Old electric cars?

Grumpy_chap

prowla said:

If I get into my petrol car and it says there's 20 miles left, I go straight to the petrol station to fill up.

I can't fathom anybody buying a car with up to 20 miles range.

There are some cases where an EV with low range could work.  

There are probably a surprising number of cars (second car in household) that never really even get warmed up because the extent of their use is the school run and the supermarket.

If such a car was low capital outlay for a suitable car and the car can be used as domestic battery storage from solar with ability to operate in reverse (vehicle to home) at peak rate or power failure, that would be logical.

Cheapest Leaf / Zoe now seems to be down to £5k or thereabouts, 24 kWh battery on the oldest ones.
Domestic battery storage upwards from £3k for 5 kWh battery.
(Obviously need to understand the storage capacity now for the car given the battery has degraded, which is the sentiment of the conversation.)

There will also be processes coming along to resolve cars with degraded batteries, and for sensible cost point.

Petriix

prowla said:

If I get into my petrol car and it says there's 20 miles left, I go straight to the petrol station to fill up.

I can't fathom anybody buying a car with up to 20 miles range.

If you only drive within 10 miles of home and can wake up with a full tank every day for 40p then it makes perfect sense. 

However, there will only ever be a very few EVs that end up with only 20 miles of range. Mine will likely never go below 100 miles (on average) after about 20 years.

The idea of having to head to a petrol station sounds like a massive hassle. You have to drive there and queue up before standing holding a nozzle for 5 minutes before finally paying about £100. I can't see why anyone would choose that. 

silverwhistle

ComicGeek said:

Really interesting article, which also highlights the impact the charging regime has on degradation.

I really think this depends on the car. Battery Management Systems (BMS) as well as advances in batteries themselves mean that by and large you can leave the BMS to care for the battery. There's always buffers in these things too. Early Leafs might be a different matter but the problem isn't universal.

As for having 20 miles range, it's difficult for some people to understand that everybody has different needs and wants. The 'must have 400 miles' brigade obviously have bigger bladders than I do! But filling up at night means that 20 mile range is always available to you. I wouldn't have one if I had to visit a charger that wasn't on my doorstep.

Herzlos

prowla said:

If I get into my petrol car and it says there's 20 miles left, I go straight to the petrol station to fill up.

I can't fathom anybody buying a car with up to 20 miles range.

You're replying to a post from someone who literally only needs 4 miles range, so why is it hard to understand?

I could probably do most of my mid week driving in a car with 5 miles range easily. I'd absolutely have a 20 mile range EV if it was cheap enough.

My parents probably only make a journey over 10 miles once a month.

Herzlos

Jaded2022 said:

Herzlos said:

I think it's a fairly slow degradation, and then eventually it'll plummet. But we don't really have old enough electric cars in the real world to see what actually happens as the degradation have been a lot lower than predicted.

https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-1003a-battery-aging-in-an-electric-vehicle-ev has some explanations and charts.

When you say plummet will it stop working all together? Or still get a few miles?

Unless they all fail it'll still work, but the range will drop rapidly. So it may lose (pessimistically) 5% battery life a year until some point it'll drop by 25-50%.
Of course, it's less of an issue if you can replace some cells in the battery.

The biggest issue might be how you get a car with a 4 mile range home in the first place, because unless it's really local you're going to struggle to find a charging point every 4 miles. You'd almost certainly need to get it transported.

What I don't know is what the impact of battery capacity is on charging time. I'm assuming that as the battery degrades and cells fail it should charge faster, but it's entirely possible that it won't.

Martyn1981

Jaded2022 said:

Herzlos said:

photome said:

Herzlos said:

Jaded2022 said:

Grumpy_chap said:

ElefantEd said:

I'd be amazed if you can buy a BEV with only 4 miles worth of battery left. Or even only 20. 

There was a thread recently on here where someone was looking to buy exactly that - a Leaf with 20 mile range.

What happens over the next few years would it keep going down and then does it bottom out at just a few miles or does it eventually stop working all together?

i have two free chargers a few miles apart I want to use

It'll continue to tail off gradually until one day you won't be able to make it to the other charger. At 4 miles though, I suspect the car will need to be scrapped for something else, first.

For some perspective, the first Leaf (2010) had a range of about 70 miles and 12 years later the worst ones are down to about 20 miles. So you've probably got another 10 years for it to drop as low as 4.

how much would a 12 year old leaf with 20 miles range left cost ?  i couldnt see any below 7k ish on autotrader and the one i saw with range listed said 70 miles

I think at the time of the last discussion about range, there were 2 on autotrader claiming a range of 20ish miles for about £4k, but I'm assuming they've been sold.

They started with a claimed 75 mile range, so I'd be skeptical that a 12 year old one would still manage 70 miles.

That’s what I’m so interested in

time will tell and we should be able to find out by now

the first gen leafs on original battery, how many miles can they do now?

Hiya, just one example, but we had a 2014 24kWh Leaf which we sold in 2020. I drove it in the winter and it managed 60 miles, with 10 miles left, but I didn't use the heater (only the heated seat and heated steering wheel) and kept my motorway speed to about 60-65mph.

We only owned it for 2 years, but we got the 'Leaf Spy' app, and a plug-in thingie for the diagnostics, and this showed the battery SOH (state of health) rise from 88% to 92% during that time as we only granny charged it (2kW overnight), a tip we were told might help the battery. Apparently Leaf's used for V2G (vehicle to grid) trials have shown a battery health improvement, not the expected harm from increased cycles, again due to low rate charges and discharges. Taking 2 or 3kW from a batt for V2G is nothing compared to flattening your foot on the accelerator and drawing 80kW.

Sorry, gone off on a waffle, but battery life, quality and care mean the issue is a big one, with many pro's and con's to be balanced. Other than the early 24 and possibly 30kWh Leaf's, I doubt many BEV's will actually ever require a battery swop outside of faults. Also worth considering that a 24kWh battery will work 3x harder over any given distance v's a 75kWh battery, so wear and tear is not necessarily equal when comparing BEV's.

macman

prowla said:

If I get into my petrol car and it says there's 20 miles left, I go straight to the petrol station to fill up.

I can't fathom anybody buying a car with up to 20 miles range.

Why? The average UK car journey is just 8.4 miles. So, as long as you can charge at home, a 20 mile range would cover most daily usage, assuming one return journey per day.

ComicGeek

macman said:

prowla said:

If I get into my petrol car and it says there's 20 miles left, I go straight to the petrol station to fill up.

I can't fathom anybody buying a car with up to 20 miles range.

Why? The average UK car journey is just 8.4 miles. So, as long as you can charge at home, a 20 mile range would cover most daily usage, assuming one return journey per day.

While your response is completely logically, people are not. I would never let my previous ICE get below 100miles in the tank before I filled up, range anxiety has been an issue for me long before I bought my current EV.

I don't know if I could ever relax fully with that limited range, I only bought my EV when the range was 300+ miles - very few people would need to suddenly do a 300 miles trip outside of their normal usage, but a large number of people could need 20-30 miles. If I lived in a town/city with good taxis, then that might be feasible - but where I live you would have a long wait for a taxi in an emergency.

It's good to hear that some people would consider buying a very limited range EV - for me, and probably the majority of the population, it would never be an option.

Jaded2022

macman said:

prowla said:

If I get into my petrol car and it says there's 20 miles left, I go straight to the petrol station to fill up.

I can't fathom anybody buying a car with up to 20 miles range.

Why? The average UK car journey is just 8.4 miles. So, as long as you can charge at home, a 20 mile range would cover most daily usage, assuming one return journey per day.

My question is do old electric cars bottom out in range about 10-30 miles and then slowly go lower or will there come a point where they don’t hold any charge?

Herzlos

ComicGeek said:

macman said:

prowla said:

If I get into my petrol car and it says there's 20 miles left, I go straight to the petrol station to fill up.

I can't fathom anybody buying a car with up to 20 miles range.

Why? The average UK car journey is just 8.4 miles. So, as long as you can charge at home, a 20 mile range would cover most daily usage, assuming one return journey per day.

While your response is completely logically, people are not. I would never let my previous ICE get below 100miles in the tank before I filled up, range anxiety has been an issue for me long before I bought my current EV.

I used to always refill the tank the next time I passed a petrol station after hitting 100 miles or less remaining (though now I'm lazy I tend to wait for the light at about 60 miles), but part of the reason for that is convenience since I don't necessarily know when I'll be passing a petrol station again.

Even when I had a 2.5l petrol with a 270 mile range that was twice a month at most. I rarely had any concerns about getting home, just about being able to use the car for the next week.

So with the ability to refuel at home every night, I think that paradigm changes drastically. Being able to start every morning with x range available means you only need to worry about that days usage or potentially even the first journey, since there's a good chance you'll be able to recharge somewhere near the other end.

Of course, the occasional road trip (for most people that's a handful of times a year), that means a bit more planning. For someone with an EV with a 20 mile range it probably means hiring something for the trip, but that could still work out far cheaper than buying an EV with a 200 mile range that's only used 4 times a year.