Electric vehicles

[selectortone]

In trying to find the article I mentioned where a secondhand EV buyer ended up with not being able to buy a replacement battery turning the whole car into landfill or a chicken shed I did stumble across an article about the Leaf 40KW battery losing capacity on each charge considerably more quickly than the smaller one.

https://insideevs.com/news/337439/nissan-issues-statement-on-leaf-30-kwh-battery-degradation/
If you search for Leaf 40KW battery issues there are plenty of people saying they have issues which the manufacturer doesn't seem to want to deal with. I am sure they have very few "failures" because that is an absolute term in the warranty I am sure, but ending up with something that doesn't do what was advertised is a harder thing to prove I would think.

Not that I'm going to buy an EV. Having spent some time reseaching lithiums for my camper, and installed enough with solar to run a washing machine in that when parked near the Med, I can't see it being a sensible choice for the environment, short or long term personal or business vehicle use, or as a domestic storage unit to be run from solar or a turbine to put my house off grid. All cars should be made to a more basic standard and be as light as possible, carting round more weight than needed rather than desired is too wastefull. Simplify and add lightness was and will always be true, not bolt in hundreds of kg of lithium. The only sensible use for an EV IMHO is to hopefully reduce particulates in areas where there are too many, like some city centres only.

Robert Llewellyn (Kryten in 'Red Dwarf') has a youtube channel devoted to EVs and renewable energy called 'Fully Charged'. He bought a Nissan Leaf several years ago and in one of his videos he talked about swapping out the original battery for a new one. He had it done by the company in Cheltenham mentioned earlier in this thread. The only issue he had was that the garage was closed for a time during the first lockdown. Other than that, no problem.

Edit: here's the video:

 

[RobinBHM]

What do people think about the ultra-cheap EVs available from China? For example:
Solar EV car on alibaba
Anybody seen or tried anything like that? Or seen a review?
What sort of range are they likely to have in reality?
Do they perform well enough to keep up with the normal flow of traffic?
Is the build quality as low as the price might suggest?
Are they street legal in the UK and/or EU?

in the video it looks like it goes about 10 miles an hour down the dual carriageway

 

[D_W]

In trying to find the article I mentioned where a secondhand EV buyer ended up with not being able to buy a replacement battery turning the whole car into landfill or a chicken shed I did stumble across an article about the Leaf 40KW battery losing capacity on each charge considerably more quickly than the smaller one.

https://insideevs.com/news/337439/nissan-issues-statement-on-leaf-30-kwh-battery-degradation/
If you search for Leaf 40KW battery issues there are plenty of people saying they have issues which the manufacturer doesn't seem to want to deal with. I am sure they have very few "failures" because that is an absolute term in the warranty I am sure, but ending up with something that doesn't do what was advertised is a harder thing to prove I would think.

Not that I'm going to buy an EV. Having spent some time reseaching lithiums for my camper, and installed enough with solar to run a washing machine in that when parked near the Med, I can't see it being a sensible choice for the environment, short or long term personal or business vehicle use, or as a domestic storage unit to be run from solar or a turbine to put my house off grid. All cars should be made to a more basic standard and be as light as possible, carting round more weight than needed rather than desired is too wastefull. Simplify and add lightness was and will always be true, not bolt in hundreds of kg of lithium. The only sensible use for an EV IMHO is to hopefully reduce particulates in areas where there are too many, like some city centres only.

As I recall, the leaf didn't have thermal management for the batteries, at least early on. It suffered here where it gets cold and hot. Tesla has thermal management for the battery and probably better batteries to begin with, and so far the opposite has been the case...The batteries last longer than expected and I'd be surprised if the cars themselves can last as long as the batteries will before they get to 90% capacity.

 

[hairy]

D_W from A Study on Real-Life Tesla Battery Deterioration you seem to be right about Tesla

 

[D_W]

There were a lot of nissan leafs here early on. I don't see many lately (it's hot in the summer and cold in the winter). I remember thinking that early li-ion tools were very poor in a cold garage and said something to my brother in law about it seeming to make sense that you could use less energy keeping the battery warm or cool than it would lose in working at an improper temperature (I wasn't thinking about degradation of capacity, just efficient use of what's there).

He is a tesla owner - I know not much about them other than some reading and he mumbled "yeah, they already do that", and then something about storing in a garage if not using the car often otherwise it's just spending energy keeping the battery conditioned. He drives a lot of miles and has nothing in his garage. I drive few and my garage is full of tools.

Model S vehicles here didn't have good reliability, but the class they were competing in (full size BMW, Audi, Mercedes) is filled with very unreliable cars that have no value after a decade, so I guess they're keeping up with the class!

 

[D_W]

(it seems like there are fewer S models here now, to the point that I don't recall seeing more than one here or there - the X seems to be the choice for doctors wives and such now that crossover types are pushing out sedans (saloons?). I'm sure there's some case for extended range high performance models 3 being bought by someone who may have otherwise bought an S, too. )

 

[Dr W]

Rorschach is too young to remember the Sinclair C5. The gulf between the hyped product and the real thing was breathtaking. I can't imagine how Clive's credibility must have suffered. An acquaintance of mine bought one, solely so that he could drive to the pub and back without fear of losing his licence. After everybody had taken it for a spin, he almost invariably ended up having to pedal home.

When I was a marine biology student in the 1980s, we had a 2 week field trip to the research station at Millport on Great Cumbrae. The local cycle hire shop had a small fleet of Sinclair C5s for day trippers to rent. Their battery life was just enough to get you about 2/3rds of the way around the road that circumnavigates the island. Apparently bank holidays were marked by the sight of small groups of inebriated Glaswegians peddling like fury in a desperate race to complete the last few miles, so as to retrieve their deposits in time to catch the ferry back to Largs.
Did try one myself one day (purely for research purposes you understand) and couldn't believe how bad they were - really hard to pedal!

 

[MikeJhn]

Lost your licence, not problem, move to France and get a voiture sans permis :The little car you can drive in France without a licence

 

[ivan]

With average traffic speed in London # 7MPH your chinese tok tok (to warn pedestrians) would have a sporty advantage!
Tesla is not very well built according to the Consumer Association car testing - very prone to breakdowns - but these not in motor or battery. However what happens in winter? car heaters are rated about 9KW, everyone wants aircon nowadays, oh! and it rains a lot and wiper motors are quite juicy. If everyone bought one, we'd need the extra generating capacity of around 6 large nuclear power stations, and that is before the gas is cut off to your boiler and you run an electric heat pump producing low grade heat so it runs most of the 24 hours. As usual we're behind the curve - batteries ok for short term advantage, hydrogen for the future - other coutries looking there, but not so much in UK.

 

[AlanY]

Lost your licence, not problem, move to France and get a voiture sans permis :The little car you can drive in France without a licence

Move to France? No thanks, I would rather walk. Funny, really, because I did consider moving to Normandy back in the noughties. My wife and I spent some time looking for a property but found most were structurally challenged or simply too far run down. I wanted to move there because Normandy is beautiful, with a stunning coastline (it reminded me of 1960's to early 1970's England: low traffic, lovely countryside and, as it turned out, an appalling economy!). Anyhow, life changed and we turned away from the idea of moving. Just as well for us, I think.

 

[Just4Fun]

Lost your licence, not problem, move to France and get a voiture sans permis :The little car you can drive in France without a licence

That is called a moped car over here. Almost always sold to teenagers, who can drive one of those before they are old enough to get a full driving licence. A licence (and test pass) is needed before you can drive one, but it is an easier test I think. They are notorious for being an accident risk and are also expensive to run & repair.

 

[Just4Fun]

in the video it looks like it goes about 10 miles an hour down the dual carriageway

10 MPH should be good enough for anybody, but if you want something a tad faster take a look at the latest Tesla. Just what you need for nipping down to the corner shop!

 

[clogs]

Alan Y.
being just lucky enough to escape Frogland......16 years of hell......the country is wonderful, it's the inhabitants that wreck it....
u had a lucky escape......
those little cars were know as TUT-TUT's.....absolute carp.....
the later one's now have a 2 cylinder Kubota "D"...slightly faster, more reliable.....
they were the main runaround for drunks that lost their D/ licience......
had a few close escapes of nearly running them down.....

 

[powertools]

Well 76 pages in and I have to say I have not read them all but I think that this push for EV cars is more stupid than the compulsory fitting of cats on European petrol cars and the push for everybody to buy diesel cars in the past.
The way that the environmental impact of cars is worked out in the UK is ridiculous in that a vehicle that weighs the best part of 2 tons and does 20 mpg is considered better than a car that weighs less than a ton and does 50 mpg.

 

[D_W]

Are you talking about gas vs. diesel? WE went through the same thing here in the US - there's no good way to clean up the diesels and the particulate and NOx screws up the air no matter how efficient a diesel is.

The push for EV cars is simple - just like the push for electric appliances in the states where gas lines are common. You can clean up the dirty combustion and emissions at the power plant a lot easier than you can solve it at the appliance level. I'd be more impressed with the idea if we could get modular platforms, though. But that involves people using something for a long time and only replacing parts of it and manufacturers aren't going to be into that.

 

[powertools]

Are you talking about gas vs. diesel? WE went through the same thing here in the US - there's no good way to clean up the diesels and the particulate and NOx screws up the air no matter how efficient a diesel is.

The push for EV cars is simple - just like the push for electric appliances in the states where gas lines are common. You can clean up the dirty combustion and emissions at the power plant a lot easier than you can solve it at the appliance level. I'd be more impressed with the idea if we could get modular platforms, though. But that involves people using something for a long time and only replacing parts of it and manufacturers aren't going to be into that.

I have no idea what goes on in the US I am referring to the UK and Europe.
In the past all new petrol cars had to be fitted with cats that simply done work in the UK or most of Europe and only increase fuel consumption this was done to protect the German car industry that rely on sales to the US to thrive.
In the UK in the past people were encouraged to buy diesel cars and we can all see how that worked out.
If we are serious about the environmental impact of cars we need to take into account the whole life impact and take into account the manufacturing and life span.

 

[D_W]

I don't disagree with that. Cats improve air quality in areas with inversions by an enormous amount, though.

50 miles per gallon is possible with a cat (toyota prius).

The same thing has occurred with diesels - diesels at the small vehicle level now seem to be less efficient than the smaller mechanical (but very dirty) diesels of yesteryear. It's possible to make an underpowered pickup truck in the US with a cummins 4BT and get 40 miles per gallon. This is a full sized pickup truck.

mechanical 12v cummins pickups (factory) that weren't underpowered would average in the low to mid 20s (this is a "super duty" pickup here, not just a regular half ton light truck). Trucks have gotten larger and the powerplants doubled in power, but now the average MPG that I hear from farmers for a super duty pickup is about 13-14 empty.

This is absurd. They can only match older pickups when comparing consumption per pound fully laden/towing.

That said, I live in an area that often has a temperature inversion - catalytic converters help immensely here.

 

[powertools]

I don't disagree with that. Cats improve air quality in areas with inversions by an enormous amount, though.

50 miles per gallon is possible with a cat (toyota prius).

The same thing has occurred with diesels - diesels at the small vehicle level now seem to be less efficient than the smaller mechanical (but very dirty) diesels of yesteryear. It's possible to make an underpowered pickup truck in the US with a cummins 4BT and get 40 miles per gallon. This is a full sized pickup truck.

mechanical 12v cummins pickups (factory) that weren't underpowered would average in the low to mid 20s (this is a "super duty" pickup here, not just a regular half ton light truck). Trucks have gotten larger and the powerplants doubled in power, but now the average MPG that I hear from farmers for a super duty pickup is about 13-14 empty.

This is absurd. They can only match older pickups when comparing consumption per pound fully laden/towing.

That said, I live in an area that often has a temperature inversion - catalytic converters help immensely here.

In the UK a Toyota Prius is a hybrid car that will do 50 miles to the gallon but only if you also charge up the battery that it has along with a petrol engine so all of a sudden it does not seem very environmentally friendly.
Way back in the 1990's Ford were developing lean burn engines with amazing mpg figures but they had to abandon it because it did not burn enough fuel to make a cat work that US insisted had to be fitted to all new cars. In the UK most of the time cats don't work but we have lost the advantages that lean burn engines would have given us.
From what I understand about the market for vehicles in the US is that Ford no longer produce cars because you all want to drive around in massive suv's with little or no regard to the environmental impact. Sadly I think the same is happening here.

 

[JobandKnock]

Surely the solution is to return to living nearer to.worķ, have greater labour mobility (so more public housing/affordable rents housing) and people tentimg longer as opposed to buying homes, more home working (where feasible) and a major reduction in private motoring...

Even EVs have large carbon footprint in terms of their manufacture...

BTW I am referring to Europe here

 

[Spectric]

EV's will become pointless just like any other vehicle if we continue down this path of just building roads, then more houses and allowing urban sprawl to just spread out of control, it will be quicker to walk or cycle as the traffic grinds to a halt, ok with EV's we can sit there in clean air but will still be stationary.