shortage.

Don't we need to be doing whatever leads to the least CO2 emissions over the next, say, 20 years?  If that means keeping ICEVs going in certain locations a bit longer then why not?  Even though he may have a vested interest, I think Herr Diess is right.  The outcome is more important that trying to stick to the ideology regardless.

Makes sense to me, if we are battery and thus EV constrained then sell the EVs into the market where they will be charged with the lowest CO2 electricity over their life time. 

Even if we weren't then there may be some markets where the expectation is that over the vehicle's lifetime an EV is more dirty than an efficient iceV because of how dirty the grid is and will remain.

orrery

michaels said:

Even if we weren't then there may be some markets where the expectation is that over the vehicle's lifetime an EV is more dirty than an efficient iceV because of how dirty the grid is and will remain.

From what I recall, it has already been determined that an EV is cleaner than an ICE even if the grid is 100% coal powered.