Frozen EVs in Chicago.

[jdindadell]

IMO there are enough moving parts to install a part, like an alternator (we all have them), to charge batteries while the vehicle is moving. That debate isn't new to me but I am relatively certain we already have the technology, but it may need to be refined to make it work.

Soooo, there are issues with trying to generate power, it takes some sort of energy to generate electricity. So if you tried to used the power in a tesla battery to turn an alternator which would recharge the battery, you would end up with less power in the battery than what you started with, due to energy losses, and the fact that nothing is 100 percent efficient.

And yes, solar panels can produce electricity, but the surface area needed to charge a tesla battery faster than it discharges would likey be bigger than a few acres...

Pretty sure most people have no idea how much electricity is in a tesla battery. Its alot, like 20 or 30 large car batteries. Imagine trying to charge 30 car batteries quickly... not happening with lead acid. Lipo can be charged faster, but there are limits.

The downfall of the ev will be resale value, or lack thereof. When they get older and need a fresh battery, the new battery will be likely more costly that the used cars value.

 

[Fordfella]

Tesla and all of the major EVs already already way ahead of you. Whenever you take your foot off of the "gas" pedal, the vehicle uses regenerative braking technology to slow the vehicle down and to charge the batteries. In practice, you almost never apply brakes while driving an EV. Not kidding - you could go weeks without touching the brake pedal.


Quoted my post below.

I guess I should have said "Get 500 miles of equivalent battery charge in 5 minutes."

What I mean is that a big selling point for gas powered vehicles is that you can refill the tank in under 5 minutes and in many vehicles the gas tank holds enough gas to get you 500 miles. EVs take longer to "fill up," but my point is that for most people it doesn't matter because you wake up every day with a full battery.

Thank you, that made more sense.

 

[Abby Normal]

The downfall of the ev will be resale value, or lack thereof. When they get older and need a fresh battery, the new battery will be likely more costly that the used cars value.

Here’s a list of EV battery prices. The cheapest is the chevy bolt at $9908.00. When the price of battery & labor is more than the value of the car, it’s a total.

The Replacement Battery Costs for These Six Normal EVs Is Staggeringly High

The battery pack is almost the entire cost of the car in some cases. Some are more costly than the car itself.

www.thedrive.com

 

[John_]

Good grief, look at those replacement battery costs! After 10 or 15 years of service life facing a 15 or 25k $ battery replacement cost. I have read this before in online articles about EVs, battery replacement costs, parts and labor.

There is a reason Toyota does not offer a new full time EV today. Their new hybrids are attaining 50 mpg city and highway. The 2024 Prius, and its now pretty fast too. New and improved. Honda has some very efficient hybrids too, I test drove a couple new models in Covington 9 months ago.

 

[T-boy]

When the price of battery & labor is more than the value of the car, it’s a total.

In Louisiana, when parts and labor reach 75% of the actual cash value of the vehicle, it's considered a Total Loss.

 

[thperez1972]

There's a company named Ample that has an interesting take on EVs. Buy the car but lease the battery. The lease comes with the opportunity to swap the current battery for a charged battery. They claim to have gotten the process down to about 5 minutes. So getting a 500 mile range in 5 minutes with an EV may not be terribly far off.

 

[noob]

You can get aftermarket Prius battery packs for 800-900 bucks. There’s YouTube videos on how to swap it out, usually a battery pack lasts 150-200k miles. I know two people that have had to change theirs.

It’s been years with the 20k dollar Chevy bolt battery story. I’m sure they finally have aftermarket or cheaper alternatives to replacement. But 7-10k doesn’t sound out of the ordinary for that. Cars are consumables, you buy it, use it and get rid of it when it no longer works for you. And the ones that cannot afford to buy new, shouldn’t be looking into buying a used EV.

 

[AdvancedLaser]

There's a company named Ample that has an interesting take on EVs. Buy the car but lease the battery. The lease comes with the opportunity to swap the current battery for a charged battery. They claim to have gotten the process down to about 5 minutes. So getting a 500 mile range in 5 minutes with an EV may not be terribly far off.

Tesla actually started down this road. They initially built a shop to hot swap Model S batteries. Its not much time to get under it and swap it. They decided Supercharging was the way to go.

They also just got a patent on near field charging. No more plugging in. Drive above the mat.

There is a country I read a while ago that just built a road that charges the EV's as they drive above it. The proof of concept worked. Pretty amazing.

And to the above comment about the 10-15 year car battery. There are no Model S cars standing in line for batteries. And thankfully there are no ICE vehicles that need engine replacements at or before 10-15 years (rolling eyes). They are known for their resilience to breakage with their thousands of moving parts.

 

[noob]

I'm not sure how I feel about near field charging. Does anyone feel that there's a lot more cancer going around? I know 3 people personally that are around my age and are battling cancer, and I don't consider myself old

 

[jdindadell]

While it would not be unreasonable to think a ev with a 300 mile range between charges could achieve 150k miles before it needs the battery replaced, there are other considerations.

Tesla has decided to use a small format cell, 21700 if I remember correctly. These are arranged in a 20plus parallel arrangement then in series for 400 volts. Series adds the voltage, so if you want 400 volts and you are using a 4 volt nominal cell, you need 100 cells in series. If any individual cell fails in the series, you will not have any voltage output.

The issue arrives with the parallel arrangement. If any of the cells in a parallel setup have issues and become weak, the other cells will not charge correctly. Given the assembly technique of the pack, it is difficult to remove a single cell.

The chances of 1 cell out of 1000s being problematic is pretty good. So these battery packs will likely fail that way, rather than just wearing out. And you can't just put a brand new cell in a used pack, as it will perform differently and cause charging and balancing issues. So you would need a selection of used cells with known amount of usage on them to be able to fix these packs with any semblance of effectiveness.

Keep in mind these packs are charged en bloc, not per cell. This poses issues with getting g all of the cells equally charged. Once a cells gets out of balance, it is very difficult to get it back in balance without charging all of the cells individually.

I have a lot of time fixing lipo batteries under my belt... I was thinking of getting into the ev battery repair business.

 

[John_]

I have a 2016 Model S 90D. The “90" kwh battery holds about 68–70 kwh of energy. My full charge range is about 190 miles (not 285 as advertised). Most of that battery degradation occurred in the first few thousand miles of ownership.

While that loss of energy capacity and range is annoying enough, I am more annoyed by:

1. Tesla Service says that my battery is fine.
2. The cars energy meter still shows full charge range near 280 miles.
3. Tesla Service manager told me: “We do not replace batteries for any amount of degradation. Only if the battery shows a fault.”

Aside from the battery deterioration, the car has been very reliable.

Update September 2023. Despite the very annoying battery degradation problem, I replaced my 2016 Model S (96,000 miles) with a new one. This time I'm going into it knowing that my range will likely be about 320 miles. Much less than the advertised 405 miles. But good nonetheless.

source of above quote

 

[John_]

More thoughts on this: To me the biggest tell on EVs is why is Hertz selling 20,000 EVs and going back to ICE vehicles?
If its such a sweet deal as a handful here allude to, why are they switching back to ICE?

And why are LE departments not jumping in full force? If EVs are indeed cheaper to operate long term versus ICE, why are they not buying in today, and in a big way? How many patrol units does NOPD have rolling 24/7? Has to be maybe 4 or 500 units.

Or any other police departments, large or small.

 

[AustinBR]

More thoughts on this: To me the biggest tell on EVs is why is Hertz selling 20,000 EVs and going back to ICE vehicles?
If its such a sweet deal as a handful here allude to, why are they switching back to ICE?

And why are LE departments not jumping in full force? If EVs are indeed cheaper to operate long term versus ICE, why are they not buying in today, and in a big way? How many patrol units does NOPD have rolling 24/7? Has to be maybe 4 or 500 units.

Or any other police departments, large or small.

Rentals: Because it requires education to teach renters how and where to charge. Remember, people are stupid. Also, not all states have robust charging networks, so the bet that Hertz placed a few years ago didn't pay off in time.

LE: I would venture to guess that it has to due with it still being new technology and it costing more. There is also a lot more red tape for any government agency to spend cash on things. Finally, charging networks still aren't the greatest and purchasing 15 EVs for a department would also require investment of charging equipment at their station(s).

 

[thperez1972]

How many patrol units does NOPD have rolling 24/7? Has to be maybe 4 or 500 units.

Given their manpower shortage, 4 sounds reasonable. Probably closer to 7 or 8.

I'm sure you meant 400 or 500 but I'd be surprised in they have than many in their entire fleet, much less rolling 24/7. Unless it's changed, the cars are hot swapped. One shift drives them to the station, hands the keys off, and the cars go out again. There may be 10-12 for the regular patrol per district but only 5-6 may go out on an average night. With 8 districts, I'd gay 50 patrol cars on a good night. Then you may have some Task Force vehicles (the "jump out boys" according to the local slang). So add another 3-5 per district. Those may sit when the Task Force isn't using them.

In the case of NOPD, they may have to actually buy more cars than they actually just to allow for cars to have downtime to charge. An imperfect parallel to that would be the dash cam system. The footage would be saved to a box in the trunk. That box would connect to a wireless network at the station to download the data from the box to the server. So if a car didn't sit long enough, the box would hit its capacity of data and stop recording. In the case of the district covering the French Quarter, shift change wasn't even at the station with the wireless network. It was at an office right outside the Riverside Hilton. But I digress. The download may take 5-10 minutes and that had to be planned in some cases. So without more cars to allow for downtime, the specialized vehicle needs of a police department would likely not be compatible with the workflow needed to have EVs.

 

[Fordfella]

And why are LE departments not jumping in full force? If EVs are indeed cheaper to operate long term versus ICE, why are they not buying in today, and in a big way? How many patrol units does NOPD have rolling 24/7? Has to be maybe 4 or 500 units.

Or any other police departments, large or small.

Electric Mustangs for NYC Police.

https://www.police1.com/patrol-cars/articles/nyc-buys-184-mustang-mach-e-electric-cars-for-le-emergency-response-1hPTWhH0Sb05auoy/?fbclid=IwAR02uJYRULXwcqILHc7xU5bIIexaEWiXo9wJAjiNoJd-PxgbsuPXea2UrT8

bayoushooter.com

 

[thperez1972]

Electric Mustangs for NYC Police.

https://www.police1.com/patrol-cars/articles/nyc-buys-184-mustang-mach-e-electric-cars-for-le-emergency-response-1hPTWhH0Sb05auoy/?fbclid=IwAR02uJYRULXwcqILHc7xU5bIIexaEWiXo9wJAjiNoJd-PxgbsuPXea2UrT8

bayoushooter.com

NYC buys 184 Mustang Mach-E electric cars for LE, emergency response

NYC buys 184 Mustang Mach-E electric cars for LE, emergency response

The order will cost $11.5 million — the largest purchase of all-electric vehicles for law enforcement to date

www.police1.com

"New York City operates over 30,000 vehicles, the largest municipal fleet in the country."

Fleet Report - Mayor's Office of Operations

Even if all of those 184 EVs went to NYPD, that's 2.3% of their 8100 vehicles. 184 is a lot but it's not a significant portion of the fleet.

 

[John_]

Given their manpower shortage, 4 sounds reasonable. Probably closer to 7 or 8.

I'm sure you meant 400 or 500 but I'd be surprised in they have than many in their entire fleet, much less rolling 24/7. Unless it's changed, the cars are hot swapped. One shift drives them to the station, hands the keys off, and the cars go out again. There may be 10-12 for the regular patrol per district but only 5-6 may go out on an average night. With 8 districts, I'd gay 50 patrol cars on a good night. Then you may have some Task Force vehicles (the "jump out boys" according to the local slang). So add another 3-5 per district. Those may sit when the Task Force isn't using them.

Yeah, I had no idea on the numbers on a given day. So somewhere between 40 to 60 units on a weekend, 24/7. 24/7 rolling EVs would be pretty tough I think, the down time to re-charge units. Way easier to roll into a service station, and gone in 3 or 4 minutes.

 

[WilsonCombatant]

We’ve got 2 cars. My 5.7L Tundra and my wife’s Tesla. I can personally say her car is the ultimate driving machine. It takes off in an instant with no noise made. Thing feels like a spaceship. We’ve been all along the gulf coast with it. I take her car to cutoff range and get back to the house with 30 percent battery left. Im in autopilot roughly 50 percent of that ride.

As far as these issues in the media, we have not experienced any of it. I charge in my detached garage, I installed the charger myself. I don’t want her getting gas in New Orleans with the kids in the car. The supercharger downtown is in a parking garage and you have to use a code to get in. My only complaint about that place is the Uber drivers are always getting stoned. Metairie’s supercharger just added a good bit of stalls.

There was one incident when I was in Lake Charles and the stations were full and few of the stalls were broken. I had enough charge to make it to the next station on the way home.

I still love my tundra but any drive more than 5 miles, I’m taking her car. EV drivers just need to plan ahead and stop abusing their autopilot. I trust the autopilot, I don’t trust the other cars around me so I’m always paying attention. Tesla drivers abuse the autopilot and the media is all over it. A lot of the media attention is focused on Tesla because Elon is right leaning

Knock on wood, none of the issues yall are reading about happens to me. If it does, yall would be the first to know. Vacation and daily driving, we’re taking the Tesla. Hurricane comes, we gotta leave before everybody else. If SHTF, we’re taking the tundra.

 

[Gator 45/70]

Oh snap A blue snowflake, How fitting?

❄️ Tesla Snowflake Icon: What Does This Blue Symbol Mean?

Learn what the blue snowflake icon on your Tesla battery means and how to make it go away to improve your cold weather driving experience.

teslastir.com

 

[noob]

I have a 2016 Model S 90D. The “90" kwh battery holds about 68–70 kwh of energy. My full charge range is about 190 miles (not 285 as advertised). Most of that battery degradation occurred in the first few thousand miles of ownership.

While that loss of energy capacity and range is annoying enough, I am more annoyed by:

1. Tesla Service says that my battery is fine.
2. The cars energy meter still shows full charge range near 280 miles.
3. Tesla Service manager told me: “We do not replace batteries for any amount of degradation. Only if the battery shows a fault.”

Aside from the battery deterioration, the car has been very reliable.

Update September 2023. Despite the very annoying battery degradation problem, I replaced my 2016 Model S (96,000 miles) with a new one. This time I'm going into it knowing that my range will likely be about 320 miles. Much less than the advertised 405 miles. But good nonetheless.

source of above quote

Yea the numbers being unobtainable is common across all EV's in the market. Look what the Ford f150 lightnings are getting. one issue is the "range" is done going ~30-50mph with no AC or radio on. Ford motor co had the nerve to alert people with lightnings to NOT use their heated seats and heaters in the Freezing climates as people were losing so much range it was laughable. If you're going 70+ on the highway, expect 20-30% less range. Same as if it's freezing cold. I know someone that bought a taycan turbo S for 200k and traded it in, within a year and only 2000 miles, and they only got 100k for it.