Electric Vehicles

[groily]

This, from the latest MAG (Motorcyclists' Action Group, UK) update that I glanced at today 'cos it was raining again, may be of interest.
I know nothing, diddly squat squared or less, being just a grumpy cynic.
As ever, 'Just Saying'.
/wiki.mag-uk.org/images/7/7d/Network_2023_01.pdf

Subject: Electric cars

If you think electric cars are doing your bit please read this.
So much for electric cars from a NZ mechanic!

Had to work on a Nissan Leaf last week. A $30,000 car with a crook battery.
No one in town would work on it and as he had done a course it was given to him.
He got the tutor up from Dunedin polytech to help.
One crook module in the battery was shorting to the case. A second-hand module is able to
be fitted, but they need to be in exactly the same condition as the remaining ones (85.2%) or
the entire battery fails.
So the owner was left with the option of a second-hand battery out of a wreck that has no
guarantee at $14,000 or a new battery at $20,000.
Then there is the problem of disposing of the old battery or part battery. Nothing is available
and No-one willing to transport a damaged battery.
Specialist transport is available, and the cost to have one module (out of 24) trans
ported to Australia and disposed of is around $5,000.
On top of all that, the tutor went through some of the legislation around EVs with him.
If one is involved in a crash, and people are trapped inside, the fire brigade has to isolate the
battery before they cut into the car.
In a Leaf, the isolation plug is under a bolted cover on the floor between the front and back
seats. Once the cover is removed, the 3 pairs of gloves required by law are to be fitted, cot-
ton, rubber, and leather. Then with hands resembling lamb roasts they can try and discon-
nect the 3-stage electrical plug.

[Kickaha]

5 year old mostly made up bullshit by the anti EV brigade

This is from a guy I personally know who deals in Leafs regarding the secondhand battery pack

"I was trading them at $100 per 1% Capacity.

Customer has a 65% battery, I had a 85% battery, 20% difference = $2000 upgrade"

So $14000 for a secondhand one is total crap for a start

On disposal

"Batteries don't get disposed of
That get used in powerwalls, EV projects, etc and demand for them is high"

They certainly wouldn't need to be shipped to Australia

Problem is the more total crap like this gets shared the more people believe it

To run a Leaf on power at $0.20 per kWh is only $0.025 per km ($2.50 per 100km or $12.50 per 500km) it's not rocket science.

To run a Corolla that does 12.5km/lt is $0.20 a km, $100 per 500km

[KiwiGF]

5 year old mostly made up bullshit by the anti EV brigade

This is from a guy I personally know who deals in Leafs regarding the secondhand battery pack

"I was trading them at $100 per 1% Capacity.

Customer has a 65% battery, I had a 85% battery, 20% difference = $2000 upgrade"

So $14000 for a secondhand one is total crap for a start

On disposal

"Batteries don't get disposed of
That get used in powerwalls, EV projects, etc and demand for them is high"

They certainly wouldn't need to be shipped to Australia

Problem is the more total crap like this gets shared the more people believe it

To run a Leaf on power at $0.20 per kWh is only $0.025 per km ($2.50 per 100km or $12.50 per 500km) it's not rocket science.

To run a Corolla that does 12.5km/lt is $0.20 a km, $100 per 500km

Good figures, only bit arguably “missing” is that in due course the NZ government will have to find a way to tax electric car usage to make up the loss of tax from fuel. For non nzers reading this diesel at the pump is cheaper than petrol cos it gets taxed less (I think the uk has “red” diesel that is also not taxed, for tractors and heating etc) so instead diesel cars are subject to “RUC” tax at $76 per 1000km and it is arguable that would be a the correct tax rate for electric cars (it’s currently at zero), but making the electric car RUC rate the same as diesel cars would probably be politically unacceptable for a year or 2.

I am currently paying nearer 30c per kwhr, and fuel price is currently inflated due to the war, but that still does not change the basic economics much.

Most of the tax collected on fuel goes on roading, in nz anyway.

So, in nz at least the cost of electricity as a “fuel” is and will remain considerably less than petrol or diesel, an electric car is pricy to buy though, as are solar panels if you charge it that way (and that would prob be a good option, and generally counter’s arguments that electricity isn’t “clean” in countries with fossil fuel power generation).

My next “day to day” car will be electric but I hope that purchase is a few years away yet and when the cost is less and tech better, and it will be charged by solar panels (at home), but I hope to run my old bikes and “toy” cars as long as I want to.

https://www.mbie.govt.nz/building-and-energy/energy-and-natural-resources/energy-generation-and-markets/liquid-fuel-market/duties-taxes-and-direct-levies-on-motor-fuels-in-new-zealand/

https://www.transport.govt.nz/area-of-interest/environment-and-climate-change/electric-vehicles-programme/

[Kickaha]

Good figures, only bit arguably “missing” is that in due course the NZ government will have to find a way to tax electric car usage to make up the loss of tax from fuel. For non nzers reading this diesel at the pump is cheaper than petrol cos it gets taxed less (I think the uk has “red” diesel that is also not taxed, for tractors and heating etc) so instead diesel cars are subject to “RUC” tax at $76 per 1000km and it is arguable that would be a the correct tax rate for electric cars (it’s currently at zero), but making the electric car RUC rate the same as diesel cars would probably be politically unacceptable for a year or 2.

I am currently paying nearer 30c per kwhr, and fuel price is currently inflated due to the war, but that still does not change the basic economics much.

They are meant to being paying RUC from 2024, it had been due to start in 2021 but the Govt extended it

One of our clients has a leaf for commuting, at petrol prices 12 months ago when they got it they had worked out that in three years it would have paid for itself in what they normally paid in fuel

[RDfella]

"Batteries don't get disposed of
That get used in powerwalls, EV projects, etc and demand for them is high"

Maybe the 12v battery from a normal car.... Electric car batteries are high voltage, big and heavy (at least half the weight of the car). By the time the car can only do 50 miles between charges, the battery (in continuing decline) will be useless. And when an EV is 8 yrs old and needs a new battery, who's going to pay £20k - £50k to replace it? The car will be junk. So there's going to be mountains of 8yr old scrapped electric cars no-one wants to touch. When you add in the substantial environmental damage caused by the mining of hundreds of tons of material to make ONE electric car battery, you have to wonder who is pushing this electric nonsense, and why. I won't go on about the inefficiency of EV's and why they use more energy / mile than an ICE car and where all the electricity for them is going to come from when we already can't meet demand.
EV owners might be smiling now whilst they pay no road tax, but watch their faces when they find the battery is knackered....

[Angus]

Dont want to get in to the debate and the following is not science but nearly 10 year old 70000 miles Nissan Leaf still has 66% of it battery and still does 66 miles on a full charge (new real world was 90 miles). Battery tech has come a long way since then, as the guy in the video says, so the ones produced now should be even better.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwTuk1kxc20

[muskrat]

G'day Fellas.
The cost of replacement batteries is prohibitive.
https://www.thedrive.com/guides-and-gear/these-replacement-battery-costs-for-these-six-normal-evs-is-staggeringly-high  US$$$$
Cheers

[Kickaha]

"Batteries don't get disposed of
That get used in powerwalls, EV projects, etc and demand for them is high"

Maybe the 12v battery from a normal car.... Electric car batteries are high voltage, big and heavy (at least half the weight of the car). By the time the car can only do 50 miles between charges, the battery (in continuing decline) will be useless.

Using them in powerwalls is well documented, the original post is very wrong but will appeal to the uninformed anti ev brigade

[olev]

The biggest seller in Australia is utes.
This was printed in yesterdays courier mail (owned by murdoch so it must be true)
'Electric utes are available overseas, but testing has shown their range is severely affected by towing and cold weather'
The towing bit is understandable .... but cold weather???
cheers

[scotty]

spotted this vintage EV in my birth town of Lichfield UK recently
Had a chat with owner who still makes a living with it

[Greybeard]

Harrods’ fleet of electric delivery vehicles were once a familiar sight on the streets of London. The famous department store started using American-built Walker electric vans in 1919. During the 1930s Harrods renewed the fleet, undertaking the design and construction in its own workshops. Work started in 1933 and a prototype van was running by 1935. A total of sixty vans were built up to 1939. The 1 ton vans were powered by under-floor mounted batteries giving a range of sixty miles per charge. This van remained in service until 1970 when it was presented to the (National Motor) Museum
.

[redmelons]

'Electric utes are available overseas, but testing has shown their range is severely affected by towing and cold weather'
The towing bit is understandable .... but cold weather???

Yes, I have a 40kWh LEAF which does 150-160 miles in summer, but this drops to 120-130 in winter. In addition to the drop in battery efficiency, you are using the heater, lights etc. more than in summer.

"Cold temperatures adversely affect EV batteries because they rely on chemical reactions to store and release electricity. Lithium-ion batteries – the most common cells used in electric and hybrid cars – work when lithium ions move from the anode to the cathode; cold slows this process down and restricts battery performance. The result can be a dramatic loss in usable range."

https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/tips-advice/359132/electric-cars-winter-truth-about-cold-weather-range

[Rex]

Always seems like to me that those who are enthusiasts of EV's will overlook any real or potential short-comings in their enthusiasm for the concept.
120 mile range in Winter (and possibly a lot less) when we've been used to vehicles which will go on for as long as the driver can drive is just bollocks. They would have laughed at that 100 years ago let alone now.

[Swarfcut]

 Scotty. By my reckoning that milk float was registered in 1971, and I remember when they were in common use. Thanks to Supermarket Cheap Loss Leader Milk, not seen widely in the UK these days. I can also remember electric CO-OP bread vans. Believe that, fresh bread on the doorstep  and also electric dust carts. It really was "dust " they collected. Almost anything that would burn went on the domestic open fire so fire ash was the dust that went in the good old galvanised dustbin.

 For the rest of you, Lichfield has a huge medieval Cathederal, and was an important cultural, scientific and economic centre in those times. Although a relatively small city, was said at one time, the early 70's, to have more pubs and betting shops per square mile than any other city in Britain. Alas the pleasant semi rural ambience is changing as the pressures of an increasing population and government housing policy mean green belt farmland thereabouts is being transformed into high density housing, meaning more folks having more folks until there's nowhere to stand.

 So we come back to too much human activity affecting the bioshere of a finite rock in space. The ancients said "Go forth and multiply" Some doctrines still do, the results have been published  and in the vernacular, we're screwed.

 Swarfy.

 Additional. In an effort to styme the growth of the world's leader in imported tat, we had a " No Present Christmas"  Nobody felt left out, no big bill run up, no waste to dispose of and more for the drink budget. Happy New Year? Try catching a train or finding a hospital bed.

 

[BSA_54A10]

ell from a transport point oof view, shifting large capacity LI batteries is a nightmare with a pile of hazadrdous materials dacuments the size of a phone book.
In OZ you need to be certified to transport them because of all of the careless carriers who managed to get them burning.
BEcause of the 3 ( from memory ) freight aircraft that were downed due to a Li battery fire in the hold transit insurance is massively expensive .
Thus the freight costs are massive .
And yes the nay-sayers will repeat any old tosh to get their way while the advocates will overlook any shortcommings.
Like all rechargable batteries , apart from flow cells that are infinately rechargable a Li battery has a finite life and the lenght of that will be different for just about every user.
Those who top up the battery every day will be rewarded with a very short battery life because Li batteries need to be run down to their limit before recharging in order to get maximum life out of the battery.
I for one , as a true environmentalist am not a fan of EV's powered with the dirtiest power source possible, a LI battery.
However as it is some dark skinned person who gets poisioned during manufacture in a foreign country then it is fine & dandy.
EV's make sense from a convienance point of view but they will do zero to reduce pollution due to the massive amount of embedded pollution generated from their manufacture & ultimate disposal .
TO date there are only 2 plants in the world set up to recycle Li car batteries but the cost of recycling them is near twice the cost of building one from scratch so like a lot of other smart recycling plans expect to see a spate of "accidential fires " when the piles of stock waiting to be process becomes too large exactly the same as the 3 fires at recycling plants in Melbourne over the christmass new year holiday period this year , which of course had nothing to do with the fact that they can no longer export it .
Hydrogen cells , either as a fuel cell or direct combustion make excellent sense and will reduce overall world pollution but Li powered ones will not.
Add to that Malysia & Indonesia have started to mine copper from the sea floor with suction dredges again killing off thousands of square miles of seagrass  because the known copper reserves on the planet are not big enough to manufacture all of the EV's ( there may be more yet to be discovered ) .
I could rattle off a list of around 100 copper mine disasters since 2000 including over 20 tailing dam failures and when tailing dams fail they kill everything in their parth leaving the land toxic for hundreds of years.
And most of the worlds copper comes from third world countries where environmential regulations cease to exist after a few thick brown envelopes of cash change hands .
Then there is tungsten, again not  enough know to exist to replace every IC powered vehicle in the USA alone with an EV
And ths story is the same for cobalt, another metal mined in third world countries
Then there is Lithium itself.
LI is the perfect material for batteries in hearing aids, computers, watches and even E bikes but it will be found to be a massive disaster when used in EV's & grid batteries. Remember to date 5 major Li battery fires  at grid  back up sites .
We got ourselves into this mess because we did not cost the environmental pollution into the prices of the stuff we have been buying and discarding over the past century.
Failing to do the same with EV's will make things substantially worse in the long run .
However every one is drunk on Musk's cool aid so are blindly charging down the wrong road that will ultimately lead to doom.
OTOH if we posion a few billion people that will solve one side of the problem, way too many people alive on the planet .