Smellytele
Well-known member
What is the market for used electric vehicles? Battery life would keep me away from getting a used one.
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Electric Cars/Trucks and winter weather testing with results. What do you think? Who has taken one in Freezing cold long distance to a Ski mountain?
- Thread starter MidnightJester
- Start date
Kevin Schultz
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I find the focus on range to be misguided. Electric cars obviously have worse range and take longer to "refill" than a gas or diesel car. They're known to have even worse range in the cold. But they have plenty of other benefits - they drive great, they're better for the environment, they are more spacious for a given size, cost less to operate & maintain per mile, and are simpler (leaving aside Tesla's decision to reinvent every non-drive train aspect of the car). The manufacturers should lean more into their strengths rather than constantly being defensive of their weaknesses.
Most families that buy new cars have more than 1 car. The 2nd car is for running to the grocery store or dropping the kids off at school or whichever person has a short commute. Range is just immaterial. Rarely are multiple people in the house all off on super long road trips at the same time. In which case, make the equivalent of a Tesla 3 but with half the battery. Leave all that weight, material, and cost behind. I'm certain a lot of people could live with 150 mile range for their second car, especially if it was $25K instead of 35K+.
The idea that EVs are only relevant if they can do the thing they are worst at (driving long distances in the cold) makes no sense. But we're overshooting the markets actual needs by designing for the hardest case and that has a cost for everyone since EV production is constrained by the availability of batteries. Make twice as many EVs with half the battery size and the costs would come down for everyone (gas car owners included).
Most families that buy new cars have more than 1 car. The 2nd car is for running to the grocery store or dropping the kids off at school or whichever person has a short commute. Range is just immaterial. Rarely are multiple people in the house all off on super long road trips at the same time. In which case, make the equivalent of a Tesla 3 but with half the battery. Leave all that weight, material, and cost behind. I'm certain a lot of people could live with 150 mile range for their second car, especially if it was $25K instead of 35K+.
The idea that EVs are only relevant if they can do the thing they are worst at (driving long distances in the cold) makes no sense. But we're overshooting the markets actual needs by designing for the hardest case and that has a cost for everyone since EV production is constrained by the availability of batteries. Make twice as many EVs with half the battery size and the costs would come down for everyone (gas car owners included).
Kingslug20
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Musk is building rockets for a reason...lot of minerals to be mined up there some day.
Former Sunday Rivah Rat
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I spent several years in the car business in my youth. I learned many painful costly lessons.
Cars all serve 1 main purpose, transportation. You don't need to spend a ton of $$ to get a reliable car. Look for cars with good to excellent long term reliability ratings from Consumer Reports and you won't get burned. Do not buy a car in the 1st year after a major redesign. Do not buy a car from a new manufacturer.
Buying an EV breaks many of these rules most importantly, they are not a reliable form of transportation due the the range etc. They are at best a risky, expensive toy for a second or third vehicle. Hybrids made way more sense.
Cars all serve 1 main purpose, transportation. You don't need to spend a ton of $$ to get a reliable car. Look for cars with good to excellent long term reliability ratings from Consumer Reports and you won't get burned. Do not buy a car in the 1st year after a major redesign. Do not buy a car from a new manufacturer.
Buying an EV breaks many of these rules most importantly, they are not a reliable form of transportation due the the range etc. They are at best a risky, expensive toy for a second or third vehicle. Hybrids made way more sense.
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abc
Well-known member
Not all.
If that’s the “main purpose“, we’d all be driving Toyota Camary. The fact we don’t is very telling.
EV fills a nIche.
speden
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The current crop of EVs seem best for commuter cars, and I'd guess we're still 3 to 5 years away from electric cars being good road trip cars. My ideal EV ski car would be capable of level 3 or higher autonomous driving, and have 400 miles of range in cold weather. If DC fast chargers become plentiful along the major highways in ski country, then I could get by with less range.
We should see some significant battery improvements in the next five years, with better energy density, faster charging, and lower cost. There is a massive amount of investment in that area now. With the new incentives for battery manufacturing in the U.S., companies are flocking to build battery factories here. Tesla is making some great progress in AI for self driving, so that should become more mature in the next two years, and hopefully other manufacturers develop it too. I don't think I'll be able to nap while my car drives me to the slopes, but level 3 autonomy should make for a much less tiring drive.
The transition to renewable energy will hopefully pick up speed as well, so that EVs can be charged up on wind and solar power. I feel guilty pumping a whole tank of gas into the atmosphere when I do a day trip to ski, especially since the effects of that are becoming worse every year with record droughts, and now even the mighty Mississippi is at record low levels. The grid scale batteries that are starting to ramp up is going to make it a lot easier to shut down coal and gas fired power plants. But it's going to take some time.
We should see some significant battery improvements in the next five years, with better energy density, faster charging, and lower cost. There is a massive amount of investment in that area now. With the new incentives for battery manufacturing in the U.S., companies are flocking to build battery factories here. Tesla is making some great progress in AI for self driving, so that should become more mature in the next two years, and hopefully other manufacturers develop it too. I don't think I'll be able to nap while my car drives me to the slopes, but level 3 autonomy should make for a much less tiring drive.
The transition to renewable energy will hopefully pick up speed as well, so that EVs can be charged up on wind and solar power. I feel guilty pumping a whole tank of gas into the atmosphere when I do a day trip to ski, especially since the effects of that are becoming worse every year with record droughts, and now even the mighty Mississippi is at record low levels. The grid scale batteries that are starting to ramp up is going to make it a lot easier to shut down coal and gas fired power plants. But it's going to take some time.
Both UPS and FedEx are going to Elec trucks first, then driverLESS Elec Trucks.
Buddy just opened a EV service shop. Booked out 2-3 months the first week he opened.
EV's are only going to increase exponentially.
I'll stick w/ my Gas Guzzling 65 Ford
Buddy just opened a EV service shop. Booked out 2-3 months the first week he opened.
EV's are only going to increase exponentially.
I'll stick w/ my Gas Guzzling 65 Ford
RichT
Active member
Buddy just opened a EV service shop. Booked out 2-3 months the first week he opened.
EV's are only going to increase exponentially.
I'll stick w/ my Gas Guzzling 65 Ford
Your buddy should do well.............
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MidnightJester
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Put another check mark in the Colum that Electric trucks and cars are NOT ready for winter life. Not even close to winter long distance ready.
www.breitbart.com
Review of Ford F-150 Lightning Electric Pickup: Road Trips Are the Truck's 'Kryptonite'
The Ford F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck's "kryptonite" is a road trip, according to the Detroit News review of the vehicle. Auto critic Henry Payne explains that the electric truck got him "170 miles of range" on a trip up interstate 75 in Michigan, while its gasoline-powered counterpart...
darent
Active member
my son just bought a Tesla, lives in the Portland Oregon area and has a 25 minute commute. The car is working great for him and he can charge it at home where he has a solar array. Owns a gas car for long drives
BenedictGomez
Well-known member
I invest in this space and know it fairly well from mineral extraction to end product. Most of the most important topics have already been covered, so I'll just briefly add the few things I've seen not mentioned.
1) Net EV cars are mythical as a mermaid - If you add up all the vehicles all the manufacturers (F, GM, TM, HMC, BMYWW, TSLA, RIVN, LCID, VWAGY, etc..) claim they will make in their 5'ish year plan in either their public comments or investor presentations, you arrive at a number which is quite literally, metaphysically impossible for them to manufacture due to lack of resources. I'm floored how few people realize this and/or how nobody in the media talks about it. I speculate it's because the media is almost all left-wing, and so doesn't want to say anything to poop on the EV party. And of course, the manufacturers sure as hell aren't going to say anything, they need the unit numbers to justify their "bottom line" numbers, but Wall Street is increasingly aware of this, that we currently don't have the mineral capacity to hit these bogeys. Oh, and these liberal places with their government mandated 2035 ICE ban thing? Nope. Not happening. Not unless we have a major breakthrough anyway.
2) There's a Li'l problem - The biggest problem mineral is likely lithium. So there's not enough of it and that's the problem, right? Yes; but actually, it's even worse than that. The major global extractable sources of Lithium by volume are almost entirely in the hands of the Chinese & the Aussies. The largest sources are in Australia, China, Bolivia, Argentina, and Chili, but the Chinese, in The Ant & The Grasshopper fashion, started buying Aussie & South American lithium mines several decades ago. How bad is the problem? I dont know if anyone truly knows, but I've seen experts say the Chinese control something like 2/3 to 80% of current production. A communist nation. Our enemy. Awesome. Good luck non-Chinese manufacturers.
3) SSB to the rescue - which brings us to Solid State Batteries, which use way less mineral, are lighter, more energy dense, and much safer than current EV batteries (anyone seen a TSLA inferno video?). Problem is the technology is probably 5 to 10 years away from true mass production in sellable automobile models (assuming the dentrite problem can scientifically be solved). There is the equivalent of a "space race" going on in labs right now to be the first. You've got F and BMWYY partnered with SLDP, VWAGY and an "unknown manufacturer" partnered with QS, TM is working in their own labs, a company in New England called Factorial Energy partnered with Hyundai, SES partnered with HMC, then you've got a bunch of Chinese companies on this like BYD, etc....., and a handful of other private companies without partners all plugging away on this problem. The reason why is the $$$$$ opportunity is GINORMOUS if you figure this out - you basically become the new oil overnight. Not just for cars, but also for aircraft as the weight reduction is huge, so now we could talk flight. Boats too. The revenue opportunity is a once-in-a-generation thing, the likes of which have not been seen since 1990s internet investing (entirely IMHO of course).
4) I'm worried about net EV safety - Here's something I never hear anyone say (again, because IMO the entire media are EV cheerleaders), but highways are going to be more dangerous once everyone's driving insanely fast cars which accelerate like rocket ships and which are each 300 to 800 pounds heavier than their ICE counterparts? The average car crash is probably going to have about 1000 additional pounds of mass. No manufacturer can invent a solution to F=MA. Not to mention, the cars are more flammable. Maybe I'll be wrong, but I think it's odd nobody even mentions this. My long-term prediction here (this is probably 10 or more years out) is that after highway fatalities increase in a statistically significant fashion, governments will mandate governors on EV cars to restrict their top speed as well as maximum allowable acceleration. Think of it like NASCAR restrictor plate racing, but on our roads.
1) Net EV cars are mythical as a mermaid - If you add up all the vehicles all the manufacturers (F, GM, TM, HMC, BMYWW, TSLA, RIVN, LCID, VWAGY, etc..) claim they will make in their 5'ish year plan in either their public comments or investor presentations, you arrive at a number which is quite literally, metaphysically impossible for them to manufacture due to lack of resources. I'm floored how few people realize this and/or how nobody in the media talks about it. I speculate it's because the media is almost all left-wing, and so doesn't want to say anything to poop on the EV party. And of course, the manufacturers sure as hell aren't going to say anything, they need the unit numbers to justify their "bottom line" numbers, but Wall Street is increasingly aware of this, that we currently don't have the mineral capacity to hit these bogeys. Oh, and these liberal places with their government mandated 2035 ICE ban thing? Nope. Not happening. Not unless we have a major breakthrough anyway.
2) There's a Li'l problem - The biggest problem mineral is likely lithium. So there's not enough of it and that's the problem, right? Yes; but actually, it's even worse than that. The major global extractable sources of Lithium by volume are almost entirely in the hands of the Chinese & the Aussies. The largest sources are in Australia, China, Bolivia, Argentina, and Chili, but the Chinese, in The Ant & The Grasshopper fashion, started buying Aussie & South American lithium mines several decades ago. How bad is the problem? I dont know if anyone truly knows, but I've seen experts say the Chinese control something like 2/3 to 80% of current production. A communist nation. Our enemy. Awesome. Good luck non-Chinese manufacturers.
3) SSB to the rescue - which brings us to Solid State Batteries, which use way less mineral, are lighter, more energy dense, and much safer than current EV batteries (anyone seen a TSLA inferno video?). Problem is the technology is probably 5 to 10 years away from true mass production in sellable automobile models (assuming the dentrite problem can scientifically be solved). There is the equivalent of a "space race" going on in labs right now to be the first. You've got F and BMWYY partnered with SLDP, VWAGY and an "unknown manufacturer" partnered with QS, TM is working in their own labs, a company in New England called Factorial Energy partnered with Hyundai, SES partnered with HMC, then you've got a bunch of Chinese companies on this like BYD, etc....., and a handful of other private companies without partners all plugging away on this problem. The reason why is the $$$$$ opportunity is GINORMOUS if you figure this out - you basically become the new oil overnight. Not just for cars, but also for aircraft as the weight reduction is huge, so now we could talk flight. Boats too. The revenue opportunity is a once-in-a-generation thing, the likes of which have not been seen since 1990s internet investing (entirely IMHO of course).
4) I'm worried about net EV safety - Here's something I never hear anyone say (again, because IMO the entire media are EV cheerleaders), but highways are going to be more dangerous once everyone's driving insanely fast cars which accelerate like rocket ships and which are each 300 to 800 pounds heavier than their ICE counterparts? The average car crash is probably going to have about 1000 additional pounds of mass. No manufacturer can invent a solution to F=MA. Not to mention, the cars are more flammable. Maybe I'll be wrong, but I think it's odd nobody even mentions this. My long-term prediction here (this is probably 10 or more years out) is that after highway fatalities increase in a statistically significant fashion, governments will mandate governors on EV cars to restrict their top speed as well as maximum allowable acceleration. Think of it like NASCAR restrictor plate racing, but on our roads.
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BenedictGomez
Well-known member
Oh, and one thing to add on the subject of current battery problems, even though it's a moot point.
Betamax vs. VHS - I'm not old enough to know, but I've heard beta was actually better than VHS, but due to poor Betamax business planning and savvy VHS marketing, VHS won out. I think a similar thing happened with EV cars. As everyone knows, the battery tech just isnt there, and the charging can be a pain in the ass unless you have a home unit. "Battery swapping", would alleviate all that. You simply drive your car to the station, and swap your nearly spent battery for a fully charged battery. Similar to changing the battery on a camping lantern. It's quicker than even filling up a gas tank, and we'd use mostly existing gas stations for this service. Instead of anxiously wondering where the next charging station is, or literally having to spend BILLIONS of dollars building out a nationwide charging network. There are a few companies in China that do this battery swapping, but in the words of Eminem, "It's over, nobody listens to techno" - it's not going to happen in Europe or America. Like VHS & Beta, the battle was already lost. Conceptually, people were just too used to the idea of the "tank" being a self-contained & fixed part of the car, and IMO it's a shame, because I think battery swapping makes WAY more sense than sitting & charging in place for a whole plethora of reasons.
Betamax vs. VHS - I'm not old enough to know, but I've heard beta was actually better than VHS, but due to poor Betamax business planning and savvy VHS marketing, VHS won out. I think a similar thing happened with EV cars. As everyone knows, the battery tech just isnt there, and the charging can be a pain in the ass unless you have a home unit. "Battery swapping", would alleviate all that. You simply drive your car to the station, and swap your nearly spent battery for a fully charged battery. Similar to changing the battery on a camping lantern. It's quicker than even filling up a gas tank, and we'd use mostly existing gas stations for this service. Instead of anxiously wondering where the next charging station is, or literally having to spend BILLIONS of dollars building out a nationwide charging network. There are a few companies in China that do this battery swapping, but in the words of Eminem, "It's over, nobody listens to techno" - it's not going to happen in Europe or America. Like VHS & Beta, the battle was already lost. Conceptually, people were just too used to the idea of the "tank" being a self-contained & fixed part of the car, and IMO it's a shame, because I think battery swapping makes WAY more sense than sitting & charging in place for a whole plethora of reasons.
Smellytele
Well-known member
hydrogen powered EV's ?
They wouldn't be EV's (electric vehicles) if they were Hydrogen powered...
Not Sure
Well-known member
I enjoy your thoughtful commentary but I see great danger in this process. Creating a solid electrical connection that can be swapped literally hundreds of times in the life of an EV .
Wear and tear of connectors I see as a potential fire hazard as a simple loose connector can ruin your day.
A whole new technology will need mechanics trained to deal with the new issues. I never buy a first model year vehicle , I’ll let my neighbors do R&D for the manufacturers .
Not Sure
Well-known member
Putting any kind of compressed gas into a moving vehicle? What could go wrong?
Do you live in a cave?
The next big thing! But only in Cali for the time being.
2023 Hyundai NEXO Prices, Reviews, and Pictures | Edmunds
Research the 2023 Hyundai NEXO with our expert reviews and ratings. Edmunds also has Hyundai NEXO pricing, MPG, specs, pictures, safety features, consumer reviews and more. Our comprehensive coverage delivers all you need to know to make an informed car buying decision.
www.edmunds.com
2021 Honda Clarity Fuel Cell – Hydrogen-Powered Car | Honda
Enjoy a responsible drive in a zero-emission vehicle. The 2021 Honda Clarity Fuel Cell paves the path to the future with hydrogen fuel cell technology.
2024 Toyota Mirai | Toyota.com
Experience pure innovation and cleaner power with the all-new 2024 Toyota Mirai. Hydrogen and oxygen combine to generate power to propel us into a future of possibilities.
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I've stated that possibility for years - drive in, lower deleted battery out - install newly charged battery.
Its the entire bottom of a car, and most of the weight.
None of this solves the problem of creating energy =- batteries store - that's it. Hydrogen ( so far) takes more energy to separate the oxygen from the hydrogen to make it economical.
Betamax story is true - but we used to call Windows '95, 'Mac '88. And in the 80's Digital Equipment Corporation came up with the Alpha chip - superior to anything around but no applications because, well, it was Digital.
Why not use a 100-200 year supply of organic fuel until we find the alternative as opposed to punishing the very thing that allows cheap materials, heat and ac, food for poor people, and is reliable. How come even though for years - 10-20 maybe - everyone knew nat.gas produced half the carbon that oil does, that it wasn't promoted. Because of control. Elites want control. They don['t like freedom or liberty ( except for themselves)
I'm still not convinced that what we exhale and what plants inhale is bad for the planet.
One last question - compared to what say the US or Europe emits for carbon each year, what does a large active volcano release/produce?
In a free society where there is profit motive, we will come up with alternatives - just let them all compete without my ( or your) money to subsidize and have unfair competition.
These support BG's take on supply.
Good post BG. Lets talk ESG for some real debate!
Do you live in a cave?
The next big thing! But only in Cali for the time being.
2023 Hyundai NEXO Prices, Reviews, and Pictures | Edmunds
Research the 2023 Hyundai NEXO with our expert reviews and ratings. Edmunds also has Hyundai NEXO pricing, MPG, specs, pictures, safety features, consumer reviews and more. Our comprehensive coverage delivers all you need to know to make an informed car buying decision.www.edmunds.com
2021 Honda Clarity Fuel Cell – Hydrogen-Powered Car | Honda
Enjoy a responsible drive in a zero-emission vehicle. The 2021 Honda Clarity Fuel Cell paves the path to the future with hydrogen fuel cell technology.automobiles.honda.com
2024 Toyota Mirai | Toyota.com
Experience pure innovation and cleaner power with the all-new 2024 Toyota Mirai. Hydrogen and oxygen combine to generate power to propel us into a future of possibilities.www.toyota.com
Still not an EV.
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