EV Discussion thread

michaels

WE are now over 1.5 degrees.  Someone needs to move the argument on from 'but an EV can't currently do everything an ice can do' to 'we only have one planet'.  Sadly seeing Labours policy uturn today it seems like the upcoming change in the UK govt will not move the needle.

silvercar

JKenH said:

silvercar said:

JKenH said:

Netexporter said:

Spies said:

Genuine question here, why are manufacturers still using NMC rather than LFP cells? I thought LFP was better even though they are a little less efficient because they can be routinely charged to 100% without issue?

Higher energy density. They're generally used in the long-range variants of a particular model. The overall battery pack has to remain the same, as it essentially forms part of the chassis, so LFP modules are substituted with NMC modules.

I suspect that will change in the relatively near future, if CATL's latest LFP battery, that is going into Teslas in the near future, lives up to its billing. Unaffected by low temperatures and charges at up to 500kW. It will obviate the need for very large capacity batteries as it won't take much longer to recharge than filling an ICE tank.

Let’s have a look at that claim. To add range as fast as a petrol car like my wife’s Picanto - 320 miles in 2 minutes - would, at a typical efficiency of 3.2mpg, need a 100kWh battery. To fill that in 2 minutes it would need to charge at 3MW from 0 to 100%. The Model 3 Highland has a maximum charge rate of 250MW so should in theory be able to fill its 75kWh battery in 18 minutes. Well, that’s the theory. 

We know though, if only from the recent test Richard Symons did for his YouTube video, that EVs don’t charge at maximum speed over their whole capacity. It actually takes about an hour an 10 minutes to fully charge a model 3 Highland Long Range or about 4 times its maximum theoretical charging time. When this new battery comes along that can charge at 500kW that should drop the time down to about 35 minutes. Or even if we just look at the optimum charging window in practice where the M3LR manages to add 200miles in 20 minutes and assumed it could sustain that until it had added 320miles it would take 32 minutes rather than the hour and 10 minutes it actually takes. A 500MW charging rate might in theory, drop that down to 16 minutes (rather than 35 minutes it would really take) but that is still 8 times slower than my wife’s Picanto. 

Edit: final paragraph removed as I am sure @Netexporter ‘s comments were well intentioned.

You aren't comparing like for like. When you fill up a petrol/ diesel car you are holding the pump and standing by the car. 

If you are charging an EV for 20 minutes, you don't stand by the car holding the cable, you use the time to do other tasks. 

Sorry, but I am comparing like with like - how long it takes to fill your car up before you are on your way again, in answer to the claim from @Netexporter that when Tesla get the CATL battery capable of 500kW charging it won't take much longer to recharge than filling an ICE tank. What you might or might not do while charging your battery is completely irrelevant. 

A modern petrol pump can dispense at  30-40l litres/minute and a high flow diesel pump at 120 litres/min. You are only actually holding the pump for around a minute while the petrol pump dispenses sufficient fuel for around 300 - 400+ miles of motoring. 

The rest of the time is getting in and out of the car, opening the fuel flap, unscrewing the cap, inserting the nozzle, replacing it and the fuel cap, closing the fuel flap and getting back in the car - essentially similar to what you have to do in an EV. Yes, if you pay at pump it may take five seconds longer to key in your pin than a contactless charger but chargers (Tesla Superchargers excepted which I know are just plug in and go) are a lot more prone to being hesitant or downright refusing to start. You would, (well I would) just stand by the charger for a minute or so to make sure the charge had started. Chargers do have to do a handshake with the car and that can fail or sometimes a charge can start and then stop 30 seconds or a minute or so later. (I had that happen several times with different Swarco chargers.)  Not great if you already have headed off for your coffee. With the Leaf you could go through the whole charge starting procedure only to find that the charge timer was still on preventing a charge. It only took a few seconds to go back to the car and cancel it but if you don’t wait and check the charging lights are flashing you could come back from having your coffee and have to start all over again. And the of course there are the chargers that require you to start them with an app. Have you factored in the time that that takes, even if you already have the app on your phone? 

You may be looking at this through the lens of a Tesla driver but, although Tesla’s seem to be everywhere, last year I think they only constituted around 16% of new EVs sold so the vast majority of EV drivers have to contend with the public charging network. 

Perhaps, you may also be looking at it from the perspective of someone with a home charger who rarely needs to public charge. What if your usage pattern means you have to rely on public chargers? Are you always going to be able to charge at a time when you can usefully use the time it takes to fill up? And what if you use a public 7kW charger? It will take you longer to get your charging cable out and carefully coil it up again than you spend holding the petrol pump. Or you might not be able to find a charger immediately outside your house to fill up overnight for that long drive tomorrow so you have to factor in walking to and from wherever you park your car. 

Real life experience. The Leaf has only ever been charged at home or on a 7kwH slow charger, both cases are cables out connection made, walk away. The slow charger away from home also involves a few taps on a couple of apps, but still quicker than filling up at a petrol station. The Tesla has been charged on the super charger network many times. Plug in and walk away, still quicker than filling up at a petrol station and 9 times out of 10, it has coincided with the need to stop for another reason.

JKenH

Used car market up as EV sales reach record levels

Across the year, sales of used battery electric cars (BEV) almost doubled, rising 90.9% to a record 118,973 units and a 1.6% share of the overall market, up from 0.9% in 2022. The uplift is in line with growth in the new car sector and demonstrates keen demand for zero emission motoring in this naturally more affordable price bracket.

https://www.smmt.co.uk/2024/02/used-car-market-up-as-ev-sales-reach-record-levels/

This seems good news so why isn’t it in the good news thread?

Well, I don’t think the figures are quite as good as they seem, at least not the % growth. 

These are the figures for 2022.

That to me looks like 67% growth in BEVs not 90.9%. That’s still good but if we look at the trend it isn’t as good as it might have been given the ever increasing supply of BEVs coming into the market as fleet contracts came to an end. 

Across 2022 as a whole BEVs accounted for 1.03% (not 0.9%) of all transactions but there had been a rising trend and in Q4 2022 BEVs made up 1.47% of sales or 23,039 units. 

In Q2 and Q3 2023 BEVs were on a roll and had reached 1.7 and 1.8% of sales with sales of 30,645 and 34,021 units. This slipped back to 1.67% in Q4 2023 with 28050 units which was an increase of 22% in a market which had risen 7% or a net increase of 13.7% in market share y-o-y for the quarter.

So while 2023 as a whole looks good for BEVs the trend is one of flattening off,  just as we have seen with new BEV sales. 

Krakkkers

I dare the EV lovers to watch today's Harrysgarage episode on YouTube.
Some home truths there.

Spies

Krakkkers said:

I dare the EV lovers to watch today's Harrysgarage episode on YouTube.
Some home truths there.

The latest video? I'll give that a watch later!

JKenH

Krakkkers said:

I dare the EV lovers to watch today's Harrysgarage episode on YouTube.
Some home truths there.

Seemed quite sensible to me.

JKenH

JKenH said:

It is somewhat ironic that a Guardian article is being blamed for slow electric car sales. I noted that Sky News used the term “damaging to the cause”. I wonder if this was intentional or just a Freudian slip.

Mr Bean actor Rowan Atkinson blamed for slow electric car sales

Thinktank Green Alliance gave its views on the main obstacles the government faces in its bid to phase out petrol and diesel cars before 2035, and said a comment piece by the Johnny English star published in June 2023 was damaging to the cause.

The pressure group told peers in a letter that was shared: "One of the most damaging articles was a comment piece written by Rowan Atkinson in The Guardian which has been roundly debunked.

https://news.sky.com/story/mr-bean-actor-rowan-atkinson-blamed-for-slow-electric-car-sales-13065947

Edit: The Telegraph had this to say on the subject:

The great electric car revolution is stalling, and the net-zero panjandrums are desperate to find somebody to blame. It must be the fault of fake news, they intimate, or disinformation campaigns, or of nit-picking journalists and their gullible readers, or because Elon Musk has embraced Right-wing ideas: what other possible reasons could there be for consumers refusing to do their duty?

Electric vehicles’ (EVs) share of the UK market has remained stuck at 16 per cent for two years, and 10 out of 11 private buyers are still opting for combustion engines. But instead of seeking to understand the real reasons why even the environmentally conscious continue to patronise petrol-powered cars, green activists are resorting to deranged conspiracy theories. 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/02/07/great-electric-car-lie-monstrous-deception-against-public/

It is interesting how foreign commentators view Green Alliance’s submission to the House of Lords committee. Surely Green Alliance must have realised they would be ridiculed for this. In fact it reflects badly on the whole Green movement, that instead of acknowledging there is an issue with range and charging infrastructure it is seeking to put the blame on fake news. The government isn’t going to solve the problems if it starts from a premise that there is nothing fundamentally wrong and we just need to do a better job of controlling the press.

It’s Mr Bean’s Fault You Don’t Want An EV, Not Poor Range And Charging Options

You may think you haven’t not bought an EV because they’re a bit expensive, but it’s actually down to 'Mr Bean' star Rowan Atkinson

In recent years, all kinds of clever people have tried to find out why the electric vehicle revolution hasn’t quite taken off yet. It’s the multi-billion dollar question that needs answering before more automakers start cutting production of EVs, shelving models and making a switch back to hybrid power. Thankfully, one UK think tank claims to have found the source of the problem: Mr Bean.

You might have thought people weren’t rushing to buy new EVs because of the high cost or fears about range that comes with some models, but no. Instead, the real cause of the slowdown in EV sales in recent months is actually British actor Rowan Atkinson, according to a recent report from Sky News.

https://jalopnik.com/it-s-mr-bean-s-fault-you-don-t-want-an-ev-not-poor-ran-1851234349?

1961Nick

MeteredOut said:

I wonder what percentage of EV car charges are done at home versus out on the road. Anyone got any figures?

I suspect the percentage of ICE fuelling at home is lower.

I wonder if, on average over the lifetime of ownership of a car, EV owners spend less cumulative time waiting for a charge to take place (including on-the-road charging wait times, but excluding at-home charge times) compared to the time ICE drivers spend filling and paying for their fuel.

@JKenH, feel free to ignore if too personal, but do you have a another job alongside your full time job of trawling the internet for articles that might have a slight negative vibe towards EVs so you can post them here?

100% home charging in my case & that's after 2.5 years of driving an EV. That's saved me many hours of standing on a wet forecourt in the driving rain pumping derv. Ken's 2 minutes to fill the Picanto is exceptional as it used to take me 6 minutes to fill a 435d, pay for the fuel & continue my journey.

A couple of friends that do longer trips & use public charging generally just add enough supercharger miles to complete their journey. This is typically a 10 minute 25kWh 'splash & dash' rather than the often quoted 20% - 80% or 100% recharge. Of course that 25kWh can be added anywhere once the car has travelled around 120 miles which makes finding a convenient supercharger pretty easy.

I think a lot of the negative EV press is due to people buying an EV with a range that doesn't meet their needs. The WLTP test doesn't help as it overstates the range of all EVs & massively so in winter. If you buy the right EV for your needs ownership will be easy, get the wrong one & it'll probably be a nightmare.

1961Nick

michaels said:

WE are now over 1.5 degrees.  Someone needs to move the argument on from 'but an EV can't currently do everything an ice can do' to 'we only have one planet'.  Sadly seeing Labours policy uturn today it seems like the upcoming change in the UK govt will not move the needle.

The sad fact is that anything the UK government does is not going to 'move the needle'. Starmer may like you to believe that he has his finger on the thermostat but he hasn't & the best he can do is to set an example to those that have.

shinytop

1961Nick said:

MeteredOut said:

I wonder what percentage of EV car charges are done at home versus out on the road. Anyone got any figures?

I suspect the percentage of ICE fuelling at home is lower.

I wonder if, on average over the lifetime of ownership of a car, EV owners spend less cumulative time waiting for a charge to take place (including on-the-road charging wait times, but excluding at-home charge times) compared to the time ICE drivers spend filling and paying for their fuel.

@JKenH, feel free to ignore if too personal, but do you have a another job alongside your full time job of trawling the internet for articles that might have a slight negative vibe towards EVs so you can post them here?

100% home charging in my case & that's after 2.5 years of driving an EV. That's saved me many hours of standing on a wet forecourt in the driving rain pumping derv. Ken's 2 minutes to fill the Picanto is exceptional as it used to take me 6 minutes to fill a 435d, pay for the fuel & continue my journey.

A couple of friends that do longer trips & use public charging generally just add enough supercharger miles to complete their journey. This is typically a 10 minute 25kWh 'splash & dash' rather than the often quoted 20% - 80% or 100% recharge. Of course that 25kWh can be added anywhere once the car has travelled around 120 miles which makes finding a convenient supercharger pretty easy.

I think a lot of the negative EV press is due to people buying an EV with a range that doesn't meet their needs. The WLTP test doesn't help as it overstates the range of all EVs & massively so in winter. If you buy the right EV for your needs ownership will be easy, get the wrong one & it'll probably be a nightmare.

That summarises the main issue (IMO) in a nutshell.  We are not going to save the planet by driving large, fast, expensive diesel coupes or their even larger and faster EV equivalents.  Maybe we need to be driving more Kia Picantos.  

There are a couple of EVs that would be right for my needs; unfortunately I can't afford them.