Gas Prices

[aberdeen5698]

Originally Posted by Trainguy

Just wait until you have to replace that battery pack... $8 - 10 thousand later..

EV car batteries are not like the consumer batteries used in phones and cameras. They'll last for the lifetime of the car, 10 to 15 years. The Chevy Volt has been in production for 8 years now and it's hard to find a single instance of one that has lost any range. And Prius battery packs have gone 500,000 miles without problem.

If car batteries really were a problem then Prius wouldn't have captured almost 100% of the taxi market. Cab owners know better than most which cars are cheapest to run, cheapest to maintain, and last the longest.

[Bdawe]

Originally Posted by aberdeen5698

EV car batteries are not like the consumer batteries used in phones and cameras. They'll last for the lifetime of the car, 10 to 15 years. The Chevy Volt has been in production for 8 years now and it's hard to find a single instance of one that has lost any range. And Prius battery packs have gone 500,000 miles without problem.

If car batteries really were a problem then Prius wouldn't have captured almost 100% of the taxi market. Cab owners know better than most which cars are cheapest to run, cheapest to maintain, and last the longest.

I can speak to the Volt. Family bought one in 2011 and it has only lost a few miles of range in the intervening years

[MIPS]

Originally Posted by aberdeen5698

EV car batteries are not like the consumer batteries used in phones and cameras. They'll last for the lifetime of the car, 10 to 15 years.

I'm driving a car that is almost 40 years old. Ignoring the fact that it's not an EV it's ridiculous to think that most cars can have a hard limit on useable life applied like that. There WILL be people who will try and run these cars for as long as they can to get every penny out of it, either because modern equivalents are not what they want, too complicated to service or just plain and simply expensive.
Battery replacements and rebuilds are ridiculously expensive. Very few people will just get another car when it no longer holds a charge unless there's a very strong incentive.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by MIPS

I'm driving a car that is almost 40 years old. Ignoring the fact that it's not an EV it's ridiculous to think that most cars can have a hard limit on useable life applied like that. There WILL be people who will try and run these cars for as long as they can to get every penny out of it, either because modern equivalents are not what they want, too complicated to service or just plain and simply expensive.
Battery replacements and rebuilds are ridiculously expensive. Very few people will just get another car when it no longer holds a charge unless there's a very strong incentive.

You're the exception, not the rule.

A battery replacement is comparable to a full engine and transmission rebuild in terms of cost and effort. It's exactly the type of thing required by a ~40 year old ICE.

[WestCoastEcho]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

You're the exception, not the rule.

A battery replacement is comparable to a full engine and transmission rebuild in terms of cost and effort. It's exactly the type of thing required by a ~40 year old ICE.

Correct. Even a 10 year old ICE car is looking at some fairly significant maintenance that's going to be hundreds of dollars or more, depending on how big the job is.

And that's even considering the general condition of the vehicle itself; in some areas, you are lucky if you can get a car to last 10 years due to corrosion eating away at the body and frame. By then, if the corrosion is bad enough, the entire vehicle is junked.

[Alex Mackinnon]

Originally Posted by Trainguy

Electric vehicles might serve well for shorter trips in the city but I highly doubt their ability to go long distances in a reasonable amount of time and over mountain ranges like the Coke... I want to get from Van - Kam without having to stop to refuel/recharge.

You have just designed the use case for my car.

Smallish battery, with a generator for longer distances.

[MIPS]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

You're the exception, not the rule.

Garbage. There are still thousands of 15+ year old cars on Lower Mainland streets right now. Hell, you know those neat Mitsubishi Delicas and the ther JDM imports that you see puttering around? Most of those are around 25 years old.
Without AirCare there are no restrictions on how well your car needs to run and given most older cars are still easier to maintain than their successors, you are going to find a lot of people outside of car people and backyard mechanics driving older cars and not giving a toss about EV because the introduction price is far too high, even when you factor in routine maintenance costs to maintain an ICE car.

And that's even considering the general condition of the vehicle itself; in some areas, you are lucky if you can get a car to last 10 years due to corrosion eating away at the body and frame. By then, if the corrosion is bad enough, the entire vehicle is junked.

This means nothing. This is Vancouver, not Toronto or Halifax. We barely brine streets in the winter, much less use salt.

[logan5]

I don't see why you couldn't have an electric vehicle for 40 years if you wanted. Aggregated data has suggested that the Tesla Model S has a 10% capacity loss over 160 000 km. That's about 10 years worth of driving, using the average mileage rate for Canadians. Even at 70% capacity, the car is still very usable. Drivers of the Smart ForTwo are reporting capacity losses of 10% at 200 000 km, so with those kinds of numbers, replacing a battery pack wouldn't be needed for at least 20 years. With the price of batteries dropping each year, 20 years down the road, replacement battery packs are going to a lot cheaper than they are today (Nissan Leaf battery replacement is $5 500).

[logan5]

Originally Posted by MIPS

Garbage. There are still thousands of 15+ year old cars on Lower Mainland streets right now. Hell, you know those neat Mitsubishi Delicas and the ther JDM imports that you see puttering around? Most of those are around 25 years old.
Without AirCare there are no restrictions on how well your car needs to run and given most older cars are still easier to maintain than their successors, you are going to find a lot of people outside of car people and backyard mechanics driving older cars and not giving a toss about EV because the introduction price is far too high, even when you factor in routine maintenance costs to maintain an ICE car.


This means nothing. This is Vancouver, not Toronto or Halifax. We barely brine streets in the winter, much less use salt.

Like I said, the cost of the battery packs are dropping significantly each year. The latest study I have read says the price of an EV will be on par with with ICE vehicles in 2022. Even if that's too optimistic to some people, it's inevitable that EV's will be priced on par with ICE vehicles relatively soon.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articl...ttery-shrinks-and-so-does-the-total-cost

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by MIPS

Garbage. There are still thousands of 15+ year old cars on Lower Mainland streets right now. Hell, you know those neat Mitsubishi Delicas and the ther JDM imports that you see puttering around? Most of those are around 25 years old.
Without AirCare there are no restrictions on how well your car needs to run and given most older cars are still easier to maintain than their successors, you are going to find a lot of people outside of car people and backyard mechanics driving older cars and not giving a toss about EV because the introduction price is far too high, even when you factor in routine maintenance costs to maintain an ICE car.

Ok, first of all you're changing the argument from 40 years to 15 years. Sure there are a fair number of 15+ year old cars puttering around. Thousands out of a market of 2 million cars is, again, the exception, not the rule.

Bold part further proves my point. Specialty imports are rare to say the least.

Average age of a BC car in 2015 is 11.56 years:

https://www.canadianfuels.ca/Blog/Februa...Canadians-buying-You-might-be-surprised/

The price difference is paid for with refueling costs as well as less maintenance. You will easily save $1k-$2k per year in electricity vs. gas costs. The price differential will pay for itself in ~10 years. If you keep the car ~40 years, it could pay for the entire vehicle.

[L00per]

Originally Posted by Trainguy

Well 8 years is nothing to hang onto a vehicle. People tend to keep their vehicles 15 to 20 years.

The end of a warranty, be that for a battery pack, gas drive train, etc., does not indicate the "thing" is broken and must now be replaced. I have a 14 year old v8 in my driveway, long out of warranty, and it's been magnificent.

Beside it, I have a '18 PHEV with a 10yr/100,000KM warranty on the battery pack, and curiously much lower warranty terms on the other bits on the vehicle.

[jlousa]

In my current job I am involved in replacing several hundreds of thousands of dollars in batteries each and every year. We have the best in market batteries, charging equipment, monitoring and we change them out every 5yrs as they begin to deteriorate unpredictable at that point and are no longer able to satisfy our reliability expectations. A single open cell won't take out the whole battery but will take out the string it sits on. Battery tech has made improvements but really hasn't changed significantly on the grand scale of things in generations. I agree that the future will be electric I just don't want to be part of the transition and will wait for the tech to mature.
I don't see many of the current gen electric cars surviving to the 20yr mark and beyond, Tesla if still around by then probably won't be selling you battery packs as they want to push you into a newer car and the propriety nature of most of these battery packs will be a hindrance. The market will really change once standardization occurs, both on battery packs and charging.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by jlousa

In my current job I am involved in replacing several hundreds of thousands of dollars in batteries each and every year. We have the best in market batteries, charging equipment, monitoring and we change them out every 5yrs as they begin to deteriorate unpredictable at that point and are no longer able to satisfy our reliability expectations. A single open cell won't take out the whole battery but will take out the string it sits on. Battery tech has made improvements but really hasn't changed significantly on the grand scale of things in generations. I agree that the future will be electric I just don't want to be part of the transition and will wait for the tech to mature.
I don't see many of the current gen electric cars surviving to the 20yr mark and beyond, Tesla if still around by then probably won't be selling you battery packs as they want to push you into a newer car and the propriety nature of most of these battery packs will be a hindrance. The market will really change once standardization occurs, both on battery packs and charging.

I'm not sure what industry you are involved in, but batteries are designed for the specific use cases they will have. EV batteries are designed for longevity, temperature changes, discharge rates, and cell redundancy.

Each manufacturer does things differently of course, Tesla is regarded as one of the best due to the temperature management system, and the fact they use a ton of small cells to make up the battery. Individual cells can die with little to no overall impact on the pack.

[MIPS]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

I'm not sure what industry you are involved in, but batteries are designed for the specific use cases they will have. EV batteries are designed for longevity, temperature changes, discharge rates, and cell redundancy.

Each manufacturer does things differently of course, Tesla is regarded as one of the best due to the temperature management system, and the fact they use a ton of small cells to make up the battery. Individual cells can die with little to no overall impact on the pack.

I have to agree with him. We were using lead acid for EV's almost as far back as the automobile itself and only really began testing prototype EV's with newer cell technology like Nickel Cadmium and Nickel metal Hydride when the technology became viable for cars in the late 90's and even then it was partly for why the EV1 (which until 1999 was STILL a lead acid battery EV) was so range limited, and extremely heavy.
Using ultra-high capacity lithium cells in a car is still quite new relative to both technologies. Yes they do provide a far better capacity than previous technologies and are both smaller and lighter but longetivity estimates will still vary in real-world applications and we still have not yet fully gotten good at dealing with the volatility of the cells (or reliably mass manufacturing them), not just in cars but in phones, laptops or just about anything that requires a high capacity lithium cell.
Assuming these batteries will remain useable or even replaceable in 15 to 20 years is pure speculation. I said a few pages back that it would be best to wait another 20 years before committing to an EV but for now there are more than enough ICE cars that can take you to that point, many of which yes, are even half the age of my car but still perform just as well if not better with regular maintenance.

[logan5]

Originally Posted by MIPS

Assuming these batteries will remain useable or even replaceable in 15 to 20 years is pure speculation

We have real world examples of electric cars that have been driven 250 000 km's. For the average driver in Canada, that is over 15 years worth of driving. Saying those numbers are "pure speculation" is flat out wrong.

Actual Tesla owners report about a 5% drop in battery capacity by the 50,000 mile mark but after that, the rate of degradation drops considerably. On average, cars with 160,000 miles (250 000 km's) on them still have 90% of their battery capacity remaining. Projecting forward from the real world data available, a Tesla battery should still have 80% battery capacity after 500,000 miles (800 000 km's) of driving. The vast majority of internal combustion engines would have stopped functioning long before then.

https://cleantechnica.com/2018/04/16/tes...-160000-miles-may-last-for-500000-miles/

You can buy replacement battery packs today. It's extremely unlikely you wouldn't be able to buy them 20 years down the road. And you can get them fairly cheaply now too. In 20 years battery packs are going to be dirt cheap.

Nissan is finally launching the exchange program for Nissan LEAF batteries in Japan that enables LEAF owners to trade in old batteries for refabricated ones.The 24 kWh refabricated batteries for the oldest LEAFs will be offered for 300,000 yen apiece (around $2,850). That's less than half the price of a brand new 24 kWh pack (650,000 yen or ≈$6,200). Nissan will try to make use of the old modules for energy storage systems.

https://insideevs.com/news/337360/nissan-introduces-2850-refabricated-batteries-for-older-leaf/

There is strong data to support a battery pack outlasting a combustion engine. Combine that with the fuel savings, lower maintenance costs, and environmental impact, when EV's are priced the same as an ICE vehicle in 5 years, you would have to be crazy to buy a gas powered car.

[jlousa]

You can believe what you wish but there is a serious concern within the conservative business world about being about to procure battery packs long term. No one is doubting you can get a pack 5-7yrs after the vehicle purchase, the issue is will you be able to buy something in 15yrs? Perhaps a third party could create a compatible pack for the more popular models if the manufactor doesn't go after them, but how good will it be, and who will bother with the less popular models. Standardization will eventually have to happen on the battery front before things really take off.

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by jlousa

In my current job I am involved in replacing several hundreds of thousands of dollars in batteries each and every year. We have the best in market batteries, charging equipment, monitoring and we change them out every 5yrs as they begin to deteriorate unpredictable at that point and are no longer able to satisfy our reliability expectations. A single open cell won't take out the whole battery but will take out the string it sits on. Battery tech has made improvements but really hasn't changed significantly on the grand scale of things in generations. I agree that the future will be electric I just don't want to be part of the transition and will wait for the tech to mature.
I don't see many of the current gen electric cars surviving to the 20yr mark and beyond, Tesla if still around by then probably won't be selling you battery packs as they want to push you into a newer car and the propriety nature of most of these battery packs will be a hindrance. The market will really change once standardization occurs, both on battery packs and charging.

How many people expect their vehicle to last 20 years?

[jlousa]

Originally Posted by whatnext

How many people expect their vehicle to last 20 years?

With the average age of cars on the road being 11.7yrs it stands to reason that most cars need to get to 20yrs and even older. Think too many people here live in a bubble and think when they get rid of their car after the lease it just disappears. A well maintained car, even a domestic,should last 25+ yrs.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by jlousa

With the average age of cars on the road being 11.7yrs it stands to reason that most cars need to get to 20yrs and even older. Think too many people here live in a bubble and think when they get rid of their car after the lease it just disappears. A well maintained car, even a domestic,should last 25+ yrs.

That's registered cars. Most of the truly older ones pulling the average down aren't daily drivers.

10% of cars on the road are 2019s, and it goes from there.

Maintaining a car costs money. Most people give up on domestics long before then.

[Mikemike]

I know one guy with a couple cars in the 100 year old range. Another with several around 50 years old, but the one he drives is about 5. A few others with a summer car from the 60's or 70's.

A few of those can make a big change to the average.

That said, you should expect to get 15 years from a vehicle even in the land of winter and road salt.