The original prototypes involved connecting hundreds of small batteries in parallel.
How did that happened in the age of the internet ? and are there still a lot of such technological "secrets" ?
Then, on the other hand, $3/gal is a US-only phenomenon among countries that can really afford electric cars, everywhere else it is ~2x that? Europe, japan/korea/australia? I could be wrong here too but I think that's how it is. So there electric may already be quite a bit cheaper, depending on generation cost.
I wonder if some kind of weight + mileage tax would work better?
Ultimately I don't see how one could institute a fair system without converting all roads to toll roads (perhaps with variable pricing to manage demand).
Gasoline taxes are a reasonable proxy for "usage", so heavy users contribute more.
Registration fees treat everyone of the same make and model the same, be it a livery vehicle with six-digit annual mileage or a proverbial old-lady whose car is being driven around town twice a week. And one can't exactly levy a tax on kWh.
(This is bad because it makes driving more very cheap for people who already have cars, the exact opposite what's good for extracting maximal utility out of minimal fuel use)
The high taxes on cars and gasoline usually goes to improve public transport.
So at least for transportation, the breakeven is probably somewhat further than your calculation suggests.
Low on gas? Get to a station, take 10mn to refill and you're gone for 500 more miles. Low on battery? Get to a station, wait hours to get it charged back up and you can go for 300 more miles. The fact charging takes time means a long queue before you can get to a charger.
besides time to charge the real big drawback of battery EVs is the weight of the packs
EG: The vast majority of travel is for errands and work commuting. Probably a lot of that social travel in the linked survey is short distance as well.
Average miles a day is 30, which can easily be covered by an overnight charge.
Agree that the time to charge EVs is definitely a drawback for long distance travel (whether for social reasons or for transport etc.).
[1] Source: http://www.mtfca.com/discus/messages/118802/146015.html?1276...
For now. Battery tech is increasing at a fast pace.
And if we play this game, to get it even, maybe we should compare the whole car since gasoline requires a big engine too.
My impression is that analysis which takes everything into account puts EVs far ahead in environmental impact, and I think they're slightly ahead in terms of total ownership costs.
The current battery are way too heavy.
Not true with modern EV batteries. Tesla's packs typically show less than 8% degradation after 100,000 miles, which would be approximately 500 cycles.
https://electrek.co/2016/06/06/tesla-model-s-battery-pack-da...
[1]: https://electrek.co/2016/07/26/tesla-upgrade-software-limite...
Thats only for certain specific model and delivery time combinations.
i.e just before they introduced the 90kWh option in production, some 85kWh cars were shipping with the 90kWh pack.
If you ordered a particular pack before the next step size started shipping, then that's all you got.
>Tesla batteries only show very little degradation because their capacity is limited by software
Not true. It's mostly to do with active management of the battery, and keeping it within the optimal conditions for much of it's life. These are things your phone and laptop can't (or rather: don't) do.
Everyone tends to plug in their laptop/phone and charge to 100%, then leave it there for long periods of time. Plus, laptops and phones tend to get very hot, and there's no active cooling of the battery.
This combination of conditions tends to reduce the life of batteries significantly.
Why is this a problem for Lithium batteries?
Tesla recommends that their customers to charge to only about 80% for normal daily driving, and that if they need the full 100% range that they should start driving very soon after it reaches 100% charge. They also recommend not leaving it at empty for very long too as empty cells are more likely to drop below their minimum voltage, and die.
It's now four years old, has driven over 45,000 miles (well over 500 cycles) and the total degradation is less than 10%.
https://survey.pluginamerica.org/model-s/charts.php
I'd say it looks like they behave rather well in general.
Guy #2: No it won't.
Guy #3: Do you have any sources that disprove that claim?
The onus is on the person making the ridiculous claim.
I can tell you from personal experience I have had a Nissan LEAF for about 2.5 years and ~24k miles, driven daily and it has lost no range whatsoever. But if you want a study or something, you're gonna have to Google for yourself man.
Both you and 'jjawssd are making claims, and you're very confident that 'jjawssd is wrong.
This is a bullshit statistic that has somehow become a meme on the internet. It just flat out isn't true.
I don't think it's unreasonable to expect someone who expresses that level of confidence to have something to back it up. And if the false claim is so widespread, I'd also expect someone to have busted it and publicized it. From my outside, ignorant point of view, both sides are unproven, with an edge to you because of your own experience.
I'm sure you have devices in your own life that disprove his claim. Look at your phone. Does it really go to 50% capacity after 500 days? None of mine have. Sure batteries degrade over time and you'll experience better performance one day or worse another, but he's claiming after 500 days of using your phone you should be at 50% capacity. That's obviously baloney.
When I first read your comment, I thought you were a little over the top, but it sounded like you likely had something solid to back it up, so I was interested in learning something new. Personally, I don't make strong statements like that unless I can pretty quickly defend them. I honestly wasn't trying to catch you out. And seeing a myth busted is generally a good time!
As for phone batteries, I just had to replace mine, so that's not a particularly useful example. As I understand it, there's a lot of circuitry in phone batteries these days anyway, so I'm not sure what failed. I'm not going to use my anecdotal evidence for or against your case, for what it's worth.
Be well!
I don't save a folder full of links to answer skeptical people on the internet and I'm not going to Google for you. If you're interested in reading articles, go look for yourself.
Anyway whatever. This has been a colossal waste of time.
Next time just say "sorry I don't have hard evidence for this opinion on hand". Nobody expects you to know everything but they do expect you to treat people decently.
Are you relying only on the 12 bar indicator or on the more detailed data download from the car's telemetry? My car still shows 12 bars, but has obviously lost some capacity (max range at 100% charge is down to about 95 from 102/103), just like my phone that still charges to "100%" but obviously has way less capacity after 3 years.
From my perspective, losing "no range whatsoever" after 2.5 years is the extraordinary claim.
If his claims about losing 50% capacity after 500 cycles were remotely true that would be the main cause of lost range ina 2.5 year old LEAF.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Li-ion-Lithium-24vdc-100ah-2-4kwh-NE...
So with shipping, $869.96 for 2.4 kwh, or about $362/kwh. A $3 gallon of gasoline has 33 kwh, but only 8 kwh of usable energy due to the inefficiency of internal combustion engines, so $0.375/kwh.
So batteries are somewhere around 1000 times more expensive than gasoline, but, if they can be recharged more than 1000 times they may actually be cheaper. 1 kwh of electricity costs about 10-20 cents usually (call it $200 per 1000 charges). That's a total of $1069.96 for 1000 cycles, maybe $1269.96 for 2000 cycles, etc, something on that order anyway.
So $1 per cycle per kwh is pretty close to a breakeven against gasoline, and batteries are only going to get less expensive.