Hybrid vs electric

Rare earths? What rare earths? Lithium ion batteries don't use rare earths, they use lithium and often nickel, manganese and cobalt, none of which are rare earths. NiMH do use rare earths, but NiMH batteries are not used in modern BEVs.

 

I confess to being baffled at all the comments (not just here) about EV chargers at legacy dealerships. Really, even if those chargers were available 24/7, how many would use them? Auto dealerships are not typically located where it would be convenient to charge your PEV when driving beyond its all-electric driving range. Even if every single auto dealership had a publicly accessible DCFC charge point or two (or four), that would not by any stretch of the imagination constitute a useful, operational, nationwide or continent-wide network enabling long-distance travel in BEVs, of the sort which Tesla -- and nobody else -- has built.

 

When I was working, I used the one at Bill Penny Mitsubishi to grab a charge while eating lunch at Chick Fila or Denny's. Charging at Century BMW, I also grabbed a late breakfast at Waffle House, lunch at Shogun's, and Olive Garden. I would have no problem paying a fair price to access their L2 EVSE during or after hours.

In 5 minutes, I'm headed to Propst Discount Drugs on Pratt Ave. Their free EVSE operates 6AM to 11PM, the local business hours every day. I'll pickup groceries my wife asked for at Star Market and for myself, an adult beverage at 1892. Later, I'll grab a quick, free charge at Whole Foods, getting some club soda and delectables.

I have no problem with a free charger operating during business hours, a fair trade for my business. Outside of business hours, a fair charger is also OK. But if we're going to see a network 'in depth', every dealership selling a plug-in needs to have a 24x7 charger available.

BTW, I used a Blink, L2 fee charger while eating supper at sunset driving West. The fee was high for the charge but it was as much an exercise as practical. I could have taken another stop at a free TVA charger on the way home but instead, just fired up the REx to get home an hour sooner. A CCS would have easily topped off the car which I did when I got to home town Huntsville.

Bob Wilson

 

I've been seeing complaints about the high fees Blink charges for years, usually accompanied by claims the company is going bankrupt, or predictions that it soon will. Yet I guess they're still managing to stay in business, at least in some areas. Too bad competition hasn't yet driven them out of the market.

 

kumar you are delusional about many things.
you wont run on sunshine, and you cannot exist in this synthetic world without oil, the oil industry, and oil companies.

and for pp, rapid charging stations may be one answer, but i doubt it. i think the more likely scenario for EV adoption is battery swaps, which will eventually happen once batteries are standardized.

 

Discussions of the need for rapid EV charging are waaaaaaaaay overblown. About 95% of EV charging is slow charging, and there is no good reason for that to change. According to one survey, 55% of PEV (Plug-in EV) owners have never used a fast charging station. I reject the idea that apartment dwellers are going to have to rely on fast-charge stations instead of overnight slow charging, for their everyday charging needs. As more and more people adopt PEVs, we'll see more and more apartment landlords install slow EV chargers in their parking lots, and eventually we'll see cities install those at curbside in residential areas with no off-street parking.

People who don't have reliable access to slow charging, should not buy a PEV; and if someone who owns a PEV is forced to move long-term to where they don't have access, they should trade their car in for a gasmobile. PEVs do not suit all lifestyles in 2017, just like owning a Ford Model T did not fit all lifestyles circa 1908.

It wasn't until after the motorcar revolution, circa 1910-1925, transformed cities to accommodate motor vehicles, that it became practical for almost anyone to own them. Similarly, it won't be until after the EV revolution forces a similar transformation for parking spots to accommodate PEVs, that it will become practical for almost anyone to own them.

History is not on your side. The (Project) Better Place battery swapping subscription company failed, mainly due to the high cost of the infrastructure and equipment needed for battery swapping. Also, when Tesla offered battery swapping on a trial basis, almost no customer who tried that did it a second time.

There may be a place for battery swapping for long-distance BEV freight trucking, but even there Tesla didn't so much as hint at the possibility in its Reveal of the Tesla Semi Truck.

Personally, I think battery swapping is dead. At best it would only be a short-term, interim solution. As soon as battery tech is improved to the point that it's practical to fast-charge a PEV in 10 minutes or less, nobody will be interested in going thru the hassle of swapping a battery. A practical 10-minute or faster fast charge is likely less than a decade away; it may arrive with solid state batteries.

P.S. -- I don't see battery packs becoming standardized. Instead, I see them as being the main thing which auto makers will use to compete with each other, in the way that they now use different ICEngines to compete with each other.

 

Battery swaps will not be a thing ever, for the sheer number of batteries that need to be produced and sit idle. That goes against the principles of efficency. Even if every single EV ever made was on the same platform for swapping (which will never occur, they cant even agree on plugs) then for every car built you need some extra capacity disbursed throughout the country to accommodate swaps where swaps need to happen. What's the spare capacity that's needed? I dont know but say 20%, as en ex. You have now added 20% to the carbon footprint of your battery from day 1.

You also need ultra fast charging capacity in high density areas to get them back up and running for the next cars. If this ultra fast charging is going to exist then just disburse that technology and be done with it, no extra batteries or swapping platform and infrastructure needed.

 

@ Feed The Trees:

Well said. The cost for extra battery packs, and the need to stock battery swap stations with those as an upfront cost for setting up their network, is one of the primary reasons (Project) Better Place failed. I was thinking of the high cost of extra battery packs when I wrote in my comment upstream "...the high cost of... equipment needed for battery swapping". I suppose I should have specified that much or most of the equipment cost is the need for extra packs at every battery swap station.

The business model (Project) Better Place used simply does not work, period. Upfront costs are too high.

The high cost of battery swap stations and the high cost of extra battery packs are the reasons why I predicted -- correctly, it turns out -- that Tesla would not be offering battery swapping for its Tesla Semi Truck.

 

you guys make some valid points negating the battery swap idea. i think you are right.

but then that puts the emphasis back on rapid charging tech, and we are a ways away from that being universally available, or even possible in most places. which supports my current opinion that for the near future people are better off with a hybrid. i know i am. for example, a couple weeks ago, i drove from houston to fort worth, drove around to my meetings, and then drove back to houston, in a hybrid. i did not have to go looking for a charging station, wait around for a charge, or be inconvenienced in any way. i drove in electric mode in town, and ice mode on the highway.

i know you said that most people recharge at night at home etc, and that the whole range anxiety is misplaced.....but people who have only one car do think this way, and they wont be dissuaded from thinking that way for a while.

 

I agree 100%. It surprises me that BEVs are selling about equally with, or even outselling, PHEVs. I put that down to the fact that almost no PHEV has a battery pack large enough for most daily driving needs. I think the only one which does is the BMW i3 REx, and that's less of a PHEV and more of a BEV with an auxiliary scooter motor (no, really!) bolted on. That is to say, it functions well as a BEV, but not very well as a gasmobile, with its inadequate ICEngine and its tiny gas tank.

A secondary factor is people who buy a BEV as a second car, and plan to use their other car -- a gasmobile -- for longer trips. That's called the "hybrid garage", and from a great number of comments posted on the subject, it seems to be a pretty popular concept among EV owners.

Maybe things will be different if we start seeing PHEVs with an AER** of 100+ miles. Or, heck, even 75+ miles would be nice!

**AER = All Electric Range

 

most people's daily commute is covered by the 50 mile range (provided that the range is in fact 50 miles, since i have found on my fisker that this is optimistic, and i actually get about 37-40 miles depending on how i drive). and it all gets even more acceptable if there are charging stations at work so that you can in theory drive up to 50 miles to work, charge the car while there, and then drive 50 miles back, and then charge overnight again.

however, i do think that standardization of batteries and/or charging types, needs to happen. thinking about how ICE cars are used and what they need, and keeping in mind that people want the same behavior from their EV's....most folks dont want to have to figure out which locations have which kind of chargers, that charge at what level over what time period - just too much hassle. the adoption of EV's over time will be accelerated by replicating the way ICE cars act and are treated. so one type of charging plug (for a variety of charging rates if needs must), which might require a standard battery.

i understand PP's idea that batteries may be the way EV companies differentiate themselves, and that could well be - however they all need to have the same basic functionality; plugs, charging rate acceptance, acceptable range etc.

and since that wont happen for a certain period (TBD), hybrids will fill in the blanks between now and then.

separate discussion point tho.....the prognosis for ICE engines are usually underestimated on sites like this because proponents of EV's are normally in OECD cities with adequate infrastructure. the other thing to add to any prediction of the ICE engine viability, is the cost of the mogas and diesel. oil refining will not stop because of the irreplaceable need for petchems in our synthetic world, but as EV's gain traction, the price of mogas and diesel may drop by a lot. i dont think diesel will drop very much at all since it has other aspects to it (completely separate thread topic), but mogas has one purpose only.....my guess is that mogas prices could drop to a fraction of what it is today (absent government taxes).
btw, other separate discussion topic....as mogas consumption plateaus or drops, how will governments extract their money from transportation users?....well it will be a mileage tax or some other way of taxing EV's. so at the moment we may be saving ourselves some gas money, but the governments are addicted to our money, and they will squeeze it out of us somehow....

 

you are correct. and the rare earth issue may not become an issue at all as higher prices beget more supply.
https://thebulletin.org/clean-energy-and-rare-earths-why-not-worry10785
however, the lithium supply may not be able to keep pace with the projections. see this:
https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/is-there-enough-lithium-to-maintain-the-growth-of-the-lithium-ion-battery-m#gs.2tBOD2M
https://investorintel.com/sectors/technology-metals/technology-metals-intel/us-vulnerability-mammoth-battery-disconnect-rare-earth-supply/

 

Fleet average for Volts, as reported at VoltStats.net, is ~69-71% miles on electricity (I think it varies seasonally) with the remaining being gasoline powered. I'd like to see that go up to 85-90%, and that's only going to happen with longer AER provided by a larger battery pack.

Also, consider the fact that one 2012 study showed that Volt drivers were stopping for an en-route charge more often than Leaf drivers! If the Volt's AER was adequate, they wouldn't be doing that. Of course, this model year's Volts have a longer AER than they did in 2012, but still I think the Volt needs more all-electric range to truly satisfy the vast majority of daily driving needs.

 

http://beta.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-gas-tax-increase-political-battle-20171031-story.html

 

Remember the requirements are all that matters:

• buyer's typical daily commute and errands
• buyer's area EVSE population, fee and free
• buyer's typical long distance trip
• buyer's fueling and charging opportunities along a typical long distance trip

Now living in Huntsville AL, both plug-in cars fully meet our requirements. We also have excellent Interstate and divided highways that radiate to our long distance destinations with plenty of gas stations but few EVSE. Some destinations have L2 and a rare, fast DC EVSE in Nashville.

Bob Wilson

 

And a 5th seat!!

 

Unfortunately gas tax is highly regressive. Much better way is to add it to annual registration bills. This won't do much if anything for EV outside of Tesla

 

No, that shifts the cost away from high mileage drivers onto those who drive little. Best would be a fee based on miles driven.

 

In CA very often those who drive a lot are the less well off and are doing so out of necessity because they are priced out of living where their jobs are. Yes they use more roads than the executive who can afford to live near the office and drive their Tesla 5 miles a day, but I think many/most would agree there's a significant difference there. Placing a huge gas tax on them says 'here, we pushed you out of living here, now please pay a lot more to drive here too'.