Random EV thoughts.....

smellyoldboot

Silent Running wrote: »

There are none so blind...

Some people just will not see that there are answers. All sorts of excuses will be dragged up, like 'I can't park at a lamp post' Well you would be able to if it had a charger and was an EV only parking spot.

'Batteries degrade and need to be replaced.' Pointing to the first Leaf as an example. Technology has moved on. The blind need time to catch up to this. Not everyone needs 500kms of range every day. I certainly don't. A lot of people would be more than happy with 80kms a day. Look at your own mileage. If you do 500kms a day, only the long range EVs would suit. But do you?

Only high end Tesla... Yawn... My Kia can keep up with Teslas in range.

What's next? 'Electric cars can't be driven in the rain' You sound like a cretin certain Kerry politician.

OK a challenge to the naysayers: Burning fossil fuels has to go, it's killing us. What do you propose as an alternative transport solution?

You see that's part of the problem, sneering at questions, referring to people as idiots and then rather provide credible solutions claim the technology is perfect rather than accept it's very very flawed. And the lamp post point? Remember in the hypothetical scenario, every has an EV now so it's a dedicated charging point, but for public use. The same problem persists. Does everyone get their own charging space outside their home? This would require massive investment. Will these be free chargers at cost to the state? Or personal charge points linked to domestic supply(again this would require significant legislation change relating to the roadside directly outside your home no longer being a "public road" if it contains a parking space and charger designated for your sole use).

It's myopia and I'm all right Jack stuff. Your Kia without even checking I would guess is not nor will be in even 5 years the type of vehicle one could purchase on a less than managerial/professional salary. Not even close to attainable for a lot of people and definitely not the norm in fairness. Have a look around at the general age/price profile of vehicles on the road.

Look, I'm on roughly the same book if not the same page. I know fossil fuels are crap and I wish EVs were truly the easy peasy solution to that problem like they are presented to be, but we know they're not and are not likely to be without massive improvements in technology on the manufacturing and infrastructure end and cost reductions.

For the record I drive a PHEV that runs on a squirt of petrol, I fill the tank (32L) roughly once a month. An 80km range Leaf or 500+km range modern EV would require me parking overnight at least on occasion at the nearest public charging point some 2km from my home. Who wants to do that?

AndyBoBandy

smellyoldboot wrote: »

So, given there are plans to outlaw sales of NEW ICE vehicles in the medium future in a few European countries

Just made a slight adjustment to your sentence there, as no one mentioned that on Jan 1st 2031 petrol & diesel cars will be no longer allowed on the roads, just no more new registrations will be allowed.

AndyBoBandy

smellyoldboot wrote: »

Does everyone get their own charging space outside their home?

no, the same way that everyone doesn't get a petrol pump installed outside their front door.

People who (for whatever reason) cannot get home charging, will utilise public charging to meet their needs,

whether that's slow lampost charging on the street, or slow/fast charging in their local Tesco/Lidl/SuperValu via chargers that will give cars up to 70%-80% battery in around 20 minutes...

The problem in Ireland is we simply don't have the infrastructure yet to support that.
Thats not to say we won't have the infrastructure when the demand is there, as everyone likes to earn a buck or 2 (just like petrol station companies), only this time, any location with an electricity supply can be a forecourt...

smellyoldboot wrote: »

An 80km range Leaf or 500+km range modern EV would require me parking overnight at least on occasion at the nearest public charging point some 2km from my home. Who wants to do that?

Thats why (fast) chargers need to be installed in convenient locations, like supermarket/shopping centre carparks, so you can get that same overnight's worth of charge in 20-30 minutes.

MJohnston

smellyoldboot wrote: »

OK, but EVs don't actually solve the problem, not properly. We can have all the best intentions in the world but demand for transport from what I can see will always outstrip what EVs can deliver.

They're mostly beloved by 1st world, relatively wealthy countries in any case and I hate to be blunt but, even if we all magically switched to EVs in the morning, it fixes nothing, we're not the problem, in fact we create a bigger problem environmentallly: the things are expensive as they are, to push the prices down there is no way they can be manufactured in Europe, so we push production to China, India etc to fulfill our increased consumption, but those guys aren't buying EVs and those production facilities are run on...dirty dirty coal.

You assume that slave1 meant that ICE cars are killing us because of the broader environmental effect, but you don't consider that those vehicles are killing us more directly through air pollution. Various cancers, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, increased Covid death risk, etc. Fuel burning is a health disaster, and the scale of it has been suppressed for a long, long time. Hopefully the tragic death and court case of Ella Kissi-Debrah will provide the legal obligations necessary for governments to start taking that seriously.

As an aside, I do wonder whether in a few years, we'll have realised that cases of Covid spiked this winter because of all the smokey fuels that people burn in their homes. A few times these last few months I've gone out for a cycle and come back absolutely reeking of smoke in the fog.

MJohnston

AndyBoBandy wrote: »

no, the same way that everyone doesn't get a petrol pump installed outside their front door.

People who (for whatever reason) cannot get home charging, will utilise public charging to meet their needs,

whether that's lampost charging on the street, or in their local Tesco/Lidl via fast chargers that will give cars 70%-80% battery in around 20 minutes...

The problem in Ireland is we simply don't have the infrastructure yet to support that.
Thats not to say we won't have the infrastructure when the demand is there, as everyone likes to earn a buck or 2 (just like petrol station companies), only this time, any location can be a forecourt...

As I've said before too, I think it's a mistake to compare our charging infrastructure as it is now, against the standard it would need to be at for everyone to be driving an EV.

I think it's also going to be very hard for a growing network to not feel sparse and insufficient because it's trying to cover a broad geographical area for a small number of users with a huge range of differing journey requirements.

ESB are undoubtedly behind on where they need to be, but I think this pre-widespread adoption phase is always going to feel slightly inadequate.

Silent Running

smellyoldboot wrote: »

You see that's part of the problem, sneering at questions, referring to people as idiots and then rather provide credible solutions claim the technology is perfect rather than accept it's very very flawed. And the lamp post point? Remember in the hypothetical scenario, every has an EV now so it's a dedicated charging point, but for public use. The same problem persists. Does everyone get their own charging space outside their home? This would require massive investment. Will these be free chargers at cost to the state? Or personal charge points linked to domestic supply(again this would require significant legislation change relating to the roadside directly outside your home no longer being a "public road" if it contains a parking space and charger designated for your sole use).

It's myopia and I'm all right Jack stuff. Your Kia without even checking I would guess is not nor will be in even 5 years the type of vehicle one could purchase on a less than managerial/professional salary. Not even close to attainable for a lot of people and definitely not the norm in fairness. Have a look around at the general age/price profile of vehicles on the road.

Look, I'm on roughly the same book if not the same page. I know fossil fuels are crap and I wish EVs were truly the easy peasy solution to that problem like they are presented to be, but we know they're not and are not likely to be without massive improvements in technology on the manufacturing and infrastructure end and cost reductions.

For the record I drive a PHEV that runs on a squirt of petrol, I fill the tank (32L) roughly once a month. An 80km range Leaf or 500+km range modern EV would require me parking overnight at least on occasion at the nearest public charging point some 2km from my home. Who wants to do that?

You seem to be doing the same old thing. Not looking for answers at all. For that you have to be asking questions. You only come in here and state as fact things like the technology is very, very flawed. Well for me and many like me it isn't at all flawed. We've been using it without much issue for years.

There is no reason why a street can't have a public charger on every lamp post. I didn't suggest that every EV owner would have their own charger and space. That's your idea, thought up to make the whole thing sound ridiculous. Maybe if you don't invent scenarios that don't exist, EVs might look like a solution. Being constantly negative around solutions to the car pollution problem will get us nowhere.

A lot of current fossil fuel drivers could easily transition to EVs today, but will go out and buy a new diesel, often because they read complete rubbish presented as fact. Maybe they saw Danny Healy Rae state as fact that electric cars can't be driven in the rain. Or maybe they'll read your statement that "we know they're not and are not likely to be without massive improvements in technology". We know that, do we? News to me.

As to affordability? Yes my Kia is newish, but I'm very, very far short of an executive salary.

smellyoldboot

Silent Running wrote: »

You seem to be doing the same old thing. Not looking for answers at all. For that you have to be asking questions. You only come in here and state as fact things like the technology is very, very flawed. Well for me and many like me it isn't at all flawed. We've been using it without much issue for years.

There is no reason why a street can't have a public charger on every lamp post. I didn't suggest that every EV owner would have their own charger and space. That's your idea, thought up to make the whole thing sound ridiculous. Maybe if you don't invent scenarios that don't exist, EVs might look like a solution. Being constantly negative around solutions to the car pollution problem will get us nowhere.

A lot of current fossil fuel drivers could easily transition to EVs today, but will go out and buy a new diesel, often because they read complete rubbish presented as fact. Maybe they saw Danny Healy Rae state as fact that electric cars can't be driven in the rain. Or maybe they'll read your statement that "we know they're not and are not likely to be without massive improvements in technology". We know that, do we? News to me.

As to affordability? Yes my Kia is newish, but I'm very, very far short of an executive salary.

Healy Rae is undoubtedly an idiot to be sure but he didn't even need such lunacy. His voters can buy a big dirty diesel sucking German saloon for a few grand second hand and drive cross country for reasonable money and unlimited range as long as they can afford to refill the tank. EVs are many many years from getting this kind of buyer to cross over. And much as we may not like it, this kind of buyer is very very normal.

DrPhilG

MJohnston wrote: »

I do wonder whether in a few years, we'll have realised that cases of Covid spiked this winter because of all the smokey fuels that people burn in their homes.

I doubt it. California is one of the greenest states in the US and they just got absolutely pumped by Covid through the winter season.

Silent Running

smellyoldboot wrote: »

Healy Rae is undoubtedly an idiot to be sure but he didn't even need such lunacy. His voters can buy a big dirty diesel sucking German saloon for a few grand second hand and drive cross country for reasonable money and unlimited range as long as they can afford to refill the tank. EVs are many many years from getting this kind of buyer to cross over. And much as we may not like it, this kind of buyer is very very normal.

Yeah, agreed, and that's a problem for government to solve. It looks to me like it will be tackled by making this kind of choice a very expensive one. A carrot and stick approach looks like the best one. Unfortunately our government is populated by Danny Healy Rae and his ilk. They will make sure that their diesel selling business is protected to the last, not giving a tinker's curse about the country as a whole.

graememk

smellyoldboot wrote: »

For the record I drive a PHEV that runs on a squirt of petrol, I fill the tank (32L) roughly once a month. An 80km range Leaf or 500+km range modern EV would require me parking overnight at least on occasion at the nearest public charging point some 2km from my home. Who wants to do that?

I'll only comment on this as the rest have the rest covered?

So you have a PHEV, but don't(can't?) plug it in.

you'd use even less with a straight petrol engine.. or a petrol hybrid(non plug in kind)

Save lugging around a nearly dead battery all the time.

If you only have to fill up with 32L once a month, (avg petrol consumption, 7L/100km?) - 450km in a month?

So Say we in 10 years time have fast chargers all over the place, at the local shops, petrol station, anywhere that you could be parked for an hour or so.

Take the corsa e its in around 26-27k brand new currently.

Got a range of say 300km in normal driving conditions. means that It only needs a top up say twice a month. Fair?

Im not chatting now, As yep it doesnt suit you right now, wouldnt advise you to switch now. maybe in 10 years when the ban on new ice cars come in, maybe 20 years when the new ice cars sold in 10 years time start to come to the end of their life.

Also drive a kia.. and im a long way away from a managerial or executive salary. - done 22k km since march. only cost me €300 in electricity

MJohnston

MJohnston wrote: »

As an aside, I do wonder whether in a few years, we'll have realised that cases of Covid spiked this winter because of all the smokey fuels that people burn in their homes.

Nothing to do with smokey fuels, it is really down to owners of many older houses having "improved" the draught protection on the windows, thus resulting with poorly ventilated houses that allow stale (possibly virus infused) air to remain inside for far longer.
In a house with an open fire the chimney would draw this air out whenever the fire is lit, so the exact opposite of what you say is true.
Many modern houses are designed to have the correct ventilation.


EV's wont solve any of these issues....

ELM327

smellyoldboot wrote: »

OK, but EVs don't actually solve the problem, not properly. We can have all the best intentions in the world but demand for transport from what I can see will always outstrip what EVs can deliver.

They're mostly beloved by 1st world, relatively wealthy countries in any case and I hate to be blunt but, even if we all magically switched to EVs in the morning, it fixes nothing, we're not the problem, in fact we create a bigger problem environmentallly: the things are expensive as they are, to push the prices down there is no way they can be manufactured in Europe, so we push production to China, India etc to fulfill our increased consumption, but those guys aren't buying EVs and those production facilities are run on...dirty dirty coal.

ROTFL.


You havent a clue mate.


https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/03/chart-of-the-day-half-of-new-cars-sold-in-norway-are-electric-or-hybrid/


Think of how many cars are sold in China and 5% are already EVs - in March 2019. Before Chinese model 3.

innrain

cruisey1987 wrote: »

Looks like hydrogen might have gotten a lifeline

https://www.electrive.com/2021/02/02/fraunhofer-develops-hydrogen-storage-paste/

Very early days yet, might not see this in production for 10 years and it's cost effectiveness is unknown at this point

Has all the ingredients to be very useful though, could be the boost that hydrogen needs to become viable

It seems it is not very very new. Even wikipedia speculates about that.

It is interesting that the original press release says that it hints to use in light devices like scooter and drones.

About the method of making it I hope it stores a lot of energy because it definitely uses a lot "Magnesium powder is combined with hydrogen to form magnesium hydride in a process conducted at 350 °C and five to six times atmospheric pressure" That is very power hungry. It actually reminds me of the Haber-Bosch process, process used to store H2 for other purposes. i.e agri or explosives. And that raises a lot of questions because it does not change how the H2 is produced but just how it is stored. In fact a major problem how to produce it. And just to think ahead to scaling, the Haber Bosch process is around for the last 100 years and technology didn't find anything economically viable to replace it. And while the figures are debated this process alone generates globally around 1% of the CO2. Do we really want to add another global process like that?

smellyoldboot

graememk wrote: »

I'll only comment on this as the rest have the rest covered?

So you have a PHEV, but don't(can't?) plug it in.

you'd use even less with a straight petrol engine.. or a petrol hybrid(non plug in kind)

Save lugging around a nearly dead battery all the time.

If you only have to fill up with 32L once a month, (avg petrol consumption, 7L/100km?) - 450km in a month?

So Say we in 10 years time have fast chargers all over the place, at the local shops, petrol station, anywhere that you could be parked for an hour or so.

Take the corsa e its in around 26-27k brand new currently.

Got a range of say 300km in normal driving conditions. means that It only needs a top up say twice a month. Fair?

Im not chatting now, As yep it doesnt suit you right now, wouldnt advise you to switch now. maybe in 10 years when the ban on new ice cars come in, maybe 20 years when the new ice cars sold in 10 years time start to come to the end of their life.

Also drive a kia.. and im a long way away from a managerial or executive salary. - done 22k km since march. only cost me €300 in electricity

Sorry maybe I have the terminology confused but I have a Toyota hybrid that you fill with petrol and it runs an electric motor off that at lowish speeds (will actually work up to about 100km/h) like a mini generator, no plug in required as that wouldn't work for me. I'm not against EVs per se. I just think there's a fair way to go for them to actually replace ICE's and I'm not convinced they will be the winning formula to get the job done.

AndyBoBandy

smellyoldboot wrote: »

Sorry maybe I have the terminology confused but I have a Toyota hybrid that you fill with petrol and it runs an electric motor off that at lowish speeds (will actually work up to about 100km/h) like a mini generator, no plug in required as that wouldn't work for me. I'm not against EVs per se. I just think there's a fair way to go for them to actually replace ICE's and I'm not convinced they will be the winning formula to get the job done.

So 100% of the energy created in your car comes from burning petrol.

Yes, these car's regen to put charge back in the battery, but they can't regen if they don't burn petrol to get moving in the first place

:rolleyes:

graememk

smellyoldboot wrote: »

Sorry maybe I have the terminology confused but I have a Toyota hybrid that you fill with petrol and it runs an electric motor off that at lowish speeds (will actually work up to about 100km/h) like a mini generator, no plug in required as that wouldn't work for me. I'm not against EVs per se. I just think there's a fair way to go for them to actually replace ICE's and I'm not convinced they will be the winning formula to get the job done.

Yeah a phev is a plug in hybrid, has a small battery, usually can do 50 km on electric only.

Then has the petrol for anything beyond that.

Just don't fool yourself, the hybrid you have is great for city driving, stop start driving - just goes to show how much is wasted in idling cars in traffic, you said it yourself, it sips petrol.

The "self charging" hybrids is better than nothing for air quality. - it's the direct fumes that is causing us harm.

but on long journeys, it's no difference (cost/efficiency) to a standard petrol.

Nobody is making you switch, for at least say 20 years?

Think of the difference between cars now and 20 years ago. My sister is changing the golf she drives that is 21 yrs old, it's finally reached the end of its life. Too many things to fix to keep it on the road. Grandfather bought it new, it doesn't even have electric windows!

ELM327

@Andy - No, they are self charging!!

(lol)

MJohnston

DrPhilG wrote: »

I doubt it. California is one of the greenest states in the US and they just got absolutely pumped by Covid through the winter season.

Green for the US is a low, low bar. Their cities have absolutely awful AQI, even in winter.

Deleted User wrote: »

Nothing to do with smokey fuels, it is really down to owners of many older houses having "improved" the draught protection on the windows, thus resulting with poorly ventilated houses that allow stale (possibly virus infused) air to remain inside for far longer.
In a house with an open fire the chimney would draw this air out whenever the fire is lit, so the exact opposite of what you say is true.
Many modern houses are designed to have the correct ventilation.


EV's wont solve any of these issues....

I think it's overly presumptuous to say that it's "Nothing to do with smokey fuels" - there are obviously a lot of overlapping problems that led to the winter surge, but AQI is tightly associated with Covid. There are some studies on this connection already:
https://www.escardio.org/The-ESC/Press-Office/Press-releases/study-estimates-exposure-to-air-pollution-increases-covid-19-deaths-by-15-world

EVs won't solve all air pollution, but they will hopefully lead to big reductions in long-term localised air pollution exposure.

smellyoldboot

AndyBoBandy wrote: »

So 100% of the energy created in your car comes from burning petrol.

Yes, these car's regen to put charge back in the battery, but they can't regen if they don't burn petrol to get moving in the first place

:rolleyes:

Yes, but it uses a lot less petrol, and being completely honest here, the environment wasn't exactly to the forefront of my mind. I could buy the car for the same money as a similar spec regular petrol and it's cheaper to run. You'll find that's what most motorists care about most.

Worrying about the effects on the environment even 50 years down the line goes over peoples heads. Paying more for an EV now and explaining there is a fuel cost saving payback period of say 5 years if you do X mileage per year goes over peoples heads.

Put the savings in people's pockets from Day 1 and you will get mass buy in to EVs even in plenty of cases where they're not an ideal fit. You'll get the environmental benefits then, but only by appealling to base instincts first. Principles are useful for those who can afford them.

KCross

smellyoldboot wrote: »

I'm not against EVs per se. I just think there's a fair way to go for them to actually replace ICE's

You are right. There is a long way to go and no one is saying otherwise. The lack of charging infrastructure is a real issue. Lack of on-street charging, price and choice. All real issues but all solvable with current tech and money and its happening already.... its just going to take a few years.

The proposed new ICE bans are just proposals. We will have ICE cars for decades yet so there is time to resolve the issues.

Your comments about battery replacements dont do you any favours do. You need to do more research before peddling that one again.

smellyoldboot wrote: »

I'm not convinced they will be the winning formula to get the job done.

Why not? The only alternative you have proposed is hydrogen and that has much greater obstacles and in any case a hydrogen fuelled car is still an EV (i.e. electric motor driven) just that the fuel is different but still fundamentally an EV so you seem to be simultaneously for and against EV's!

The main issues you have raised have been around price and charging infrastructure. We dont need a technological breakthrough to solve those. Its current tech and price, like all new tech, comes down over time as it scales up.

Generally your points seem to be based on taking the situation today and projecting that to the future and assuming that that's it as far as EV's are going to progress. Thats not whats happening or going to happen though....

e.g. In 2011 a 120km Leaf cost about €25-€28k. You can now buy EV's for similar money that have 3 times that range. What will it be like in another 10 years (solid state batteries, more infrastructure, more choice, more competition etc).

There isnt a fundamental flaw with EV tech. Electric motors are well proven. Battery capacity, as shown above, is improving in leaps and bounds. For now, BEV's are not for you as you dont have off-street parking.... that doesnt mean EV's are dead in the water... it just means you will be the last cohort to be able to adopt the tech.

AndyBoBandy

I went from Diesel to EV 11 months ago, we would do around ~25k km a year.... and just out of the blue we got an EV. 21,000km driven so far in the EV. Have been all over the country in it, and (really) needed to charge in the wild (away from home) 3 times.

Total spent on electricity so far... around €220 (some charging is/was got for free).
Brake pads are still only wearing in 21k km later..

liamog

KCross wrote: »

e.g. In 2011 a 120km Leaf cost about €25-€28k. You can now buy EV's for similar money that have 3 times that range. What will it be like in another 10 years (solid state batteries, more infrastructure, more choice, more competition etc).
.

It's a good example of how the battery degradation appears to be much worse than it is, that same 2011 leaf now has an 80km range, they are are holding 2/3 range after ten years, we know that they also improved battery chemistry to make them more resilient to time based battery loss starting in 2014.

A 2021 ID.3 with its current 350km will no doubt still have more than 250km in 2031 especially as they have a built in buffer.

AndyBoBandy

liamog wrote: »

It's a good example of how the battery degradation appears to be much worse than it is, that same 2011 leaf now has an 80km range, they are are holding 2/3 range after ten years, we know that they also improved battery chemistry to make them more resilient to time based battery loss starting in 2014.

These batteries also had no cooling, which affected the degradation badly...

Do the current Leaf batteries have cooling? if so, since when?

AndyBoBandy

AndyBoBandy wrote: »

These batteries also had no cooling, which affected the degradation badly...

Do the current Leaf batteries have cooling? if so, since when?

I think they're still air cooled, from what I have been reading it is mostly cars used in hot climates that suffer badly from degradation, cars used here seem to be far less affected.
Keeping the charge levels between 20 & 90% also seems to help.

smellyoldboot

KCross wrote: »

You are right. There is a long way to go and no one is saying otherwise. The lack of charging infrastructure is a real issue. Lack of on-street charging, price and choice. All real issues but all solvable with current tech and money and its happening already.... its just going to take a few years.

The proposed new ICE bans are just proposals. We will have ICE cars for decades yet so there is time to resolve the issues.

Your comments about battery replacements dont do you any favours do. You need to do more research before peddling that one again.




Why not? The only alternative you have proposed is hydrogen and that has much greater obstacles and in any case a hydrogen fuelled car is still an EV (i.e. electric motor driven) just that the fuel is different but still fundamentally an EV so you seem to be simultaneously for and against EV's!

The main issues you have raised have been around price and charging infrastructure. We dont need a technological breakthrough to solve those. Its current tech and price, like all new tech, comes down over time as it scales up.

Generally your points seem to be based on taking the situation today and projecting that to the future and assuming that that's it as far as EV's are going to progress. Thats not whats happening or going to happen though....

e.g. In 2011 a 120km Leaf cost about €25-€28k. You can now buy EV's for similar money that have 3 times that range. What will it be like in another 10 years (solid state batteries, more infrastructure, more choice, more competition etc).

There isnt a fundamental flaw with EV tech. Electric motors are well proven. Battery capacity, as shown above, is improving in leaps and bounds. For now, BEV's are not for you as you dont have off-street parking.... that doesnt mean EV's are dead in the water... it just means you will be the last cohort to be able to adopt the tech.

But the image is still there in the public eye that these things are knackered after 10 years on the road. The buying public now sees the Leaf at their price range and how crap it is.

For a long time US made cars pretty much collapsed in various ways after 100,000 or so miles. That likely isn't the case anymore (I don't know, it could be) but the image persists and they won't be selling too many of their models in the EU or even the US these days where Rav4s and Nissan Rogues are what people want.

Paddy's 2nd hand 2L Diesel still has 99% of its capabilities after those 10+ years and if it doesn't the price is reduced accordingly and the fix is relatively cheap and easy.

smellyoldboot

smellyoldboot wrote: »

But the image is still there in the public eye that these things are knackered after 10 years on the road. The buying public now sees the Leaf at their price range and how crap it is.

For a long time US made cars pretty much collapsed in various ways after 100,000 or so miles. That likely isn't the case anymore (I don't know, it could be) but the image persists and they won't be selling too many of their models in the EU or even the US these days where Rav4s and Nissan Rogues are what people want.

Paddy's 2nd hand 2L Diesel still has 99% of its capabilities after those 10+ years and if it doesn't the price is reduced accordingly and the fix is relatively cheap and easy.

A lot of car makers in the 1950s through to the late 1980s tried to make cars a "consumerable" item that you throw away after 8 years or so, people hated this refused to buy them (the second hand values of some fell through the floor*) and the makers got a bad reputation and now they last much longer.
*so did the driver's feet!

slave1

AndyBoBandy wrote: »

These batteries also had no cooling, which affected the degradation badly...

Do the current Leaf batteries have cooling? if so, since when?

Nope, no "active" cooling for any Leaf on the road today.
In reality this has zero impact on battery for the Leaf.
Severe degradation cases were on the first gen "lizard" battery pack in extreme locations like Arizona in the States, Nissan quickly revised the battery pack and fixed the issue.
Our Leaf without any active cooling is 92% SOH at just over 4years old.
Very steady decline, fek all impact on our range too.

liamog

AndyBoBandy wrote: »

These batteries also had no cooling, which affected the degradation badly...

Do the current Leaf batteries have cooling? if so, since when?

They changed the packs in 2014 by tweaking the chemistry, the original packs suffered from degradation due to time and heat, with the new chemistry, degradation is largely a function of charge cycles (correlates with distance travelled). It's still a bit more notable in Leaf's because of the way they they don't hide the buffer up front.
Nissan's batteries will degrade from excessive heat and would benefit from a battery cooler, but instead they use the BMS to manage the performance of the battery which is why we had rapidgate, as slave1 mentions it's only really a problem for people who need to do multiple rapid charges day.

KCross

slave1 wrote: »

Nope, no "active" cooling for any Leaf on the road today.
In reality this has zero impact on battery for the Leaf.

+1

You wouldnt think it though based on some of the commentary you see on here, with people claiming that Nissan and its batteries are terrible with huge degradation battery replacements being required and rapidgate is the devil incarnate... in reality it was all fine really.

Battery cooling is better but generally not required in Ireland, particularly on those early Leaf's as they were not motorway cars anyway... they were city cars really.

AndyBoBandy

This looks like a promising move...

https://twitter.com/dept_transport/status/1357322026436997127?s=21