What's the problem with electric vehicles

[Las Palmas]

15 minutes ago, Linas.P said:

This weekly charging practice only works if you have ICE weekend vehicle and you dedicate EV just for daily commute an local driving... which as discuss would (important to underline WOULD) work if people would be able to have multiple cars and own BEV as second or third car in household. Otherwise BEV will get charged daily... 

Would also be great and function if you have 2 EV cars and use the one that is charged. Of course you will have to charge several times if going to visit family in other countries, like we do.

[ColinBarber]

3 minutes ago, Linas.P said:

they specifically quote Nissan (BEV manufacturer) who says that most of batteries they have made are still in use, which is kind of "economical truth" statement as that neither confirms nor denies the reduction in capacity... if anything recent video about 80k miles Leaf shows it has just about 42% of range left and that equates to ~56 miles or real life driving for that car. 

The Leaf has the worst performing Battery because it didn't have any active thermal management, unlike the vast majority of modern EVs. Many older ones have very high degradation.

4 minutes ago, Linas.P said:

The problem is that generally there are very few reliable sources of information when it comes to EVs.

The reliability and capacity drop often quoted is all based on theory and accelerated lab cycling. There are no reliable sources whichever side of the fence you sit because until a larger volume of EVs of 10+ years and 100k+ miles exist there isn't the data to back up any theory. What we are seeing with the small samples now available is the Battery degradation isn't as high as first thought.

For people that don't need long range, the LFP/LiFePo4 batteries offer even more cycles and ability to charging to 100% with much less degradation than the higher range NCA and NCM chemistries.

 

[Mr Vlad]

Fifth Gear Recharge did a piece on 100k mile + EV'S and 10 years in age. However the model S tesla was 5 or so years old with over 100k miles and its Battery deg was under 5%. Nissan leaf was about 15%. Very surprising results. 

[Shahpor]

4 hours ago, Las Palmas said:

Do you know any with an EV car that only charge once a week?

Me.  I only charge on average once a week.

[Shahpor]

4 hours ago, Linas.P said:

I do not actually trust this, especially coming from biased source. Most of BEVs use standard 18650 Lithium Cells, I know Tesla has it's own type 20700 and 21700, as well they looking at 4680, but the technology and the principles are the same as consumer batteries. I guess in simplest terms - if you get good quality cells made by Samsung, LG or Sanyo, then they will be equivalent or better quality cells then those in Tesla/other cars, because big part of choosing cells for BEVs are cost cutting. So "industrial" quality just means "cheaper than consumer", because at $18 per cell and ~600cells per pack +~20% of cost of all peripherals using something like good quality Samsung cells would make the battery cost $12960. And that is just material cost alone, who knows how much should be added for manufacturing, maybe 30-50%. So we are looking at $17000-19500 for battery pack if best cells are used. Tesla is known to use Panasonic batteries which are generally cheaper for consumer batteries than Samsung, LG or Sanyo. I am not saying they are inferior quality, but cost aspect is definitely very important. We as well know that Tesla battery costs ~$13500, but it not very clear how much it costs to actually manufacture it... what I am certain of - it definitely does not cost just $540 and that means Tesla don't use best quality cells available for $12960. I reckon more realistically (using high level 30-50% manufacturing/profit margin) the $13500 battery pack costs less than $9450 in materials and less than $7560 for cells ($12 per cell)... which coincidentally (or maybe not) is the same as best Panasonic "consumer" cells available to buy. 

I think you are missing the point here Linas.  The article doesn't say that the cells are a better quality, only that the overall Battery is built to a 'higher' standard.  What that means is that, unlike a mobile phone Battery, longevity is a key factor that is taken into account in its design.  So, you can see that only about half of the cells are actually used when the Battery is new.  This is costly and makes the Battery much bigger/heavier than it needs to be when the car is new, but the trade off is that it lasts longer then the equivalent phone Battery.

So, as was originally stated, they are different than mobile phones in their degradation profile, but only because they are overprovisioned by a large margin, not a 'better' cell design. 

[Linas.P]

46 minutes ago, ColinBarber said:

The Leaf has the worst performing battery because it didn't have any active thermal management, unlike the vast majority of modern EVs. Many older ones have very high degradation.

The reliability and capacity drop often quoted is all based on theory and accelerated lab cycling. There are no reliable sources whichever side of the fence you sit because until a larger volume of EVs of 10+ years and 100k+ miles exist there isn't the data to back up any theory. What we are seeing with the small samples now available is the battery degradation isn't as high as first thought.

For people that don't need long range, the LFP/LiFePo4 batteries offer even more cycles and ability to charging to 100% with much less degradation than the higher range NCA and NCM chemistries.

Have no issue with what you said, just stating the fact that it is hard to find good source on it and it seems we agree on that. As well, I said before that focus should be making low range range small EVs (seems like you statement supports that) for the city and monsters like Model-X, Model-S, Porsche Tycan should be prohibitively taxed, not to incentivise them, but to disincentivise them... basically like ICE are (or used to be) in brackets based by amount of CO2, the batteries should be taxed by capacity... so long range EVs with large batteries should be in G category or whatever ad get £730/year tax - because they are new "gas guzzlers" with their massive polluting batteries and they are BAD. It is much easier to make good, short range BEV for city, but that is the only thing they should be used for, not for long range driving with monstrous batteries.

12 minutes ago, Shahpor said:

I think you are missing the point here Linas.  The article doesn't say that the cells are a better quality, only that the overall battery is built to a 'higher' standard.  What that means is that, unlike a mobile phone battery, longevity is a key factor that is taken into account in its design.  So, you can see that only about half of the cells are actually used when the battery is new.  This is costly and makes the battery much bigger/heavier than it needs to be when the car is new, but the trade off is that it lasts longer then the equivalent phone battery.

So, as was originally stated, they are different than mobile phones in their degradation profile, but only because they are overprovisioned by a large margin, not a 'better' cell design. 

Well I guess I get your point - by being overprovisioned they avoid being at low charge or at full charge and that in theory prolongs the life of the entire pack... or maybe just masks the degradation? The problem is that there is no reliable, accurate information about it and no transparency (because clearly negative info here would hurt interests of manufacturers).

What cars do you own? 

[Shahpor]

42 minutes ago, Linas.P said:

What cars do you own? 

We are a all Kia family at the moment, so a Kia Stinger and Kia Niro EV.  Gas guzzler and electric car; quite the contrast.

[Las Palmas]

1 hour ago, Shahpor said:

I think you are missing the point here Linas.  The article doesn't say that the cells are a better quality, only that the overall battery is built to a 'higher' standard.  What that means is that, unlike a mobile phone battery, longevity is a key factor that is taken into account in its design.  So, you can see that only about half of the cells are actually used when the battery is new.  This is costly and makes the battery much bigger/heavier than it needs to be when the car is new, but the trade off is that it lasts longer then the equivalent phone battery.

So, as was originally stated, they are different than mobile phones in their degradation profile, but only because they are overprovisioned by a large margin, not a 'better' cell design. 

So, what you are saying is that in order not to accept that batteries degrade they are having intelligent computer systems charging and having 30 - 50% larger and heavier batteries than needed in order not to inform that the batteries are losing power just like phones and computers. Thus, accepting that batteries are losing power just like batteries do.

[Shahpor]

1 minute ago, Las Palmas said:

So, what you are saying is that in order not to accept that batteries degrade they are having intelligent computer systems charging and having 30 - 50% larger and heavier batteries than needed in order not to inform that the batteries are losing power just like phones and computers. Thus, accepting that batteries are losing power just like batteries do.

No, what I am saying that they are accepting that batteries lose power (since it is not possible for it to be otherwise at present) and are designing their Battery packs accordingly to give the car a minimum of a 8 year useable life expectancy.  As for how they achieve that, manufacturers deliberately avoid telling the driver the state of the Battery as the typical owner is only concerned with range, which is what the computer systems on the cars manage.

[Las Palmas]

1 hour ago, Shahpor said:

No, what I am saying that they are accepting that batteries lose power (since it is not possible for it to be otherwise at present) and are designing their battery packs accordingly to give the car a minimum of a 8 year useable life expectancy.  As for how they achieve that, manufacturers deliberately avoid telling the driver the state of the battery as the typical owner is only concerned with range, which is what the computer systems on the cars manage.

Meaning that they are actually bull****ting and that is accepted. So no better batteries in cars than in phones and whatever else is battery-powered.

[Las Palmas]

I think that this is the question started this :

What's the problem with electric vehicles?

There are no problems with electric cars.

The problems are that some people believe what the companies that make the cars tell them.

[Linas.P]

2 hours ago, Shahpor said:

Me.  I only charge on average once a week.

1 hour ago, Shahpor said:

We are a all Kia family at the moment, so a Kia Stinger and Kia Niro EV.  Gas guzzler and electric car; quite the contrast.

Which is the point - the only reason you can charge once a week is because you have BEV as second car. That is because you don't need to care that your BEV only has 30 miles range on Friday, because if you need to go 200 miles on Saturday you just jump into Stinger and go whatever distance. This is impossible in household with only one car!

21 minutes ago, Las Palmas said:

Meaning that they are actually bull****ting and that is accepted. So no better batteries in cars than in phones and whatever else is battery-powered.

It is not bull****ing, but in principle cars carry like extra 10-30% of the Battery firstly to slow down degradation of the Battery and secondly to hide the degradation of the Battery. Which is why I am saying all "Battery degradation tests" are flawed, because they don't actually tell you how much it has degraded, it only tells you how much below the spare capacity it has degraded. And because reserves are often unknow we don't know what we measuring (to be fair testers know how to estimate the real capacity, but it is still just estimation). I understand why it is necessary, but it is still fact that it is hidden from public and not transparent even to the owners themselves. 

In either case - the older the BEV the faster the Battery will degrade as less and less spare capacity there will be, which will mean Battery will have to get discharged more and charged more to keep reasonable range. The spare capacity does not prevent degradation, just slows it down and hides it for first few year.

I think it is fair to say it is kind of cheating... not cheating would be if car would openly say "I won't charge past 80%", "I won't let you drive above 10MPH after you reach 20%"... No they say "Battery is full", but it isn't and they say "Battery is empty" but it isn't... even if there would be advanced menu or some sort of override button, then we could say at least it is know how much spare capacity there is, but now it can only be estimated.

[Linas.P]

19 minutes ago, Las Palmas said:

I think that this is the question started this :

What's the problem with electric vehicles?

There are no problems with electric cars.

The problems are that some people believe what the companies that make the cars tell them.

I can't completely agree... more like people are ignorant and they don't research and understand what companies are telling to them. It is not secret that most BEVs have "Battery management technology"... but one needs to understand what that means. It means exactly that - 100% of Battery will never be available to you, because it is overprovisioned to reduce degradation. It is kind of similar to "reserve fuel" in fuel tank - car tells you the tank is empty, but there is still like 5L, the difference is that you can drive until you actually run out, you are not restricted in any way and car isn't really hurt by doing it (the fuel pump can overheat, but once fuel pump is replaced you tank capacity does not become smaller). 

So people don't understand and can't be bothered to understand what companies are telling them, so they end-up believing things companies didn't actually told them... and all the gaps are filled by EVangelists glossing over things and further misleading those who do just surface level research. 

Because imagine yourself as mildly interested individual and you decide to check something you heard during the day - "they say that BEV batteries degraded"... you put this in the google and the article which comes-up is from EVbox... which pretty much calls the degradation myth and glosses over the facts by using research which was done by biased sources and articles which are outright purchased by companies involved in the game... and you go to sleep thinking "cool I find out there is no need to worry and all that is a myth". Very very few people do in depth research, checks all the links to all the sources, checks who commissioned reports and who paid for their publishing etc. And for example I quite like that sort of thing (doing research, getting to the bottom of sources etc), but I have no doubt that 80% of population has no clue and are not even interested in finding out.

[Las Palmas]

12 minutes ago, Linas.P said:

but I have no doubt that 80% of population has no clue and are not even interested in finding out.

Just say that 95% of population accept being lied to because that will let them sleep well at night and not worry about what they are doing to their children and children’s children. Ruining the planet, we live on, by using more than is regenerated naturally.

Cool, we just put twice as many cells in the Battery and let computer take care of managing it in order to fool the idiots buying them. Is that what car companies say behind closed doors? Or do you say that I am the one understanding nothing?

[Mr Vlad]

this is a very interesting video I watched earlier this week. It should answer a few things within this thread. Enjoy.

 

[Linas.P]

1 minute ago, Las Palmas said:

Cool, we just put twice as many cells in the battery and let computer take care of managing it in order to fool the idiots buying them. Is that what car companies say behind closed doors? Or do you say that I am the one understanding nothing?

Well it is not exactly like that but close. If they don't put twice as many cells, then the Battery will be toasted within 3 years. 

For example imagine there are 2 cars (just illustrative example), both has 75KWh batteries, but one actually has 100KWh an only allows 75KWh to be used, the other only has 75KWh and allows all of it to be used. After 3 years of using the first car will have say 90KWh capacity left and will allow 70KWh to be used, so the Battery will degrade 10% and user will notice 6% degradation, the second car will have 50KWh left and 50KWh available to the user, or 33% drop in both stated and available capacity. 

As clear from above example overprovisioning the Battery and managing the charging and discharging significantly reduces the speed at which Battery degrades (or that is theory anyway), but at the same time it hides the real level of degradation. For example for normal owner there is no real way of knowing if the Battery degraded by 10KWh, or 20KWh or by whole 30KWh... The car companies would like us to believe it is just 10KWh, but my point was that I have not seen any reliable source definitively showing the degradation, because the real capacity is most of the time not advertised and only estimated. 

[Las Palmas]

3 minutes ago, Linas.P said:

because the real capacity is most of the time not advertised and only estimated. 

If you know how much the batteries in phones and computers degrade then you know how much the Battery cells in cars degrade. They only are computer controlled to fool people.

I never said that. What did you never say? What I just said.

[Linas.P]

1 minute ago, Las Palmas said:

If you know how much the batteries in phones and computers degrade then you know how much the battery cells in cars degrade. They only are computer controlled to fool people.

I never said that. What did you never say? What I just said.

Well... again not exactly. Because laptops and phone will degrade at the rate of the second example where Battery is "not managed"... because laptops and phones are very small, there is no space inside to put bigger Battery than it needs and further it is deemed unnecessary, because 1... they are just disposable and having them keep the same capacity for long time is just not important (would you buy phone which holds charge 1 day, but does it for 10 years, or the one which holds charge for 2 days, but drops to 1 day after 4 years... the logic that if you change phone every 3 years you are likely to pick second option)... and 2. because manufacturers wants you to change your electronics (planned obsolescence - if you Battery and the rest remains as good as on the day you bought it, then there is no motivation to upgrade). So it is realistic to believe (at least in theory) that by having extra cells car Battery only degrades by 10%, where laptop Battery without extra cells degrades by 30% in the same period.

[Steven Lockey]

8 hours ago, Linas.P said:

Because it does defy the chemistry Most of EVs have some capacity cap both at the top and at the bottom to hide the degradation... it is not known but estimates are 10-30%. So that 3% loss after 5 years could mean loss of 13-33% and in next 5 years the degradation may be significantly higher. 

Secondly, battery degradation is massively impacted by charging type. Charging at home on slow charger the degradation may be very slow, but you you using exclusively fast chargers on motorway then this will accelerate degradation. Some batteries degrade like 10 times quicker on fast chargers compared to slow chargers - this is hard to quantify as it really depends what battery, how much discharged it was at the beginning of the charge, how full it was charged, what was the rate of charging... so 10 times is probably like worst case scenario and 50% or 1.5 times is best case scenario. But that illustrates the issue with owning BEV if you can't charge at home, or if you doing longer journeys necessitating fast charging on your way.

I really wish you would actually do some basic research before typing.

No, there is no reason batteries can not be made to never lose capacity. The "chemistry" is perfectly happy to allow that. 
Fortunately scientists have already found a couple of ways round this, like plating the surface with a lithophobic substance. Its one thing they are looking at implementing commercially in the next few years which vastly increases the life-span of batteries. 

Fast charging car batteries shouldn't cause any extra degradation, what you consider a fast charge is actually putting very little power into each cell because of how many there are. They could charge a lot faster if they weren't worried about Battery damage.

 

8 hours ago, Linas.P said:

But... if you charging at home with slow charger, then you most likely going to try to charge it every day, to always be topped-up to ensure maximum range is available. Which then necessitates daily charging for just few % which in itself isn't good for the battery.

At least my smartphone lasts me 2.5 days (Galaxy S22) so I am charging it 146 times per year, whereas one will potentially charge EV every day they drive... but as well could be twice a day if they charge at both ends of the journey... so may estimate would be between 150 and 300 times a year (for myself as I drive ~150 times per year). 

 Topping it up isn't a full charge cycle. It's about % of total Battery capacity. So if you phone uses its entire Battery in a day and has to be fully recharged in a day, thats 1 full charge cycle. 
If you drive 60 miles in your EV and recharge the Battery the missing 20%, that 0.2 charge cycles.

[Linas.P]

1 hour ago, Steven Lockey said:

I really wish you would actually do some basic research before typing.

No, there is no reason batteries can not be made to never lose capacity. The "chemistry" is perfectly happy to allow that. 
Fortunately scientists have already found a couple of ways round this, like plating the surface with a lithophobic substance. Its one thing they are looking at implementing commercially in the next few years which vastly increases the life-span of batteries. 

Fast charging car batteries shouldn't cause any extra degradation, what you consider a fast charge is actually putting very little power into each cell because of how many there are. They could charge a lot faster if they weren't worried about battery damage.

 

 Topping it up isn't a full charge cycle. It's about % of total battery capacity. So if you phone uses its entire battery in a day and has to be fully recharged in a day, thats 1 full charge cycle. 
If you drive 60 miles in your EV and recharge the battery the missing 20%, that 0.2 charge cycles.

I hope this is sarcasm as you clearly have no clue what you talking about, but it is me who needs to do some "basic research before typing"...

Yeah sure "lithographic substance and whale liver pate distilled into pure gold".... and that will happened in "next few years"... which is the same story for last 15 years... and every year there is some sort of "ground breaking" technology coming in "next few years". As far as I am concerned in "next few years" we may as well have nuclear fusion, but let's not jump over ourselves alright? When it is going to be in the market, then we can see what impact it has.

And I think this is the bit I like the most, honestly one of the dumbest thing I heard in a while - "They could charge a lot faster if they weren't worried about Battery damage"... ohh so you are saying they could not charge faster... because faster charging would damage the batteries? Isn't that exactly what was said... or this is some language problem? When you charge batteries faster (this is particularly true for lithium based batteries) they degrade quicker. So if just for illustration let's say single "slow" charge at 7Kw degrades the Battery by 0.01%, then charging the same Battery with 350Kw "fast" charger may actually degrade it by 0.1%... which part of that you didn't understand? 

The charge cycle is approximate arbitrary measurement same as MTTF or MBTF, it is meaningless... each Battery type is affected differently by the charging, some can be half-charged (shallow-charge) without issue, some are actually damaged more by it, therefore it is better to fully discharge them before recharging and vice versa. Yes technically full cycle is one cycle when Battery is charged from 0% to 100%, however charging Battery 5 times for 20% between 40% and 60% could be much more damaging than charging it once from 0% to 100%. So if you have say have Battery with 5000 cycles warranty, it may fail after just 1000 cycles, if they were not full cycles (deep-charges). It is comparative measure so that manufacturers could compare the longevity of the Battery, it is not reflective of real-life charging patters. One Battery with 10k charge life-span is expected to outperform another Battery with 5k in the same conditions, but apart of that it doesn't mean much more. 

[Mr Vlad]

Reading the last post above reminded me of a short period within this EV revolution about charging these EV'S. It went something like You shouldn't charge the batteries to 100% as that will  damage the Battery sooner and shorten its life. You should only charge the EV when it's showing 20% charge and then and only then charge it to 80%. This will enhance the life of the Battery. That's the gist of that.

From what I understand it seems they're saying its ok now to charge to 100%. 

Blimey no wonder there's confusion surrounding EV'S. 

[Linas.P]

8 minutes ago, Mr Vlad said:

Reading the last post above reminded me of a short period within this EV revolution about charging these EV'S. It went something like You shouldn't charge the batteries to 100% as that will  damage the battery sooner and shorten its life. You should only charge the EV when it's showing 20% charge and then and only then charge it to 80%. This will enhance the life of the battery. That's the gist of that.

From what I understand it seems they're saying its ok now to charge to 100%. 

Blimey no wonder there's confusion surrounding EV'S. 

It is ok to charge to 100%, because 100% isn't 100%... 

[Mr Vlad]

Yeah I gathered that. Seen lots of videos stating that the EV hides between 2 and 5% of the batteries capacity.

[Spock66]

15 hours ago, Shahpor said:

No, what I am saying that they are accepting that batteries lose power (since it is not possible for it to be otherwise at present) and are designing their battery packs accordingly to give the car a minimum of a 8 year useable life expectancy.  As for how they achieve that, manufacturers deliberately avoid telling the driver the state of the battery as the typical owner is only concerned with range, which is what the computer systems on the cars manage.

You could argue it's the same with ICE vehicles, manufacturers quote the power output and torque of the engine, after 10-years / 100k miles it's likely that those figures will have degraded.

[Las Palmas]

9 minutes ago, Spock66 said:

You could argue it's the same with ICE vehicles, manufacturers quote the power output and torque of the engine, after 10-years / 100k miles it's likely that those figures will have degraded.

You never heard this?

Old Chevys Never Die: They Just Go Faster