My stove has a vent hood that vents to the outside. That doesn’t count?
Speaking of battery upgrades, a timely article.
These are lithium battery replacements for the NiMH batteries in old Priuses and other hybrids. They start at about $2500, and are about half the weight of the original batteries. The ability to use the electric motor longer increases gas mileage. The article goes into detail that the money saved on gas is unlikely to pay for the battery. The largest benefit is increasing drivability of an old hybrid with a dead battery.
It also seems like a competent amateur mechanic could do the install at home, which is not ever going to be the case for most EVs, where removing the battery requires a four post lift and a forklift.
Those are batteries for hybrids, which are tiny compared to EV batteries. The Prius battery in the article was 1.3 kWh, and weighs 80 lbs. The battery in an EV will be at least 50 times that size, and on the order of a thousand pounds or more.
The other problem with swapping batteries is that some are built to be structural members, and some are undoubtedly built in ways that make them nearly impossible to swap out.
Lithium Ion batteries are tricky things. I’ve been using them in RC models long before EVs came around. There are many ways to damage a pack that makes it unsafe. You need very good charge controllers to prevent overcharging cells that have different levels of charge in them. Best practices back then including charging your batteries in a ceramic pot in the garage in case they ignited.
Maybe an aftermarket will develop to replace some EV batteries, but I suspect they’ll just lose 10% of their charge over the first decade and 20% over the next, and people will just live with the fact that used EVs don’t have the range of new ones. The question is what happens when a battery fails early but the vehicle isn’t worth the replacement cost. That could result in vehicles only a few years old being scrapped if the battery fails out of warranty.
Changing the battery is likely to be so expensive that it won’t be worth it in a 20 year old car, and won’t be needed in a ten year old car. But I could be wrong, as this market is just getting started.
Lithium ion batteries lose capacity way faster than 10% in a decade (assuming they are daily drivers) and at some point just won’t be able to meet the voltage threshold for useful operation, or will start exhibiting defects and the characteristic ‘bulging’ or thermal runaway. Lithium iron phosphate (LiFePo4) which is being used increasingly more will get considerably more use cycles even though it has slightly less energy capacity and lower current throughput per unit mass, and it wouldn’t be unrealistic to expect two or three decades of service from such a battery and the vehicle using it.
Hopefully a battery chemistry with comparable capacity will be developed that is cheaper and can be more easily recycled, but again, adoption of electric vehicles (even with government incentives for both consumers and providers of cars and charging stations) just isn’t going to occur fast enough to make a measurable impact upon climate change or achieve a hypothetical “net zero [carbon emissions]” within a timeframe to stay within the RCP 2.6 scenario, notwithstanding that light vehicles are a just a portion of the transportation sector, which itself is only a fraction of overall sources of greenhouse gas emissions.
Stranger
You’re right. I guess the 10% per decade number was ‘aspirational’. Real world results do not match.
According to one source in that article:
Another source reports even worse results:
So I guess the smart thing to do is to determine how long you want to keep the car, the minimum range you can tolerate, then work back from that. So if I want to keep a car for a decade, and I lose 20% of range over that decade, I will need to purchase a car with 20% more range than I would need.
It probably also means that low-range EVs are going to lose their value more quickly., an an already-marginal range drops below usefulness. That might be one reason the Mazda MX-30 was such a flop. It has only 100 miles of range. The Nissan Leaf S has 150 miles. A decade from now the Mazda will be very compromised, and apparently the Leaf loses as much as 4% of its battery life per year if driven in hot and cold weather, because it has poor active bagtery management. That may be an older version but the point remains: Some EVs will lose huge value in a decade, which means they will depreciate faster than other cars.
I agree completely with your last paragraph. Especially since people seem to be demanding high-powered EVs with big batteries. I’m not sure there is any CO2 savings at all if you grt rid of an economy gas car and replace it with something like an Ioniq 5 n with 600 HP, or someonne who otherwise wouldn’t buy a truck because of gas costs now decides to buy a Ford Lightning or an EV hummer.
Here’s an article that tries to quantify how long it will take to break even on Co2 by driving an electric car:
Tldr:
1/3 of vehicles drive 10,000 miles per year or more. Breakeven in CO2 is about 5 years.
1/3 of vehicles drive closer to an average of 5,000 miles per year. They will need 24 years to break even.
1/3 of vehicles drive significantly less than 5k miles per year. They will never break even, and the planet would be better off with you driving a gas car or a hybrid.
If EVs don’t last 24 years, it looks to me like 2/3s of car drivers should not buy EVs just for the CO2 savings. Perhaps if you live in a state where most power comes from renewables it’s a little different.
But if only 1/3 of EVs eventually return CO2 savings, the impact is even less than you suggest.
Yeah, there are other reasons to own a BEV; lower total cost of ownership (depending on how much you drive and how long you keep the vehicle), less maintenance cost and effort, reduced particulate emissions, et cetera, but they aren’t going to “save the world”, or even provide more than a marginal reduction in total greenhouse gas emissions.
Stranger
Some stoves are, but many aren’t. Building codes can vary from state to state and I know in my state it’s not required. The point is that your post implies that there is a problem with ALL gas appliances, when in fact the problem is only with a specific use case.
There have been several stories showcasing the declining enthusiasm for EV lately so I thought I’d add a few here.
Ford cuts production of F-150 Lightning EV
The automaker will be reducing production of the Lightning at its Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Michigan to one production shift from two, impacting approximately 1,400 employees.
The employees aren’t being laid off, but instead transferred to other production lines or offered early retirement.
Rental giant Hertz dumps EVs, including Teslas, for gas cars
Jan 11 (Reuters) - Rental firm Hertz Global Holdings is selling about 20,000 electric vehicles, including Teslas
About a third of their EV fleet.
More alarm bells sound on slowing demand for electric vehicles
Honda and General Motors announced they were ending a $5 billion plan to develop lower-cost EVs together just a year after announcing the effort.
All of the EV news isn’t doom and gloom of course, but there’s still more than enough to go around.
I read a different version of that article a while back, and what it likely should say is “*especially Teslas”. Apparently, EV are more expensive to repair right now (likely true, economy of scale and fewer aftermarket/used parts) but Tesla especially.
On top of that, Hertz depends on selling it’s used vehicles, and with Elon’s stink on Tesla, PLUS his recent and increasingly steep discounts on his new models, used Tesla models had a massive drop in value.
IMHO - Hertz is feeling like they’ve been burned for being an early adopter, and that Elon is doing them no favors on their major investment (vehicle wise) in Tesla.
That may be, but the takeaway from the story is that Hertz is selling off 20000 EVs, regardless of who made them, due to maintenance/repair costs and lack of customer interest.
Based on my experience with renting Hertz vehicles over the past couple of years, they charge extra to get a Telsa or other EV. I wouldn’t mind the novelty of driving one as a rental, but am not willing to pay a surcharge (especially since I’m usually doing so on a business trip).
Repair costs are definitely high, but other than cabin air filter, top off the washer fluid, and rotating the tires, there is no maintenance on a Tesla for the time Hertz would keep them. That is what bothered me about the reporting on Hertz.
This is literally the entire Model 3 service interval list:
- Brake fluid health check every 4 years (replace if necessary)**.
- A/C desiccant bag replacement every 4* years.
- Cabin air filter replacement every 2 years.
- Clean and lubricate brake calipers every year or 12,500 miles (20,000 km) if in an area where roads are salted during winter.
- Rotate tires every 6,250 miles (10,000 km) or if tread depth difference is 2/32 in (1.5 mm) or greater, whichever comes first.
My understanding is the maintenance costs they were referring to wasn’t regular maintenance, but instead due to poor build quality.
I hadn’t realized that EVs had such light requirements. Thanks for the info.
Renting an EV is probably not the best idea for many people. The sweet spot is being familiar with your home charging routine and normal driving habits. Renting typically means being in a new place, unusual driving distances and locations, not having home charging, not knowing where chargers might be, and just generally not the time to try out new tech.
I would count that as repair, and should have been covered under warranty. Time out of service is definitely a cost for a rental company, regardless of who is paying for the repair, and is completely fair for them to count.
It should be noted that the high repair costs were mostly in Teslas, with other EVs only slightly higher than ICE cars or hybrids…
Considering total cost of ownership should include insurance, btw. And Teslas are expensive to insure, probably because of the high cost of repair.
We don’t really know yet how EVs are going to shake out in terms of repair and maintenance. Currently, EVs have 78% more problems than gas cars or hybrids. That’s like due to the ‘infant industry’ effect, though. It remains to be seen how reliable/cheap to drive they are as time goes by.
It also remains to be seen how well batteries hold up in the hands of people that abuse them. I know people who have never taken their car in for a service, or even had the oil changed. It frightens me to think how they’ll treat their EVs.
This is one where I think the EVs will have a big advantage over abused ICE cars. The computerized nannies can do lots of things to prevent ignorant battery abuse, like automatically resetting the stop-charging point to 80%, and automatically adjusting charging speeds as appropriate for the temperature and state of charge.
I’m sure there will be people who are stubborn and ignore the warnings, and insist on charging to 100% everyday, but that’s going beyond neglect into deliberate abuse. It will require the person to take a negative action, instead of just not bothering to do things right.
What we will see are people just using the car very hard. Ride share, delivery, taxi, etc. where the battery is going to be depleted and fast charged every day, or even more than once per day.
Not quite- it said on Thursday, citing higher expenses related to collision and damage for EVs
In other words, people not knowing how to drive them getting into accidents.
And yes, repairing Teslas for collision damage is very expensive.
My buddy worked for one of those “we do it in your driveway” mobile auto glass places. Only in a few states could they even do glass for Teslas. The windshields were super expensive in those few states.
And of course there is the MAGA idiot concern- they wont get near “one of them there hifalutin electric mobiles”.
I see this said often and I now have actual real proof of how expensive a Tesla is to insure.
We have a 2012 Subaru Forester with maxed out liability and uninsured/underinsured (we have an umbrella policy and we had to max them out first). We just got a quote for the same coverage on a new Tesla Model Y. Difference between 2012 Subaru and 2024 Tesla? drumroll please
$15/month.
I would guess ANY new car would me more expensive to insure that a 12 year old vehicle.
So, is $15/month more considered expensive?