Actually the record is 31 hours 4 minutes set in 2006. http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/31/us/new-york-los-angeles-cannonball-speed-record/
:eek: Truly was it said that one man’s meat is another man’s poison. 
We’re moving into pretty esoteric territory here. It’s a fairly small percentage of people that think “I’d really want a BEV, but if I get one it’d take 67 hours to drive cross country instead of 47 hours with 2 drivers and peeing in a bottle soooo… yeah, better stick to ICE.”
I’ve had my BEV since January and so far I have a hard time seeing myself going back to ICE. The drive is that much better. And like I said earlier, I’m a gear head whose past cars include stuff like Camaro Z28, BMW M3, Mustang Boss 302 etc. I still have a classic (1971) Corvette for weekend fun, but when I need to actually go anywhere and not just drive around for fun, I pick the BEV.
Interestingly, the battery can last 20 years if it uses the right technology. Lithium iron batteries : 5000 cycles at average of 50% depth of discharge. (would be true for a BEV you plug in nightly : inductive charging being the standard would help with this tremendously, as you wouldn’t have to remember to plug in the cable)
Assuming the same capacity battery pack as the one in the 85 kWh tesla, but using this brand of Lithium Iron batteries, you would have driven an average of 132 miles between charges. I’m assuming a user mostly commutes more like 40 miles on average (at only 30% DoD the battery can last 7k cycles), but that this user also does frequent long distance runs with supercharging and draining the battery to 80% (which is really hard on it).
Anyways, 5000 cycles at 132 miles each = 660k miles. That battery would last 66 years if you drove 10k a year.
Even with more pessimistic assumptions, 20 years using Lithium Iron tech is very doable.
The battery’s a wear item, but the electric motors are inherently more reliable than ICE (basically only one mechanical part inside the motor itself, the bearing) and they do not have a transmission. (there’s a fixed gear setup similar to a differential, however)
On the other side of the coin, the motor controllers on a BEV do wear out, although they could be built in a way that changing a failed controller board is as easy as changing a video card on a personal computer. And, currently, a battery pack as powerful as the one in the Tesla will cost you $38,000 just for the batteries. (numbers using thisbattery as a comparison)
It’s also 2283 pounds worth of batteries, which is why the Tesla doesn’t use this tech yet. (that would reduce the range slightly from the Tesla’s 265 mile range, but this is a complex subject because the Tesla is not an optimal design for maximizing range)
Anyways, if the Lithium Iron battery technology could be reduced in manufacturing cost by a factor of about 3-4 (I think it’s possible, the raw materials are much cheaper than the current prices for the completed batteries), now we’ve got something.
How does this sound : a BEV that costs between $24k and 30k brand new (battery reduced by a factor of 3-4, so it’s about 9-12k for the battery, $1500 for the motor, $1000 for the motor controller, and the balance is everything else plus manufacturer profit). The battery in it is rated for 500k miles/20 years with a warranty. Same 265 mile range as a Tesla, same ability to supercharge. Rooftop solar panel integrated so that if car is parked outside for a prolonged period it will remain charged and even slightly recharge over time. (from doing the math, you might get a few extra driving miles per day it is parked outside in the southwest)
“Right” depends on the trade off you are willing to take. More than twice the weight and likely more than twice the volume as well is a big trade off to accept. Plus the technology loses more performance in the cold than do other battery types.
Now of course by 12 plus years the costs may be down substantially and the technology improved. Or not.
Yes, but the longevity is huge. For cold weather, you need those inductive charging pads to be common. If you park it in a garage over a charge pad, you can spare the energy to run electric heaters to keep the battery cells above freezing. (would only amount to a few 10s of watts probably in most weather conditions)
More weight and volume is bad, but not unmanageable. The tesla has a frunk and a flat floor. This car would probably need a bulge in the floor and less front/back trunk space.
Not needing to replace the $15000+ battery every 7 years is worth these compromises, I think. Lithium cobalt batteries, I once saw a paper that showed that at the current prices, about 60% of the cost is the actual raw material cost of the cobalt itself. (can’t get an exact source on this, but I know it’s a huge cost). China just can’t make them any cheaper, any more than you could sell gold coins for less than the price of the gold in them.
I agree. Discussing the drawbacks of taking an EV on a cross-country road trip misses the advantages of using an EV for a daily commute. I’ve tried both, and the cross-country trips are fun, in a sort of “hey let’s be adventurous” kinda way, but rather nerve-wracking if you actually have a deadline. I tell people that the EV is great for in-town driving, maybe going to the next town over and back, but if you plan on going on a road trip, take an ICE car. If you don’t have one, borrow one or rent one. Or take the bus or the train. Or fly. Personally, I only go out of town about six times a year, so I just take my wife’s car, which is a 2013 Fiat 500. The last time I drove it out of town, we averaged 48 MPG on the whole trip.
But the Fiat only gets about 30 MPG in town. That’s where the EV really shines. Both cars cost about 50 cents per mile to drive, when you figure in depreciation, insurance, repairs, fuel, et cetera. But The EV has a smaller carbon footprint by about a factor of eight, and it’s quieter. Two cars, one EV and one ICE, makes a nice combination for a family to have.
Getting back to the OP, if your family has two cars, one EV and one ICE, and one day you forget to plug in the EV overnight, you can just leave your EV plugged in that day. No big deal. Ask your spouse to drive you to work in the ICE car.
Honestly, this sounds like the most straightforward and cost effective way to have a hybrid. Sort of reminds me of how many other ‘hybrid’ technologies sucked and it’s better to have a purebred version of each tech. Instead of trying to get a BEV with insane range ($$$$$) or a gas engine you rarely use (yet it slowly decays over time, costing you money in the future and reducing your range), just get a good cost effective BEV like a Leaf and a regular gas car like a basic honda accord or civic as the other vehicle.
The spouse with more commute distance uses the BEV, the spouse with the job located close to home uses the ICE vehicle. Flip it around if a spouse has to commute farther than the BEV’s round trip range.
I completely agree that the fact that a pure BEV is a poor choice as a road trip car is of little importance … but let’s at least accept the fact that it is not a great choice for a road trip. If the car needs to do that often you are better off with something other than a pure BEV.
Real world: many of us take really never take road trips and of those of us who do most of us have more than one vehicle in the household, at least one of which is not a pure BEV. Honestly worst case, rent an ICE vehice for the one week you need one and have the vehicle that best suits your daily needs the other 51 weeks of the year.
So far the batteries are holding up pretty well (Nissan’s poor experience in hot weather duly noted as an exception). If it is charged frequently (not more than 50% discharged most days) then over 300K is not impossible. Every 7 years (hence two replacements in a 20 year plus vehicle lifetime) seems as unrealistic as planning on it lasting 20 years plus on the original battery.
I was just saying that 20 year life is physically possible, more or less. Realistically, batteries are not monolithic units - there’s hundreds of individual cells, and modern packs have electronic monitoring systems that can detect dead cells. You could swap out the dead ones every now and then over time. (these pack lifespans are also ignoring damage to the batteries caused by vehicle vibration and heating/cooling cycles)
Having had a dead battery on a normal gas car from leaving the interior light on, I wonder if this would be a problem for electric cars.
BEV are smart about that stuff and will go to sleep if you’re not driving. Tesla works like this:
Get close to the car with the fob in your pocket and the car wakes up, unlocking and extending the door handles.
Open the door and the screens come on.
Sit in the driver’s seat and press the brake pedal and the car “turns on” (ready to drive).
Once done driving, you put it in park and leave the seat. Car now powers off. Once the fob has been out of range for about 10 seconds it locks.
Not sure you if it’s even possible to leave a light on. I think it just turns off when it goes to sleep. But even if you could it would take months to empty the battery. Remember the battery in a BEV is massively larger than the 12V battery in an ICE.
Some Tesla owners are known to have forgotten to turn off the engine when they borrow an ICE. I’ve not had that happen, but I do find myself forgetting to take the keys out of the ignition.
If the battery tech used by Tesla was really that bad yes. But so far everything points to a much longer life span for Tesla batteries than 7 years. The Tesla roadster batteries are still going strong with the oldest being 6 years old, and they are not quite as advanced as the Model S batteries.
Tesla also has an 8 year/unlimited miles warranty on the batteries.
Yup. I think that all the different combos for electrics are a great idea. But it is just not there yet. At least not for me. I can’t imagine pulling over for and hour, or even 20 minutes on a road trip. It would drive me nuts.
People have mentioned how using the heater reduces your range. No doubt. Wouldn’t AC reduce it even more? It takes quite a bit of energy to run that compressor, doesn’t it?
It seems to me, that an all electric car would work pretty well in a very mild climate, and for a very predictable lifestyle. I like the idea of the volt because at least you can just gas it up and go.
In that case a BEV is not for you. But I hope you realize that most people aren’t like you? Personally I can’t imagine driving more than 3 hours without stopping for a leg stretcher.
Heater uses much more energy than AC.
Mild temps has my efficiency at 300 wh/mile.
In 25F/-4C I’ve seen over 400 wh/mile energy usage for short distance (7 mile) trips. After the initial heating, I see a 20% energy increase.
100F/38C on the other hand gives me ~360 wh/mile for the same short trip which then goes down to less than a 10% increase.
Hmmm. My wife and I pull over every 3 hours or so. But an hour, or even twenty minutes is way, way longer than a leg stretcher. I’ll bet that many people that do these long drives would agree. I really doubt I’m in the minority on that. But this thread may show otherwise.
[QUOTE=zwede]
Heater uses much more energy than AC.
Mild temps has my efficiency at 300 wh/mile.
In 25F/-4C I’ve seen over 400 wh/mile energy usage for short distance (7 mile) trips. After the initial heating, I see a 20% energy increase.
100F/38C on the other hand gives me ~360 wh/mile for the same short trip which then goes down to less than a 10% increase.
[/QUOTE]
Huh. Ignorance fought. It is easier to dress warm, than cool. That’s probably a good thing for electric vehicle ownership.
As I said, I like the idea. It will grow in popularity, but it’s going to be a while before it works for me. My wife and I just did a trip from Frisco Colorado, to Lake Tahoe California. We took one of our SUV’s. She races IronMan’s so that means the bike, and a lot of gear. We also need vehicles that can plow through a foot of snow, and withstand -20F. Yep, we each need one. Not to mention the plow truck. Yes, I understand that we are a rare bird.
Just for fun, I googled charging stations, and man oh man, we would have never made it across half of Utah, and ALL of Nevada in an BEV. Hell, I was just a little concerned about finding gas.
Yes, such a thing can happen with a Mitsubishi i-Miev like mine. There are actually two batteries: the main battery which is 300+ Volts, and the accessory battery which is 12 Volts. It’s possible to run down the accessory battery when the car’s not moving and then it won’t go even though there’s plenty of power in the main battery. Strange as it sounds, the solution is to “jump start” the car from another vehicle’s 12 Volt battery.
You have to admit, that’s kinda funny. But good to know if someone wants me to jump start their electric vehicle. Id be looking for the ‘Candid Camera’ and Alan Funt.
I trust engineering data on the performance of lithium-cobalt cells more than I trust anecdotal accounts, sorry. Lithium cobalt cells have very short lives, the exact data depends on the average depth of discharge.
Didn’t know that about the i-Miev. Tesla has a trickle charger powered by the main battery that always keeps the 12V topped off (even when the car is parked).
That said, Tesla has had issues with this 12V battery. The early cars had 12V batteries that did not do well being used that way and some of them failed. The 12V battery is needed to switch on the main battery and without it the car won’t go anywhere. So Tesla has replaced all the early 12V batteries with an updated version. The new ones seem to do better.