EV Discussion thread

JKenH

Maybe we were lucky but we never got taken to school by car. Everyday I went by bus - in fact 2 buses to senior school. I remember standing around at the bus stop in short trousers in the winter of 1963. The only exception I remember was during A levels when having worked in the fields in the morning my dad took me in the van, having missed the bus. Same with the kids they walked or caught the bus, depending which school it was. You went to your local school. You didn’t see many overweight kids in those days.

Round our way the only traffic jams are at school run time. EVs are good for school runs but should we be driving our kids everywhere? 

Petriix

Magnitio said:

Another consideration is that for low mileage EV's, the constant drain from the battery is a greater percentage of overal energy usage. Depending on the car and settings, this can be quite significant.

What 'constant drain'? Energy doesn't just evaporate. 

Magnitio

Petriix said:

Magnitio said:

Another consideration is that for low mileage EV's, the constant drain from the battery is a greater percentage of overal energy usage. Depending on the car and settings, this can be quite significant.

What 'constant drain'? Energy doesn't just evaporate. 

Many manufacturers of EV's have taken advantage of the fact that there is a large battery and provide the option to keep various systems running that result in a constant drain e.g. the BMS running, checking for software updates, status reporting, sentry mode etc. Some people have reported over 200W drain with sentry mode turned on.

JKenH

Petriix said:

Magnitio said:

Another consideration is that for low mileage EV's, the constant drain from the battery is a greater percentage of overal energy usage. Depending on the car and settings, this can be quite significant.

What 'constant drain'? Energy doesn't just evaporate. 

More info here on Tesla vampire drain

Most of the time the loss is relativity small over a short period of time and as many people plug in to charge over night they do not see the impact of vampire drain. Over the course of a year it can however add up and be quite a considerable amount of energy, Sentry Mode alone can consume over 500kwh per year, which can cost $200/£200 or more depending how much you pay for electricity.

The other situation where it is most noticeable is when leaving the car for more than a couple of days and not on charge. A typical example might be at an airport long stay car park when going off on a 2 week vacation or business trip. The wrong settings could mean the car loses over 2%-3% per day, and a 14 day trip can mean 50% battery loss.

The news is not all bad, with the right settings and use of the car, the loss can be well under 0.5% per day and as low as 0.1%.

https://tesla-info.com/blog/vampire-battery-drain.php

Grumpy_chap

Collected the TM3 this evening.
Met the June criteria for taking delivery - so I will get the SC miles plus the wall-charger.
Very pleasing drive home.  I'm not sure how to check the energy consumption, but the car was collected at 90% charge and the sat nav said it would be 66% at destination so arriving home at 69% is better than the car predicted.
A few things that I find odd so I'll read the manual and then may ask some queries in here for advice from the fellow owners.

I also looked at the discounts and the SC miles. 
When I ordered, the terms were "must take the car in June" to qualify for the 6k SC miles.  Obviously, I ordered 18th and it took 2 weeks to actually get the car - I took the earliest date offered by Tesla for the car listed as "ready for delivery" when I ordered.
I noted this week, the SC offer is changed to 10k km (rather than 6k miles) and the terms are "take the car within 7 days of the vehicle being ready and registered in June" so I guess if you ordered, say last weekend (25th), the car would be registered and you'd pick it up next week.

I also realised, when collecting from the port, why the price for white was so much better than alternatives.  Rows upon rows upon rows of white TM3/Y parked up.  A reasonable number of black.  Count on one hand the number of blue, silver, red.

JKenH

It is interesting to see that despite its lack of BEVs Toyota was able to increase its market share last year. These results seem to contradict the message we hear on many EV channels predicting the imminent demise of the company. Contrast the performance with that of VW that has nailed its colours firmly to the EV mast.

Tesla among the top-selling models | Toyota world’s best-selling OEM

Toyota was the world’s best-selling manufacturer, accounting for 13 of every 100 new light vehicles purchased in 2022, according to new figures from Jato Dynamics.

The Japanese manufacturer was able to increase its global market share by 0.3 points thanks to strong results in China – now its largest market ahead of the US and Japan.

https://www.fleetnews.co.uk/news/manufacturer-news/2023/05/05/tesla-among-the-top-selling-models-toyota-world-s-best-selling-oem

Edit: chart demonstrating Toyota vs VW market share

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-30/toyota-keeps-title-as-no-1-carmaker-for-third-straight-year

Petriix

Magnitio said:

Petriix said:

Magnitio said:

Another consideration is that for low mileage EV's, the constant drain from the battery is a greater percentage of overal energy usage. Depending on the car and settings, this can be quite significant.

What 'constant drain'? Energy doesn't just evaporate. 

Many manufacturers of EV's have taken advantage of the fact that there is a large battery and provide the option to keep various systems running that result in a constant drain e.g. the BMS running, checking for software updates, status reporting, sentry mode etc. Some people have reported over 200W drain with sentry mode turned on.

I think by 'many manufacturers' you mean Tesla (but only if you leave sentry mode on). Most EVs don't just lose charge if you leave them parked. The BMS would have no need to be active unless the car is charging or 'on'. 

Grumpy_chap

Petriix said:

I think by 'many manufacturers' you mean Tesla (but only if you leave sentry mode on). Most EVs don't just lose charge if you leave them parked. The BMS would have no need to be active unless the car is charging or 'on'. 

Having recently been in the market for an EV, it is not only Tesla that have features available on their EV's that cause increased power consumption over and above the purpose of being a car in motion (even plus the associated comfort features while occupied).

Sentry mode, I think, is a unique to Tesla feature and does not seem to have been adopted by other manufacturers.  There are other power consuming features that have been adopted by several manufacturers such as cabin pre-conditioning (heating / cooling), advance windscreen defrost etc.  There is good logic why these features would be available as, if operated while the vehicle is connected to an external power source, the benefit of increased comfort can be achieved without impacting travel range.  It still consumes additional power though and, if the features are activated when the vehicle is not connected to an external power source, it creates a "vampire drain".  It is still really a "vampire drain" if the vehicle is connected to an external power source.

I understand that some of these types of features are also available on some ICE cars - cabin pre-heating is one that comes to mind.  I don't know how this actually operates with an ICE - does it mean the engine runs even though the car is otherwise locked and "off"?  Does it mean that a secondary "leisure" battery is provided?

I do think that the reason "vampire" drain is noticed on an EV is actually because of the increased overall efficiency of an EV compared to ICE that these loads now make a noticeable difference.  Cabin heating is the most obvious example - on an EV this is all drawn from the battery so directly impacts power consumption and range (or both).  An ICE operates lovely and inefficiently expelling loads of waste heat out to atmosphere so the cabin can be heated effectively for free (the heat is being dumped somewhere so not real change to dump that heat to the cabin interior).  I suppose some EV's may, or may in the future, divert heat from the battery to cabin heating, if that is viable.  I don't know enough as to whether the heat would be viable.

JKenH

Grumpy_chap said:

Collected the TM3 this evening.
Met the June criteria for taking delivery - so I will get the SC miles plus the wall-charger.
Very pleasing drive home.  I'm not sure how to check the energy consumption, but the car was collected at 90% charge and the sat nav said it would be 66% at destination so arriving home at 69% is better than the car predicted.
A few things that I find odd so I'll read the manual and then may ask some queries in here for advice from the fellow owners.

I also looked at the discounts and the SC miles. 
When I ordered, the terms were "must take the car in June" to qualify for the 6k SC miles.  Obviously, I ordered 18th and it took 2 weeks to actually get the car - I took the earliest date offered by Tesla for the car listed as "ready for delivery" when I ordered.
I noted this week, the SC offer is changed to 10k km (rather than 6k miles) and the terms are "take the car within 7 days of the vehicle being ready and registered in June" so I guess if you ordered, say last weekend (25th), the car would be registered and you'd pick it up next week.

I also realised, when collecting from the port, why the price for white was so much better than alternatives.  Rows upon rows upon rows of white TM3/Y parked up.  A reasonable number of black.  Count on one hand the number of blue, silver, red.

They probably arrived with yours on this ship.

JKenH

Grumpy_chap said:

Petriix said:

I think by 'many manufacturers' you mean Tesla (but only if you leave sentry mode on). Most EVs don't just lose charge if you leave them parked. The BMS would have no need to be active unless the car is charging or 'on'. 

Having recently been in the market for an EV, it is not only Tesla that have features available on their EV's that cause increased power consumption over and above the purpose of being a car in motion (even plus the associated comfort features while occupied).

Sentry mode, I think, is a unique to Tesla feature and does not seem to have been adopted by other manufacturers.  There are other power consuming features that have been adopted by several manufacturers such as cabin pre-conditioning (heating / cooling), advance windscreen defrost etc.  There is good logic why these features would be available as, if operated while the vehicle is connected to an external power source, the benefit of increased comfort can be achieved without impacting travel range.  It still consumes additional power though and, if the features are activated when the vehicle is not connected to an external power source, it creates a "vampire drain".  It is still really a "vampire drain" if the vehicle is connected to an external power source.

I understand that some of these types of features are also available on some ICE cars - cabin pre-heating is one that comes to mind.  I don't know how this actually operates with an ICE - does it mean the engine runs even though the car is otherwise locked and "off"?  Does it mean that a secondary "leisure" battery is provided?

I do think that the reason "vampire" drain is noticed on an EV is actually because of the increased overall efficiency of an EV compared to ICE that these loads now make a noticeable difference.  Cabin heating is the most obvious example - on an EV this is all drawn from the battery so directly impacts power consumption and range (or both).  An ICE operates lovely and inefficiently expelling loads of waste heat out to atmosphere so the cabin can be heated effectively for free (the heat is being dumped somewhere so not real change to dump that heat to the cabin interior).  I suppose some EV's may, or may in the future, divert heat from the battery to cabin heating, if that is viable.  I don't know enough as to whether the heat would be viable.

Doesn’t your Tesla do that already with the Octovalve?