Random EV thoughts.....

ELM327

Hard to believe it's still in innovator stage, 10 years after the delivery of the first leafs here.

liamog

With 4.5% of new purchases, I don't think we are at the innovator's stage. I think products that have a 15/20 year expected life span should be judged on the adoption rate at the entry into the market rather than market penetration as a whole.

the_amazing_raisin

unkel wrote: »

Agree with that too. If I plug my Tesla in when near empty, it starts charging at 130kW but that speed starts dropping immediately. If you are not an EV nerd, this must looks very worrying. VW have done that much better with the etron which has a decent flat charging curve which makes a lot more sense if you want to get people to adopt to EVs

As McGiver rightly says, we are still only in the innovator stage in this country, not even early adopter yet.

Yeah I'd almost prefer if car designers went for a decent average charging speed over a very fast max speed.


The problem with the E-Tron for now is that you're paying a lot for battery capacity you can't use, all to get that great charging speed. At the moment, it's hard for that to be done in cheaper cars, but if batteries get much cheaper then it could be feasible

Black_Knight

unkel wrote: »

Agree with that too. If I plug my Tesla in when near empty, it starts charging at 130kW but that speed starts dropping immediately. If you are not an EV nerd, this must looks very worrying. VW have done that much better with the etron which has a decent flat charging curve which makes a lot more sense if you want to get people to adopt to EVs

As McGiver rightly says, we are still only in the innovator stage in this country, not even early adopter yet.

From what I've seen of the id3 and 4, VW have done poorly with coldgating so far. Another big concern for Joe soap spending big money on electric. Almost makes the savings on a basic 50kW charging in the enyaq look worth it if coldgating continues to impact the id4 (and I assume the enyaq) as much as it does.

KCross

Black_Knight wrote: »

From what I've seen of the id3 and 4, VW have done poorly with coldgating so far.

Are you basing it off Bjorn's Norweigan test at -25°C!

The ID cars have battery heating hardware included, its just the software isnt properly utilising it yet.

There is a software update coming that is supposed to address some battery heating stuff in the ID cars so we need to see how the tests fair out once thats applied... unfortunately we will be rolling into the summer by then so it could be next winter before we really find out.

McGiver

ELM327 wrote: »

Hard to believe it's still in innovator stage, 10 years after the delivery of the first leafs here.

Innovators are the first 2.5%.

What's the EV prbetration here? Definitely no more than 1%. I don't count PHEVs

Wasn't it some 11k EVs... Out of 2M+ cars.

corks finest

McGiver wrote: »

Innovators are the first 2.5%.

What's the EV prbetration here? Definitely no more than 1%. I don't count PHEVs

Wasn't it some 11k EVs... Out of 2M+ cars.

However, when it comes to plugin-hybrids and hybrids, Which? had some sharp words for car makers, saying that they are dramatically over-promising their cars’ running costs. For example, a BMW X5 40e PHEV plugin-hybrid, going by BMW’s claimed fuel economy figures, should only cost around €290 a year in fuel.

According to Which?, which tests PHEVs over a more gruelling course to determine their real-world fuel economy, that same X5 PHEV would actually cost you €1,500 in fuel costs in one year.

McGiver

ELM327 wrote: »

I agree Unkel. I think we need to shift the focus from adding super fast charging at the start of a session, to maintaining high speeds throughout - albeit slightly lower than peak.

Yes but that's all due to electrochemistry to protect the cells from thermal and other damage during fast charging. That's why the tapering, current tech can't sustain and maintain high C charging for long.

That's why all these new superfast charging cells are being developed, they could do what you say.

Say a cell like the StoreDot is designed for 10C superfast charging. With some safety margin etc your 50 kWh pack will be able to charge 7C on a 350 kW Ionity charger within minutes - e.g. 35 kW from 10% to 80% in 6 minutes.

And you really wouldn't need super large packs then.

McGiver

liamog wrote: »

I agree with this, the downward march of battery prices and the increase in energy density have got us to where we are. I think that's at least one more cycle of both required (taking us to 2025) before we start to see a stabilisation of EV range. Personally I think it's going to be somewhere between 80kWh and 100kWh to give a reliable range of 500km.

The trend has slowed down and the current Li-ion tech has not much further to go really in terms of capacity and lower price.

2010 - $1191 per kWh
2015 - $384
2016 - $295
2017 - $221
2018 - $181
2019 - $157
2020 - $137

So it could be both.
Larger “slow“ charging packs and medium fast charging packs may cost the same, eventually. Up to the consumer to pick the one suitable for them.

ELM327

McGiver wrote: »

Yes but that's all due to electrochemistry to protect the cells from thermal and other damage during fast charging. That's why the tapering, current tech can't sustain and maintain high C charging for long.

That's why all these new superfast charging cells are being developed, they could do what you say.

Say a cell like the StoreDot is designed for 10C superfast charging. With some safety margin etc your 50 kWh pack will be able to charge 7C on a 350 kW Ionity charger within minutes - e.g. 35 kW from 10% to 80% in 6 minutes.

And you really wouldn't need super large packs then.

That would be a change, but a 50kWh pack charged to 80% wouldnt have much range. You'd still be charging every 200km.


The only benefit I could see to this is if you can make the EV tech the same as fossil times, and just set 90% as the new 100%. 10-90% in 6 minutes in an 80kWh pack. That's fossil like range with fossil like refuel times.

McGiver wrote: »

The trend has slowed down and the current Li-ion tech has not much further to go really in terms of capacity and lower price.

2010 - $1191 per kWh
2015 - $384
2016 - $295
2017 - $221
2018 - $181
2019 - $157
2020 - $137

So it could be both.
Larger “slow“ charging packs and medium fast charging packs may cost the same, eventually. Up to the consumer to pick the one suitable for them.

As most charging is done at home on AC, I would suggest the former would suit more than the latter.

unkel

McGiver wrote: »

from 10% to 80% in 6 minutes.

And you really wouldn't need super large packs then.

Yes, we are in a small minority here, McGiver, but I also believe there is no reason why a cheap city car in future should have a 60kWh battery. 20-30kwh is plenty, these cars rarely do big trips and if they do, they need to stop once or twice for 10 minutes. That's perfectly acceptable if that would make their car cost €15k instead of €20k

liamog

McGiver wrote: »

The trend has slowed down and the current Li-ion tech has not much further to go really in terms of capacity and lower price.

I'm not seeing a slow down in the numbers you shared, '19 to '20 and '18' to '19 both have a 13% reduction, that's about on par with the forecasted 10% to 15% year on year reduction. Similarly if you look at density we're looking at around a 5% to 10% increase.

MJohnston

unkel wrote: »

Yes, we are in a small minority here, McGiver, but I also believe there is no reason why a cheap city car in future should have a 60kWh battery. 20-30kwh is plenty, these cars rarely do big trips and if they do, they need to stop once or twice for 10 minutes. That's perfectly acceptable if that would make their car cost €15k instead of €20k

I'd go further — there should be no cheap city cars in the not-so-distant future. If we can cleanse our city centres of private cars, there would be a real opportunity for a fleet of self-driving pods to ferry people to their in-city destinations.

Anyway...

the_amazing_raisin

MJohnston wrote: »

I'd go further — there should be no cheap city cars in the not-so-distant future. If we can cleanse our city centres of private cars, there would be a real opportunity for a fleet of self-driving pods to ferry people to their in-city destinations.

Anyway...

I don't think you're far off, look at the success of GoCar and E-Scooters in the past few years.


Mini-cars like the Citroen Ami could go a long way to boost this, although I still question the usefulness of something smaller than a VW Up, you'd want to carry a decent weekly shop at least


I think the biggest thing holding it back is legislation, our driving laws are built around the idea of owning a car, not renting one by the hour. E-Scooters are still illegal and I imagine the Ami will be treated as a road car even though you can run faster


We also have to confront the annoying truth that cities consume a lot of resources which generally get delivered by trucks and vans

ELM327

Private car ownership being removed is a step backwards. Consumers want convenience and despite go car being here for years, the shift has not happened. It won't happen as nothing beats the convenience of owning your own car.

liamog

Personally I won't give up private transportation until there is a solution for mobile personal storage

Silent Running

ELM327 wrote: »

Private car ownership being removed is a step backwards. Consumers want convenience and despite go car being here for years, the shift has not happened. It won't happen as nothing beats the convenience of owning your own car.

When I lived in Dublin I probably could have given up car ownership, but didn't want to.

Now I live in rural Ireland, there's no way in hell that I could get by without owning a car.

McGiver

McGiver wrote: »

Yeah of course, we the innovators (not really early adopters yet), agree. We are OK to wait 15-30 minutes with kids for loo, coffee etc. General population - not much so, they're impatient.

I tried to explain this to many people, to show that EVs are very well doable in today's Ireland, that you should/need to take a break anyway and the car can charge, but generally it's not getting a positive response.

Now, saying that was talking about the ID3 with one fella from Donegal and he asked me - can the ID3 get from Donegal to Galway City and back on one charge? It's a route he would be doing weekly or twice a month. It's 400 km round trip. You could maybe do it in summer, can't do it most of the year and needs 45 min stop for charging at 50 kW DC somewhere along the way. If there was a DC 100+ kW capable charger somewhere on the route then you could cut it to 25 minutes. I think it's still more than most people are willing to accept - people are impatient and always in a hurry.

Obviously, we know that no one is (or should be) undertaking any such journey without any sort of a break, and you could of course charge 11 kW AC for few hours while the car sits idle! But let's assume it's a roundtrip with minimum break, and then you see the issue is the infrastructure on all primary motorway and national roads - it doesn't exist in most of the country. Ionity is simply not enough as it stands - you would need at least 10 more hubs like these to make any sort of journeys possible and you'd still need to wait 20-ish minutes to charge on 100 kW+ DC.

So yeah, fast charging is really needed - Tesla know it that's why they've been doing what they've been doing.

You need to charge like a petrol does. Refuel in 5 minutes, then move so someone else can. Even motorway services now sometimes have waiting. Imagine if every refuel was 30 minutes what the line waiting would be

ELM327

liamog wrote: »

Personally I won't give up private transportation until there is a solution for mobile personal storage

Silent Running wrote: »

When I lived in Dublin I probably could have given up car ownership, but didn't want to.

Now I live in rural Ireland, there's no way in hell that I could get by without owning a car.

From my cold dead hands will they pull my private car ownership.

Kramer

ELM327 wrote: »

From my cold dead hands will they pull my private car ownership.

The way the world is going, that could become a reasonable possibility in the near future .

Kramer

Kramer wrote: »

The way the world is going, that could become a reasonable possibility in the near future .

In reality, more and more don't own the cars they drive these days, company cars, cars on HP/PCP make up the vast majority of vehicles less than three years old.
Most cars under 6 years old are under some sort of finance, so technically not owned by the "keeper".

We own our cars, mine is 14 years old and the misuses is 16 years

liamog

unkel wrote: »

Yes, we are in a small minority here, McGiver, but I also believe there is no reason why a cheap city car in future should have a 60kWh battery. 20-30kwh is plenty, these cars rarely do big trips and if they do, they need to stop once or twice for 10 minutes. That's perfectly acceptable if that would make their car cost €15k instead of €20k

I agree with you, the space that small cars fill with approx 30kWh is a really good niche. It's the family hatchbacks where I think we're close but have one more round of battery increases before we see a wholesale move to primary car as an EV. It's a real shame as I think most people's needs are covered. If the winter range (and charging ability) of the ID.3 58kWh was its current summer range I'd be recommending them without caveats.

AndyBoBandy

liamog wrote: »

I agree with you, the space that small cars fill with approx 30kWh is a really good niche. It's the family hatchbacks where I think we're close but have one more round of battery increases before we see a wholesale move to primary car as an EV. It's a real shame as I think most people's needs are covered. If the winter range (and charging ability) of the ID.3 58kWh was its current summer range I'd be recommending them without caveats.

If the Honda-e wasn’t so expensive, they’d sell here by the ship load....

the_amazing_raisin

liamog wrote: »

I agree with you, the space that small cars fill with approx 30kWh is a really good niche. It's the family hatchbacks where I think we're close but have one more round of battery increases before we see a wholesale move to primary car as an EV. It's a real shame as I think most people's needs are covered. If the winter range (and charging ability) of the ID.3 58kWh was its current summer range I'd be recommending them without caveats.

I feel like the E-Up and it's clones are the best balance of battery size and car size for a city car. For something like car sharing you have to account for the possibility that the car isn't going to get much of a charge between uses.

Something like the 35kWh battery the E-Up has meant it can get almost a full days use before needing to charge, especially given how efficient the car is

The battery is also big enough that you can take it on longer journeys if needed. It's far from ideal but if it's a once or twice a year occasion then it's fine.

So to me, that's where the bar is set for electric city cars. If they can concentrate on bringing the price down to the same as the petrol Up then it'll be perfect

Black_Knight

KCross wrote: »

Are you basing it off Bjorn's Norweigan test at -25°C!

The ID cars have battery heating hardware included, its just the software isnt properly utilising it yet.

There is a software update coming that is supposed to address some battery heating stuff in the ID cars so we need to see how the tests fair out once thats applied... unfortunately we will be rolling into the summer by then so it could be next winter before we really find out.

Moreso the coldgating id4 after a 90km/hr run.

the_amazing_raisin

Black_Knight wrote: »

Moreso the coldgating id4 after a 90km/hr run.

Ah you see the ID.4 is designed for the autobahn, you need to drive at 120 to avoid cold gating.

Slow drivers will be punished with slow charging

Hopefully I'll have mine in time for NEXT winter, so I'll keep ye posted on how the charging speed goes

Black_Knight

cruisey1987 wrote: »

Ah you see the ID.4 is designed for the autobahn, you need to drive at 120 to avoid cold gating.

Slow drivers will be punished with slow charging

Hopefully I'll have mine in time for NEXT winter, so I'll keep ye posted on how the charging speed goes

Sorry Garda! Battery is cold, just warming it up

AndyBoBandy

Black_Knight wrote: »

Sorry Garda! Battery is cold, just warming it up

.... so I can spend 5 minutes less at the charger..

innrain

I just had a glance at the sales figures for January. Quite disappointing overall but not surprising. I would think lots of people put of the idea of buying a new car now.
980 BEVs 3.89% market share compared with 891 units or 2.91% in 2020
Plugin hybrids have nearly doubled. Overall plug-in cars have 8.27% market share.
The best sold plug-in hybrid is KIA Xceed followed by its sister Niro but at the class type Jeep/SUV Prestige (H2) is the first.
Should this be worrying? Are this large SUVs going to be plugged in or is just a tax scheme?

the_amazing_raisin

innrain wrote: »

Should this be worrying? Are this large SUVs going to be plugged in or is just a tax scheme?

Look at the road tax and VRT versus the equivalent ICE version and you'll have your answer


I suspect there's some tax avoidance going on