EV car thread?

IStream

Super Anarchist
11,029
3,216
Every EV has a charge curve of kWh accepted vs. state of charge. It's typically pretty flat from 0-50% SoC and then it starts dropping. If the temperature is comfy, the flat part will be close to the peak rating of the car's onboard charger (50kW for my Bolt, 190kW for a Caddy Lyriq, etc.) but can be much lower if it's cold out.

Most of the route planning apps will have you stop in for a charge at around 20% SoC. That's a fairly high SoC but they recommend it so you've got plenty of range left to get to another charger if the target charger out of order. As Bull points out, it's most time-efficient to charge until you're at 70-75% SoC unless you've got a long run to the next charger and need the miles in the bank.

As the chargers get more numerous and more reliable, you'll be able to push that lower SoC target down to 10% or even 5% and squeeze another 20-40 miles out of a charge session.

We're definitely in the early adopter, the-infrastructure-isn't-ready-yet phase of the process but the buildout is happening. I love my EV for the city and regional runs but wouldn't use it for long distance runs unless I had no other alternative.
 

BeSafe

Super Anarchist
8,279
1,526
The top 20% SoC of virtually every battery chemistry ever developed is where the bad shit happens - the cell to cell variations manifest and all of the side reactions accelerate. Most batteries packs are artificially de-rated for that reason - similar to what they've done with CPUs for decades now. Its just part of the technology.

EVs are very good for cities with shortish distances and lots of stops and starts, particularly where people have garages and places to park / charge. I think work-chargers will eventually be commonplace, as I've mentioned above, and make a lot of sense.

There's a very good case to be made EVs will revolutionize Class 3 and 4 delivery trucks at the city level and maybe up to class 6 service trucks - particularly things like bucket trucks. Running a 10-20 hp secondary motor or worse, a main engine, to power a modest sized hydraulic system is always going to be shitty efficiency. Lots of waste and opportunity to improve.

EV long hauling is generally bad across all categories. Batteries have the same sort of math as the famous 'rocket equation' for basically the same reasons. That sucks when it comes to hauling. First, and most obvious, is that the weight of the batteries become a significant fraction of the total load so commercial load of delivered goods per tractor goes down. A 50K truck that's 10K in batteries is a 40K truck, as far as load is concerned. That's not a big deal for light solids but for liquids and heavy solids, its never going to make sense. Sorry - ICs are always going to win that fight. Government can just madate away of course, in which case the cost of hauling that material just goes up 25% and right onto the consumer. There's some other more suble issues about load stability - which tend to improve ironically - but tractor length tends to also drift up which limits road access.

That's why so many vehicle makers are integrating batteries as support elements for in the framework itself across all vehicle classes. That gets the weight down, improves range and hauling, and they have to protect the batteries anyway. But that leads to difficult replacement and the aforementioned 'scrap it early' cost of replacement. Blunt force trauma isn't just for football players and boxers.

Battery hybrid systems - particularly to support hotel loads - are a very good idea for class 8 trucking.

Amazingly, roads work pretty well if you're driving an EV or ICE engine. Go figure.
 

veni vidi vici

Omne quod audimus est opinio, non res. Omnia videm
9,075
2,156
This is a great example of how clean burning and efficient ICE vehicles are in 2023. This was typical all over the world and in the USA. Our air quality is many times cleaner today with many many more vehicles than it was in the 60’s. I remember when you could only see the outline of the sun in the orange sky in LA late 60’s. The smell of car and diesel exhaust was normal

View attachment 582022
As a boy in Taiwan 1950’s we would climb on the pedestrian bridge, there is one similar in the photo, and wait for the hot cindery smoke to go under us.
This is just another example of how much the air quality has improved and the greenweenie activists are fighting the last battle

68514849-9E9F-4F86-BB6A-0F181A0560A5.jpeg
 

Bull City

A fine fellow
7,456
3,059
North Carolina
As a boy in Taiwan 1950’s we would climb on the pedestrian bridge, there is one similar in the photo, and wait for the hot cindery smoke to go under us.
This is just another example of how much the air quality has improved and the greenweenie activists are fighting the last battle

View attachment 582109
That's a nice story in the first paragraph, but in the second paragraph, you seem to be focused on particulates air pollution, whereas the current battle for "green weenies" is carbon emissions.
 
Last edited:

Bristol-Cruiser

Super Anarchist
5,165
1,700
Great Lakes
As a boy in Taiwan 1950’s we would climb on the pedestrian bridge, there is one similar in the photo, and wait for the hot cindery smoke to go under us.
This is just another example of how much the air quality has improved and the greenweenie activists are fighting the last battle

View attachment 582109
The greenweenies won the last battle so air quality has improved a lot. Check out Beijing air 20 years ago and now. The GWs have moved on to the next battle - carbon emissions. You seem to have difficulty understanding this, but then you generally have difficulty understanding most things.
 

tommays

Super Anarchist
1,419
72
Northport

US unveils stricter EV tax credit rules to take effect April 18


Alliance for Automotive Innovation CEO John Bozzella said in a statement his best guess is "few" EVs on the market will qualify for the full $7,500 credit after April 17. He noted the requirement EVs be assembled in North America to qualify for any credit eliminated 70% of models.

Its a pretty solid way of building up our Industrial capacity, and bring some of the jobs home with flushed
 

veni vidi vici

Omne quod audimus est opinio, non res. Omnia videm
9,075
2,156
Can’t get there from here, terrible strategy by ideologues.
The transition should also include and emphasize hybrid
Emphasize conversion to natural gas in traditional ICE vehicles
All the while allowing the battery development and infrastructure to support.
Fuck’n ideologues!
 

d'ranger

Super Anarchist
30,223
5,197
Only a total dumbass thinks cars running on NG is a good and workable idea. But then consider the source...
 

Olsonist

Disgusting Liberal Elitist
31,001
5,289
New Oak City
Why not??
Fuel cell EVs are pretty much the same as battery EVs with respect to the motors, AM radio, etc. Motors are dead simple. But batteries and fuel cells aren't. Their differences are two-fold:
  1. battery + chargers + power distribution
  2. fuel cell + hydrogen storage, production and distribution
Chargers + electricity distribution are dead simple. We're also getting better and better at batteries a little bit each year (same with solar), better and cheaper kind of along Moore's Law lines. You have a massive market (primed by the big bad govmint) with steadily improving economies of scale and better efficiencies.

BTW, the lithium used in these batteries is pretty abundant. But at atomic number 3, lithium should be even more abundant because abundance generally decreases with atomic number, except for lithium because well ... stars and quantum mechanics. Shit ton of hydrogen + helium left over from the Big Bang and then more helium from hydrogen fusion in stars. But it's just hard for the universe to make lithium. It's almost a stellar mistake.

The fuel cell isn't so hard but it requires hydrogen storage (hydrogen atoms are squirrelly little buggers and they'll leak through steel), production (easy) and distribution (hard) which is altogether hard and then you need a catalyst like platinum which is rare. Did I mention that hydrogen burns? It burns.

When I was at Berkeley, the profs did a back of the envelope calculation that said we just don't have enough platinum to matter. We've gotten considerably better at that and need less platinum these days. But we probably still don't have enough to really matter.

Solar and batteries are a reasonable path forward. Hydrogen is certainly worth throwing research money at but don't expect much, especially in the consumer space.
 


Latest posts





Top