Battery Electric Vehicle News / Enjoying the Transportation Revolution

JKenH

“Simply brilliant” plans submitted by Tesla to transform former Porsche site

ELECTRIC vehicle manufacturing giant Tesla has tabled a planning application to take over a former Porsche garage in Ferndown.

Tesla submitted plans on January 19 to convert the site in New Road, Ferndown, into a large showroom and service centre with electric vehicle superchargers.

https://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/19901452.tesla-submit-application-old-ferndown-porsche-site/?ref=yahoo

JKenH

Mercedes-Benz Inks New Deal With HUGE Benefits

Last week, the German automaker signed a deal with Taiwanese startup ProLogium that'll see it invest a "high double-digit million euro" figure. Interestingly, this isn't the first time Mercedes has poured money into a solid-state battery tech company. Late last year, the automaker, along with Stellantis, announced a significant investment in Massachusetts-based Factorial Energy.

Fellow German carmakers BMW and the Volkswagen Group have invested in separate solid-state tech firms. Ironically, VW was the first to invest back in 2012, three years before the Dieselgate crisis was exposed. Elsewhere, Nissan and Toyota are also focusing immense time and money into getting solid-state batteries to market, the former hoping to do so by 2028. Notably absent from the solid-state battery party is Tesla. Why is that?

The company credited with bringing EVs to the mainstream and currently the world's most valuable automaker believes solid-state battery technology is not attainable in the near term and, equally important, will cost too much. This would result in higher vehicle prices. Instead, Tesla is developing what it calls 4680 batteries.

https://carbuzz.com/news/mercedes-benz-inks-new-deal-with-huge-benefits

JKenH

I watched this and apart from crashing into a post, driving down tram lines and skipping a red light I was actually impressed with just how much FSD can achieve driving in an urban environment. I am sure we have all at times made mistakes like this particularly when we are distracted or driving in a stressful situation on roads we do not know. 

I can understand why fans rave about it but there is a way to go yet before regulators are going to allow FSD to drive the car without supervision. It seems to me to be a terrific driver assistance programme but there is a big leap from that to Level5 autonomous driving.

https://electrek.co/2022/02/04/tesla-full-self-driving-beta-crash-video/

paul991

JKenH said:

“Simply brilliant” plans submitted by Tesla to transform former Porsche site

ELECTRIC vehicle manufacturing giant Tesla has tabled a planning application to take over a former Porsche garage in Ferndown.

Tesla submitted plans on January 19 to convert the site in New Road, Ferndown, into a large showroom and service centre with electric vehicle superchargers.

https://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/19901452.tesla-submit-application-old-ferndown-porsche-site/?ref=yahoo

seems they are doing same in norwich too

NigeWick

shinytop said:

I really need that 250 mile cold, wet, motorway range.  

Do you really drive 250 miles without a break every working day?

JKenH

NigeWick said:

shinytop said:

I really need that 250 mile cold, wet, motorway range.  

Do you really drive 250 miles without a break every working day?

That’s a bit like Andrew Bailey urging wage restraint. 

I don’t drive 250 miles without a break everyday, either, but it is nice to have the ability to do so and stop when and if you want to rather than when the car dictates.

You can’t currently rely on chargers being available when and where you want to stop. I picked family up from Manchester airport. They wanted something to eat so we pulled into Birch services. I was going to grab a charge while they got some food but there was no charger available. That necessitated another stop simply to charge. 

JKenH

Electric vehicle push could see increase in automatic-only licences, says survey

As those surveyed aren’t yet drivers, they probably haven’t seriously looked into buying a car and realised how expensive electric cars are compared to the ICE bangers that is all most 17-24 year olds can afford.

Conducted by independent road safety charity IAM RoadSmart, the study questioned 1,000 drivers aged 17-24 and found that 61%were planning to apply for an automatic-only driving licence.

https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/lifestyle/motors/3482771/electric-vehicle-push-could-see-increase-in-automatic-only-licences-says-survey/

JKenH

JKenH said:

QrizB said:

mickyduck55 said:

... the freezing temperatures in my garage where the batteries are housed reduced the charge rate significantly.

It's generally advised that you should never charge lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4) batteries of they are below freezing,as it's saod to damage them permanently.

LiFePO4 batteries intended for cold weather use are often equipped with electric heaters to reduce the risk of this happening.

Presumably if you shouldn’t charge them below freezing then you shouldn’t discharge them below freezing either. (Although off topic does this mean that if you jump into a car on a freezing cold day you have to precondition the battery before using it? Incidentally how would this work with charging an EV on a timer, say, to take advantage of Octopus Go when it is freezing?)

Copied from the adding batteries to solar panel thread as my question is more relevant here.

Then I saw this. 

Bjørn Nyland Tests How Cold LFP Battery Affects Tesla Model 3

The next episode is about how the cold weather affect the Tesla Model 3. The car was left intentionally with a low state-of-charge and the battery had only a few degrees °C in the morning (outside temperature was 2°C). We can treat it as the worst-case scenario.

The EV battery packs are thermally isolated so they maintain temperature quite long.

The general operation of the car is surprisingly good and it appears to accelerate normally Regenerative braking is ok (it can reach substantial levels - up to a few times higher than continuous fast charging).

However, the fast charging is significantly limited when the battery is cold. After plugging-in, the car was able to barely reach 20 kW at about 11% state-of-charge (SOC), and then it decreased to an even lower level, like 13 kW (after 10 minutes).

https://insideevs.com/news/550021/cold-lfp-battery-tesla-model3/

Difficult to reconcile regen braking being ok but fast charging isn’t. Presumably it is the length of time involved.

Martyn1981

I've been watching and reading a few bits about the increase in sales of PEV's and BEVs last year, and some predictions going forward. May be of interest, and I think 2022/23 will really set the scene for the rest of the decade.

Last year sales of PEV's increased by 108% to 6.75m of which 4.8m were BEV's. PEV sales rose from 4.2% to 8.3% of the whole car market. EV Volumes is predicting 9.5m PEV sales this year.

Global EV Sales for 2021

Doubling from a Modest Base

With total light vehicle sales recovering by only 4,6 % from the crisis year of 2020, the 108 % growth of EVs means doubling their market share. Variations between the market regions are strong, though: In Europe the EV share increased from 10 % to 17 %, with a 26 % peak in December, in a persistently weak total market.

In Northern America EVs had 4,4 % share (2,3 % in 2020), in China their share increased from 5,5 % to 13,3 %. For the remaining 70 markets we are tracking, the combined EV share was 1,5 %.

BEVs increased by 1 % in the EV mix with most of the gains occurring in the 2nd half of 2021. Their volume increased to 4,80 million units, PHEVs sold 1,94 million units and FCEVs 15 400 units.

I've also been reading ARK Invest's Big Ideas 2022, which can downloaded from their site, but an extract can be seen here and a link to their site.

One of the possibilities they state is:

If traditional automakers navigate the shift from gas-powered vehicles successfully, EV sales could scale 8-fold from 4.8 million to 40 million during the next five years. 

this high figure hinges on legacy auto being able to finance the shift to EV's while managing the financial implications of falling ICEV sales, without of course going under.

ARK use Wright's Law to predict the falling cost of batteries, battery packs and EV's as production ramps up, and also to model charging rates. All of these issues will of course help to compare BEV's more favourably against ICEV's. Though ARK's suggestion that a 350 mile range BEV could match the Toyota Camry in production costs ($24k) by 2023 seems extremely optimistic to me, but I've learned not to bet against 'the curves' with disruptive tech.

Personally, I think that the percentage share of the market that BEV's take will ramp faster than numeric sales, since the fear of losing money / stranded asset of an ICE will continue to grow, especially given the high cost and long life expectancy of a car, and as BEV's keep getting better, the Osborne Effect will magnify as folk who can't yet buy a BEV, may put off the purchase of an ICE, if they can.

Ark goes on to mention that BEV's are, and I'll quote - " Electric Vehicles Are Breaking Traditional S-Curve Dynamics" as the YOY growth percentage steadily drops off in a traditional S-curve, but the BEV % is currently growing. My thoughts however are that that might be an anomaly given the impact Covid has had on car sales in general which may have impacted %'s over the last few years.



ARK also goes on to talk about the vast potential of autonomous ride-hailing, but since that hinges on many issues, it's probably something chat about when it gets closer to happening.

EVandPV

JKenH said:

Electric vehicle push could see increase in automatic-only licences, says survey

As those surveyed aren’t yet drivers, they probably haven’t seriously looked into buying a car and realised how expensive electric cars are compared to the ICE bangers that is all most 17-24 year olds can afford.

Saw an instructor taking someone out in an ID3 the other day and wondered the same.
Do the youngsters not just do everything on credit these days, £30k car on a pcp, latest iPhone on a contract ??