Again, beefing up the suspension doesn’t add all that much weight compared to an already heavy truck.
The aluminum body panels help reduce sprung weight and lower center of grqvity. Also, going to aluminum saved 700 lbs or so, which is far more than what it would take to beef up a driveline.
For that matter, we don’t even know if the driveline is particularly vulnerable.
Consumer Reports has reviews of Tesla going back to 2013. In general owners are satisfied or very satisfied most years. In 2013 and 2020 reliability ratings were greatly below average, in most years they were somewhat above average. A quick glance at 2014 shows multiple recalls, but they don’t specifically mention the drivetrain. It’s not a perfect source, and I read elsewhere Musk has refused to talk to them since 2019.
Well, that’s a bit of a ridiculous statement considering every vehicle regardless of size and power source is going to be tested and ranked on fuel efficiency, and good proportion of buyers are going to consider it in their purchasing decision. Even truck buyers.
As an example of an EV maker not putting weight savings above everything else, my Bolt comes with wheels that weigh around 23lbs. The Chevy Cruze had an “Eco” trim for several years that came with wheels that weigh only 17lbs, and it’s common for Bolt owners to seek out these wheels in junk yards and ebay to swap on to save weight. Chevy could have easily included this lighter wheel (or something similar) in the interest of better range but chose a heavier wheel instead. So no, I don’t think a few oz difference in a couple suspension components is enough to have Chevy and/or other manufacturers under-build their vehicles.
Doesn’t he at least send them some poop emojis, to keep lines of communication open?
It’s not that trucks aren’t heavy, it’s that there is nothing unique to EVs about watching the vehicle’s weight. If there is evidence that they fail to beef up their suspension components because of weight, and fail earlier than normal as a result, I’m willing to hear it. Without that, it’s sensible to think that they size their components based on the stresses they’re expected to bear, just like other vehicles.
Perhaps, but that ain’t talking.
I would also add that for the most part EV owners are willing to pay more for the EVness of the car, and that includes beefed up suspension, tires, etc. When EV becomes more of a commodity and the profit chasing “race to the bottom” is in full rage, then we can probably start to see EVs with suspensions that require more maintenance and repair.
My brother owns a Tesla and used an empty glass and pitcher of water as an analogy. If you just want some water it’s fast and easy to pick up the pitcher and pour it into the glass, stopping close to where you want it. If you want the glass as full as possible, you slow down as it gets close to the top until the surface tension has it trembling a bit above.
It’s not a bad analogy. And in fact there are a lot of similarities between electrical and water flow.
To make it a little bit more accurate, I’d liken it to filling up a wide pan with water, like a cookie sheet. It’s not just that you have to be careful with filling it–it’s that if you’re pouring water in on one side, it takes time for it to spread out, and you could easily overflow one side even if the other still has space. At first, it’s not a big deal, but as the water level gets closer to the top, you have to pour more and more slowly to prevent it from overflowing at the point where you’re adding water.
A lithium-ion battery cell can be charged to about 4.2 volts, and if you go above that it damages the battery. If the battery is discharged (which for lithium ion is about 2.8 volts), then if you apply 4.2 v, then electricity rushes in quickly, just like water from a high point will flow to a low point. In fact, it will rush in too quickly, and the voltage has to be decreased somewhat to prevent that from happening. But as the battery charges, to 4.1 v, then 4.15 v, then 4.19 v, etc., the difference between input and the battery level becomes very small, and so the flow goes down as well. You could increase the flow if you could give it, say, 5 volts–but that would kill the battery. 4.2 volts is the limit and you can only approach that gradually.
One workaround is to just define the capacity so that 100% is really 90% or something. Then, even when the battery is almost “full”, you can still give it a high enough voltage that it charges at a decent rate. There are pros and cons to this approach. The main con is that it’s no different than just setting your charge limit to 90% in the first place. Sometimes it’s helpful to have that extra 10% available when you need it.
I don’t know for sure, but I would expect the manufacturers to take a conservative approach to charging. If they permit the car’s software to fill the battery to its absolute physical capacity, they will encounter users who do that every time and who therefore get shitty lifetime out of their batteries then complain loudly on social media about not-very-durable batteries.
Far smarter (from their POV) to limit charging to the highest level that’s consistent with their battery life goals and leave it at that. By defining that number as “100%” and making it impossible to exceed that, they get what they want and the customer is as happy as possible.
We don’t expect too many other mechanical systems in cars to operate with no margins. Why would we expect that from something as complicated as a multi-thousand cell computer-controlled battery.
Not too different conceptually from the fact that speedometers are designed to read fast to people can think they’re speeding when they’re not speeding quite so much.
I had these special batteries made, you know how you charge to 100% and it’s just not enough, you need that extra edge? Look here, they go to 110%
Why not just make the batteries bigger and set the full amount to 100?
… these go to 110.
I’m pretty sure that’s what Jaguar did with the iPace. I can’t, like with Tesla, set it to only charge to a certain level. Unless I unplug it, it will charge as far as it can.
They adjusted the max charge level at one of the software updates, and my full charge range changed from about 210 to about 250. That was nice. I still think they have charge limit below true 100% so I can’t mess up the battery health. As I stated upthread, I haven’t noticed any loss in range over 4 years.
Which might, just might, be a result of the car’s software slowly allowing a higher state of charge in a now lesser-capacity battery as it consumes its built-in reserve capacity providing you with the illusion of no loss in range capacity. At some point all the excess capacity will be used up and then you’ll see full-charge range begin to decline with age.
Not unlike the way a rotating computer hard disk drive is provisioned with extra space that’s not available to the OS. The drive hardware uses that to move data in failing areas into the hidden free space, creating the illusion of no failures at the cost of some loss in maximum new-in-box capacity.
We are long past the point in most of our tech that simple reductionist models of mechanical machinery are valid ways to think about our gizmos. They’re all “smart”. Which means their apparent surface behavior is at least one layer of abstraction removed from the real physical capabilities. And sometimes several levels removed once you add a UI on top of their API.
Diabolical. But could be.
I wouldn’t buy a used gas driven car, and my philosophy wouldn’t change just because it was electric.
The risk I see with a used electric is that most of the models are new enough that we don’t have a lot of long-term data on what will be costly to repair, and we haven’t really figured out exactly how to inspect them for hidden damage and such.
There was a Rivian that had a minor fender bender that happened to put a dent in the battery case. Everything worked fine, but a dented battery is a hazard and the entire thing had to be replaced, for over $40,000. How many unscrupulous owners would simply try to hide damage like that and sell the vehicle?
In my youth I once bought a 240-Z which had been ‘undercoated for rust protection’. Of course the undercoat hid the fact that the unibody was rusted out. The seller filled the rust holes with metal shavings to foil a magnet test, then undercoated over it. The car was a write off when it was discovered. There are a lot of ways people try to hide major flaws, and in ICE cars we are wise to a lot of them.
On the other side, EVs are simpler and have fewer points of wear, so the odds of getting a lemon are probably lower.
Cite (for the “dent in the battery case” part specifically)?
There was this thoroughly-publicized incident where a Rivian that got lightly rear-ended cost $42,000 to repair, but it was mostly due to the fact that repainting one large panel (that spans from the rear end all the way forward to the windshield) required an awful lot of labor. Nothing at all due to it being an EV. The battery wasn’t damaged.
Well, not doing that has been working for Tesla for over a decade now. Carrying around extra, unusable battery all the time is not an insignificant cost, either for the consumer or the company. All else being equal, a car with a 90 kWh battery that can charge to 100% will have better range than one with 100 kWh that can only charge to 90%. And it’ll cost less, both upfront and running (due to greater efficiency).
Of course, even for Tesla, 100% isn’t really 100%, if we say that 100% is the level at which the battery can survive exactly one cycle while not exploding. If you always charge to 100% in a Tesla, the degradation will probably still be within the warranty limits. But users who follow the advice of only charging to 80-90% will have better results.
As per above, there’s no case where a 100% charge leaves no margin–that would indeed be crazy. The question is how much freedom the user is given. Should the level be set to a point where no abuse is possible at all, or where the decision requires some thought on the part of the user?
Of course, it’s easy to say “nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people,” and err on the side of caution, but the reality is that consumers make these kinds of decisions all the time for the things they buy, cars included. People can drive ICE cars like a race car and cause the attendant degradation (friction from high revving, brake wear, etc.), but most people don’t. So the automakers don’t build in a huge amount of extra margin because some people might abuse the cars. Tesla has plenty of nags and reminders and other things to encourage a 80-90% charge level, and it seems like most people get the idea pretty quickly.