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Fair point. An "ideal" EV should be a small, lightweight car with no more range than what you need for your every day commute. For that once in a while long trip, you can always rent a car.

Still, I wonder how much a hybrid gets in extra costs for maintenance. More components means more potential failures and more pieces to replace.

 Tiennos wrote:
Fair point. An "ideal" EV should be a small, lightweight car with no more range than what you need for your every day commute. For that once in a while long trip, you can always rent a car.

Still, I wonder how much a hybrid gets in extra costs for maintenance. More components means more potential failures and more pieces to replace.

Which is why the 600 mile, recharging in 2 minutes EV that the FUDers keep banging on about is nonsense - noone will pay for it. I think smaller cars will top out at the 150-200 mile range, that's more than enough for most journeys for most people. We may see some smaller courier vans coming with maybe 300-400 mile ranges so that they can do a full shift without needing to charge (even though they'll have stopped for a few breaks).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Dukeofstuff wrote:
IF you want to go there, electric vehicles lend themselves economically only to long commute routes that people predicatably can pour high mile commuting into.

EV's lend themselves to almost everything, except huge range with minimal stopping. Express couriers, emergency services, etc. Fast charging and increased capacity will improve this trade off all the time. Tacho drivers need to take a break every 5 hours in the UK, capped at 60mph means you need to stop every 300 miles at most. The only exception would be the the drivers switch in the same vehicle.
We've got hybrids to deal with this though,where you can use electric first and then fall back to gas if you need it.

For road warriors, it results in huge cost savings at the expense of needing to stop every ~3 hours to recharge. Those road warriors will presumably be able to spend any wasted stop doing admin work at a service station, or charging whilst visiting a customer.

They are ideal for the mid level commuters - charge at home overnight, drive to work and back, recharge. Currently you can commute about 50-100 miles each way on a single charge. Double that if you can charge whilst your car spends 8 hours in your work car park.

It's even better for the low mileage users (though kinda expensive). If you never do a trip of more than 150ish miles, you can potentially always just charge at home and thus never need to waste time with petrol stations or worrying about running out of gas.


Gas is just so outdated. It'd never be introduced today if it didn't already exist, and it's also going to run out at some point.

So, if you look at the energy used by a hyundai electric variant of the ioniq, a full EV, its about 25 kwh per 100 miles, or in an average us citizens hands, its about 280 miles per week, ie, its about a fuel cost of seven bucks in kentucky, 14 bucks in california, and 21 bucks in hawaii. Cause prices vary. Taht's assuming certain things abotu optimal charge time of day in california.
This compares favorably enough to an 18 dollar internal combustion only hybrid without plugin, I guess. For only 8000 dollars more.
Of course, that means you still need 60 to 80 years to recoup costs, and the externalities of the electric vehicle transaction are such that it will be a VERY BAD IDEA to tie up all our batties in lightly used personal automobiles, and not in high use commercial long haul vehicles, such as we could in fact save a lot more fuel with.
This also assumes we will double our existing electricity production, as adding all those cars, would roughly double national electricity demand (per my own back of envelope calculations using 25 kwh / 100 mile efficiency as a benchmark, and the 15000 mile per annum driver average per car.

 Tiennos wrote:
The problem with a hybrid is that you're carrying at all times one engine and its fuel that you're not using. That's quite a lot of extra volume and dead weight that'll hurt the overall efficiency of the car.

Which is also the problem with long range EVs.

You're carrying half a ton of batteries that you aren't using in 90% of cases.

jouso wrote:

 Tiennos wrote:
The problem with a hybrid is that you're carrying at all times one engine and its fuel that you're not using. That's quite a lot of extra volume and dead weight that'll hurt the overall efficiency of the car.

Which is also the problem with long range EVs.

You're carrying half a ton of batteries that you aren't using in 90% of cases.

It's not that big a difference. At least, if the car is designed properly, I guess.
Here's the weight for the three versions of the Hyundai Ioniq (according to their website):
- Hybrid (not plug-in): 1436 kg
- Plug-in hybrid: 1570 kg
- Electric: 1602 kg

The fully electric one is only 32 kg heavier than the plug-in one.

 Tiennos wrote:

jouso wrote:

 Tiennos wrote:
The problem with a hybrid is that you're carrying at all times one engine and its fuel that you're not using. That's quite a lot of extra volume and dead weight that'll hurt the overall efficiency of the car.

Which is also the problem with long range EVs.

You're carrying half a ton of batteries that you aren't using in 90% of cases.

It's not that big a difference. At least, if the car is designed properly, I guess.
Here's the weight for the three versions of the Hyundai Ioniq (according to their website):
- Hybrid (not plug-in): 1436 kg
- Plug-in hybrid: 1570 kg
- Electric: 1602 kg

The fully electric one is only 32 kg heavier than the plug-in one.

Because it has a reasonably sized 38kWh battery pack.

The Kia Niro/Hyundai Kona with the big battery (64 kWh) weighs over 300kg extra over the petrol version and 200kg over the plug-in hybrid (which has a very respectable 50+ km only electric range)

Long range Tesla's, Audi's, Polestar etc all have battery packs closing in to 100kWh.

Sadly, car design is often based more on coolness and impressive performance than on efficiency. SUVs wouldn't exist otherwise. The Ioniq can afford a much smaller power pack because it's not trying to be a race car and it doesn't have the aerodynamics of a brick...

Anyways, I really hope Sodium-Ion batteries will become good enough to equip cars in a few years. So far they're still much heavier for the same capacity, unfortunately, but if that hurdle can be passed it should solve the problems of both cost and recharge time.

 Tiennos wrote:
Sadly, car design is often based more on coolness and impressive performance than on efficiency. SUVs wouldn't exist otherwise.

Which is why I take offence to someone buying a, say, Porsche Taycan and getting a government subsidy for it so they can throw leather seats for free.

2-ton electric monstrosities are still monstrosities only marginally better than petrol powered ones.

Dukeofstuff wrote:
So, if you look at the energy used by a hyundai electric variant of the ioniq, a full EV, its about 25 kwh per 100 miles, or in an average us citizens hands, its about 280 miles per week, ie, its about a fuel cost of seven bucks in kentucky, 14 bucks in california, and 21 bucks in hawaii. Cause prices vary. Taht's assuming certain things abotu optimal charge time of day in california.
This compares favorably enough to an 18 dollar internal combustion only hybrid without plugin, I guess. For only 8000 dollars more.

Like for like? Because the EV's are usually the top of line models.

Of course, that means you still need 60 to 80 years to recoup costs, and the externalities of the electric vehicle transaction are such that it will be a VERY BAD IDEA to tie up all our batties in lightly used personal automobiles, and not in high use commercial long haul vehicles, such as we could in fact save a lot more fuel with.

Absolutely, for the lowish mileage driver and looking at fuel alone then EV's aren't that competitive, especially in the US where fuel is so cheap. In the UK those 280 miles would easily cost $50. Then there's things like car tax, maintenance, residuals and so on. Often if you look at the total cost of ownership then the EV may be cheaper in the long run despite the higher buy in.
That's before considering the other benefits such as the convenience and noise reduction.

This also assumes we will double our existing electricity production, as adding all those cars, would roughly double national electricity demand (per my own back of envelope calculations using 25 kwh / 100 mile efficiency as a benchmark, and the 15000 mile per annum driver average per car.

How much charge are you assuming each car will draw every night, with a relatively even spread? Cars connected to the grid can charge up overnight at a fairly slow rate, or potentially even give charge back to the grid at peak.

Electricity generation will definitely go up (though presumably oil refineries consume a lot of power and moving from gas to EV means less need to run refineries). It's not something that can't be managed with a bit of additional planning and some new power plants.

I compared the price of the ioniq hybrid plug in to the price of the ioniq EV. Same car, maybe a different wrap on the steerign wheel but its basically an economy car design.

25 kwh is the current EPA estimate for the use of that car over 100 miles as an electric only. A much smaller, lighter, shorter ranged EV, the LEAF, is rated at 19 kwh per 100 miles, which is maybe a good estimate of the best an electric car (that isn't just a golf cart) can do. However, the leaf's short range and smaller than average size led me not to use it in the math, as I wanted a like vs like comparison as much as possible.

Anyway, I think I have made my point. I am not hostile to the technology of EV vehicles, I think it has a real place in long haul trucks, where it can have a far more significant economic impact and waste far fewer precious material resources per impact. But for consumer use, hybrids are better, and plug in hybrids a reasonable compromise.

Remember that in the USA, 30 percent of the fuel cost of those inefficient combustion only cars gives an average annual tax of about 300 bucks per driver to keep our roads up. If you were to try to beat a prius that was allowed to ignore the taxes put on gasoline, your prius's annual use of gasoline would mark in under 500 dollars per annum. to fuel a 19kwh per 100 mile car to drive the same distance in the oh so green california market, without any road taxes, would cost you 570 dollars in electricity. Unless you have a COMPELLING source of alternative, green, cheaper than average electric generation that can be rapidly and easily scaled up, that means those 570 dollars of electricity represent extra coal being burned to increase marginal production during nighttime hours. We aren't getting any more hydro power in, we can't solar at night, and you can't easily charge from batteries using solar without taking TWO instead of ONE battery losses, TWO instead of ONE transmission losses and power stepdown losses. Using a fleet of cars as backup batteries for the town is a non starter that way, even if most batteries didn't already lose power over time -- an imperfect storage. Coal to the rescue? That's why kentucky is 10 cent a kwh and hawaii 30 cent, or california 20 cent. I suppose in one sense buying an EV is a token of support for the american coal industry in perpetuity, so that could to some minds justify it. You know, jobs and such, and energy independence for centuries.

EV gets even less favorable when the right weather conditions make battery life drop by 35 or so percent, or when someone has to charge with a fast charge and there is a 40 percent wastage loss. Those factors combined? A fast charge on a winter's day? OUCH -- I don't want to use a car that's marginal efficiency is already down to about 45 percent, when I can just turn on my hybrid motor and put on home -- no power loss on the wires, no charging issues, no excessive premium to buy it.

So this conversation has been useful for me, its firmed up my ideas of what I will likely buy as my next vehicle, which will likely happen in the next 1 to 1.5 years. Probably a prius plus, unless someone happens to give me a free car that runs on something else.

Cheers!

I guess It all comes down to the price of the different energies where you live.
Over here, one liter of gasoline costs about 1.3€ (and that's after it went down because of lockdown, it used to be about 1.6 and will go back up eventually). In 'murican, that's around $6 per gallon. Meanwhile 1 kwh of electricity costs about 0.15€ ($0.18).

Getting rid of gas entirely is a lot more attractive with these prices.

 Tiennos wrote:

Getting rid of gas entirely is a lot more attractive with these prices.

Still a long way away. The cheapest electric Hyundai Kona costs just short of 30k Euro.

A petrol Kona with the same equipment costs 15K, 19K for the non-plugin hybrid version.

At roughly 6 l/100km those 15k are pretty much a lifetime of petrol for the car, not even factoring electricity costs.

jouso wrote:

 Tiennos wrote:

Getting rid of gas entirely is a lot more attractive with these prices.

Still a long way away. The cheapest electric Hyundai Kona costs just short of 30k Euro.

A petrol Kona with the same equipment costs 15K, 19K for the non-plugin hybrid version.

At roughly 6 l/100km those 15k are pretty much a lifetime of petrol for the car, not even factoring electricity costs.

You also have to consider repairs. Car mechanics already dislike electronics in cars because it can be near impossible to repair components and even replacing whole units can be hard if they dont' subscribe to get the car reprogramming computer. There's a good number of pretty basic repairs and replacements that you can't do without needing access to the propitiatory computer to reprogram things.

Electric cars are even more a world away and it will take decades to get mechanics at all levels (from your top pro dealer through to your local garage) who have the proper skill and equipment set to be able to deliver effective repairs.


So a top end electric isn't just a big cost initially; it might also be a big cost to maintain the car as well. This immediately pushes it toward people/families who have achieved a higher threshold of income. This will all come down in price over time, but its going to take a long while to get there.



Heck even with petrol engines you can easily get stuck on a lower income where you can't afford a better car and can't afford not to have a car so you end up endlessly repairing an "old banger" or getting a new one every few months/years until it breaks.

Electric cars are also mechanically much simpler - there are apparently only ~20 moving parts compared to ~2000 in a combustion car, with the associated reduction in wear and tear.
Most new cars are heavily computerized too, so any modern car requires specialist software to interface with it and more and more it's just a case of replacing units rather than actually getting a hammer out and repairing something.


It's also worth noting since the Leaf was mentioned; a couple of my coworkers (doing about 20k/year) are finding that the fuel cost savings alone are slightly higher than the finance payments on the cars and thus the cars are essentially "free".

But in the UK, fuel is over £5/gallon (~$7), and there's another £140+ ($200) in a separate tax.

I will concede that the market in the US is different. In the UK our energy is being supplied by an increasing amount of renewables with an all time low coal usage. Now we get more fuel from 'zero emission' sources than fossil fuel:

http://grid.iamkate.com/ (there's no solar showing at the moment because it's dark).

Frankly we need an electric Volkswagen.

I'm serious. I hate to give the VW idea credit since hitler came up with it, but a good idea is a good idea no matter how horrible the source and ignoring a good idea is sheer stupidity.

To get EVs going we need an electric car that is built on the original VW paradigm: A reliable, simple to operate, low maintenance vehicle that is affordable to as large a segment of the population as possible. To Hell with looks and fancy features.

I'd be ok with making it modular, allowing advanced features to be options. The design should be open source for third party makers to offer options.

Ideally it should be made of recycled material as much as possible and be made in modern green-certified factories. It should be as recyclable as possible.

I'd be ok with some governments, like, say, the EU to sponsor a design contest among car makers, offer low interest government loans and subsidies to the winning design and other incentives to get these on roads ASAP. A trade in program allowing a conventional car to be traded in for one along with in some cases a cash bonus would be ok with me, think of it as "Cash plus a new car for clunkers." So if you've got a low mileage pollution factory on wheels you have a real good motive to get it off the road.


Tangentially related to electric cars there's yet another news story about a possibly functional fusion reactor on the net. The main story is on the NYT but those holes demand you subscribe to their paper to see it so 'em.

https://news.mit.edu/2020/physics-fusion-studies-0929

Guys, I know we've been here before many times. There've been a grillion stories about a fusion breakthrough that have fallen thru,we've been 20 years away from fusion for like 60 years now. But hey, someone's got to get it right sometime.

This story comes from MIT and they have released the science data, it's looking good so keep your fingers crossed.

I recall Clarkson previewing a hydrogen/fusion/whatever it ran on water car with playstation controllers for a steering wheel.

I'm pretty sure it was in "old" Top Gear. That is serious one no one remembers. Before it was 3 guys in a rather large shed fooling around.
.

 Pacific wrote:
Has anyone mentioned motorbikes here?

I think much more of a challenge due to the battery technology weighing so much. Couple of hundred KG can be managed in the weight of a 1.4 ton car, not so easy if the motorbike only weights less than 200kg to start with.

So perhaps some kind of hydrogen fuel cell technology will be a better route there?

Although I did think the Harley Livewire is the most modern and stylish looking machine that company has ever made (appreciate that there are a fair few Americans here who might not want to shoot me )

A co-worker of mine keeps mentioning that "X way round" show that Ewan McGregor does every so often with another person. . . first season was a trip from like, NY to Madrid, Spain by way of Alaska and Russia (or some such nonsense). Per my co-worker who's seen some adverts, the latest season with Mr. McGregor is supposed to go from the southernmost city on the tip of South America, riding electric bikes the entire way, up to like, NYC or some northern US city, and they are the Harley EV bikes from what I gather..


As for some comments about switching over. . . I think I've made my stance in this thread fairly clear: I'm NOT against EVs in principle. I am however, against Tesla as a company. If, and when car companies can produce EVs that are capable of the things that say, my Toyota Tacoma (non-American continent folks, the closest would be the Hilux, or the Toyota "pickup" seen in every terrorist propaganda film ever) can do. As someone who lives in basically suburbia, USA, I "need" a vehicle that can have yard junk literally dropped into it, haul trailers, etc. etc. etc. . . At the moment, EVs are currently only good as daily commuters and grocery getters. Which is fine for folks who only have a need for daily commuters and grocery getters. . . Then there's the purely subjective world of aesthetics: I do not (so far) like the styling of basically any EV currently on the market.

In reference to some above comments: I also don't think that things "need" to be fully EV. As Hydrogen cells have been discussed, IMHO, I see a place for them in the world, as they are functionally EVs, but with very quick refueling times, and if the pilot race technology goes mainstream, very safe to handle/move about. fuel celled vehicles could be very useful as long-haul trucks (lorries), as that has become basically the backbone of American commercial movement. Also thinking economically, with the way various environmental laws are written around the world, for most current gas stations, it is basically impossible to make them a business other than "gas station" . . . I think the most economically efficient means of moving forward is to start converting some/all of their capacity to hydrogen cell EV "charging", especially as this type of vehicle would, nominally have a fuel door similar to what is associated with your traditional ICE vehicle. For many gas stations that have convenience stores, there is already parking spots at the building, and thus a ready place to install quick charge outlets. But that leaves the "drive through" pump area either being wasted, or being an economic drag on the person who owns the fueling station, unless there's some alternative fuels being offered.

Ok, how about a hydrogen fuel cell powered EV?

https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/how-do-hydrogen-fuel-cell-vehicles-work

 Matt Swain wrote:

Tangentially related to electric cars there's yet another news story about a possibly functional fusion reactor on the net. The main story is on the NYT but those holes demand you subscribe to their paper to see it so 'em.

https://news.mit.edu/2020/physics-fusion-studies-0929

Guys, I know we've been here before many times. There've been a grillion stories about a fusion breakthrough that have fallen thru,we've been 20 years away from fusion for like 60 years now. But hey, someone's got to get it right sometime.

This story comes from MIT and they have released the science data, it's looking good so keep your fingers crossed.

I'm "cautiously hopeful" with that. The tokamak design dates back to the 50s (good old Soviet tech!) and getting the thing to produce more energy than it uses to start the reaction has been an issue ever since. For decades, every new reactor has tried to be the one that could finally do it.

From the articles' abstracts, they kinda claim that they've basically solved every problem and could make a reactor 10 times more effective than anything built so far. That sounds... optimistic to say the least. I can't really judge if they're right or wrong 'cause the in-depth physics are way beyond me. It certainly sounds like a step in the right direction; I just don't know if the step will be as big as they hope.

If someone here happens to be an expert on plasmas, nuclear fusion, or the insanity that is called magnetohydrodynamics, all the papers are freely accessible here.

 Matt Swain wrote:
Ok, how about a hydrogen fuel cell powered EV?

https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/how-do-hydrogen-fuel-cell-vehicles-work

thats. . . . basically what I've been talking about for the past couple pages. . . Its how the Le Mans "car of the future" project H24 or whatever its called operates. I personally think that it would be a more viable long-term solution than merely relying solely on battery upgrades and performance.

Companies are too full of themselves, there will never be an original VW kind of car again. And society in general is too connected to not have every gadget under the sun under the hood, so anything not supported that's in most other cars will mean it won't sell at all.

I just read apparently Tesla has some kind of $25k EV they are planning to release in like 3 years, so I'll expect it in 6, and by that time it will be $30k instead. But having an EV at that price point would go a long way toward getting more people into one. By the time it comes out, I bet the tax breaks will be over though.

I do kinda like that new VW ID4, but I'd rather wait for the ID Buzz van and see what that will cost and what the range will be. I'm also interested in the hybrid jeep wrangler, but with wranglers costing $40k for the bells and whistles I want right now, I bet the hybrid will be like $50k at least and for that money I'd rather have a nice and sparkly grand cherokee.

 Necros wrote:
Companies are too full of themselves, there will never be an original VW kind of car again. And society in general is too connected to not have every gadget under the sun under the hood, so anything not supported that's in most other cars will mean it won't sell at all.

I just read apparently Tesla has some kind of $25k EV they are planning to release in like 3 years, so I'll expect it in 6, and by that time it will be $30k instead. But having an EV at that price point would go a long way toward getting more people into one. By the time it comes out, I bet the tax breaks will be over though.

Don't have to wait for Tesla. The Dacia Spring will be a15K Euro EV in a small SUV-ish form and about 200km of range and comes next year.

It will be a version of Renault's entry level EV in China which sells for about 10K there so it makes a lot of sense.

https://insideevs.com/news/433930/patents-reveal-affordable-dacia-spring/

 Overread wrote:

jouso wrote:

 Tiennos wrote:

Getting rid of gas entirely is a lot more attractive with these prices.

Still a long way away. The cheapest electric Hyundai Kona costs just short of 30k Euro.

A petrol Kona with the same equipment costs 15K, 19K for the non-plugin hybrid version.

At roughly 6 l/100km those 15k are pretty much a lifetime of petrol for the car, not even factoring electricity costs.

You also have to consider repairs. Car mechanics already dislike electronics in cars because it can be near impossible to repair components and even replacing whole units can be hard if they dont' subscribe to get the car reprogramming computer. There's a good number of pretty basic repairs and replacements that you can't do without needing access to the propitiatory computer to reprogram things.

Electric cars are even more a world away and it will take decades to get mechanics at all levels (from your top pro dealer through to your local garage) who have the proper skill and equipment set to be able to deliver effective repairs.

EVs are much more reliable than ICE/hybrid cars. There's fewer moving parts in the average EV (taking into account everything from switches and door handles to the motor itself) than there are in the average ICE gearbox nowadays. That's probably more an indictment of how complex modern cars are than anything else, but the idea that you need to worry about repairs, especially specialist repairs, in an EV are unfounded. For one thing, as you note, modern cars are already at the point where it's increasingly difficult for a mechanic to just open it up and fix the problem without a specialist ECU and a couple of laptops and that applies not just to the electronics but many parts of the engine itself. The things that are likely to go wrong on an EV are the things mechanics can still fix without any fancy computer equipment.

Slipspace wrote:

 Overread wrote:

jouso wrote:

 Tiennos wrote:

Getting rid of gas entirely is a lot more attractive with these prices.

Still a long way away. The cheapest electric Hyundai Kona costs just short of 30k Euro.

A petrol Kona with the same equipment costs 15K, 19K for the non-plugin hybrid version.

At roughly 6 l/100km those 15k are pretty much a lifetime of petrol for the car, not even factoring electricity costs.

You also have to consider repairs. Car mechanics already dislike electronics in cars because it can be near impossible to repair components and even replacing whole units can be hard if they dont' subscribe to get the car reprogramming computer. There's a good number of pretty basic repairs and replacements that you can't do without needing access to the propitiatory computer to reprogram things.

Electric cars are even more a world away and it will take decades to get mechanics at all levels (from your top pro dealer through to your local garage) who have the proper skill and equipment set to be able to deliver effective repairs.

EVs are much more reliable than ICE/hybrid cars. There's fewer moving parts in the average EV (taking into account everything from switches and door handles to the motor itself) than there are in the average ICE gearbox nowadays.

Yes and no. Fewer moving parts sure, but when something goes wrong on the drive unit or the battery pack the recipe is a full replacement and those repairs are a good % of the car new value.

jouso wrote:

Yes and no. Fewer moving parts sure, but when something goes wrong on the drive unit or the battery pack the recipe is a full replacement and those repairs are a good % of the car new value.

A new engine will be a good chunk of the new car value, too, and can be wrecked by all sorts of components failing. Snap a $10 belt and you could be looking at a $10k repair. Cars are hideously integrated and complicated these days.

Herzlos wrote:


A new engine will be a good chunk of the new car value, too, and can be wrecked by all sorts of components failing. Snap a $10 belt and you could be looking at a $10k repair. Cars are hideously integrated and complicated these days.

I work in a dealership parts department and your example is off. . . no way a $10 belt snapping causes 10k in repairs. . . . Things that DO cause $10k in repairs however: ignoring check engine lights, or service oil life lights for THOUSANDS of miles. Yes, snapping a belt will stop a vehicle dead because you're right in saying that they are integrated, but once the tension is gone from the belt, its not like its flailing around ripping through stuff.

Also. . . belts generally aren't $10 anymore, lol. . . even some of our "basics" are rather expensive if you're not using some kind of warranty/extended warranty contract.

Given the stats of US car ownership suggests that most people don't own a new vehicle beyond its factory warranty life, much of the issues you are bringing up are pretty much moot. The "average" life ownership expectancy for American car owners these days is about 3 years (which means most never pay off a purchase loan, or simply opt for 3 year lease terms) which means that the first owner never has out of pocket expenses beyond standard wear and tear items, which are still present on EVs (brake rotors/pads, tires, various filters/fluids)

Also, the biggest $$ cost repairs that I've seen in my shop thus far are quite literally ALL down to the stupidity of people. . . And there are three separate instances of the "same" issue: 2 ladies put gasoline into diesel trucks (thankfully one was smart enough to not fire it up and got a tow right away, so that one was "cheap"), and 2 guys put DEF in their fuel tanks. . . Those ones were "fun" from a parts perspective because we had to get fuel tanks through injectors, heads, head gaskets/bolts as anything the DEF touched had to be replaced.


IIRC, we've already seen in this thread, some of the issues with certain car companies and their views on "right to repair", which, in the US, is a court protected idea (as in, the courts have repeatedly sided with the consumer and their right to repair an item/assembly, rather than being forced to replace it), so the cost of replacing a sub-component of an EV, and the availability of those parts may not be a huge issue right now, but it certainly will be as they gain more numbers and more prominence on the road.

Hydrogen fuel cells as they exist incidentally are a great idea but crap. They convert electricity to hydrogen and lose 1/4 of it in the process.
They convert hydrogen to electricity, and lose 40 percent of that in the process.
so...
.75x.6= .45... you lose more than half the energy by using this fuel supply, while a battery itself will lose only about 10 percent, 5 going in and 5 coming out.
Please don't make me multiply .95x.95 to get nearly .91, k? Its about.

Point is, its an expensive as hell alternative to electric battery cars, that are (in the USA) already as expensive or more to run than a competently built and managed hybrid. Also, in the recent years, there have been several spectacular failures at hydrogen fuel production plants and fueling stations, which were somewhat similar to what happened to the beriut warehouse this year.

Sure, that's maybe not going to be the most common, but H2 blowey uppey real easy.
Given it has such a high inefficiency -- and especially given that most industrial processes for producing hydrogen are currently using fossil fuel power to do so -- its actaully likely worse for the environment than EV's are, and FAR worse than comparitively environmentally friendly hybrids and ICE cars.

jouso wrote:

Slipspace wrote:

 Overread wrote:

jouso wrote:

 Tiennos wrote:

Getting rid of gas entirely is a lot more attractive with these prices.

Still a long way away. The cheapest electric Hyundai Kona costs just short of 30k Euro.

A petrol Kona with the same equipment costs 15K, 19K for the non-plugin hybrid version.

At roughly 6 l/100km those 15k are pretty much a lifetime of petrol for the car, not even factoring electricity costs.

You also have to consider repairs. Car mechanics already dislike electronics in cars because it can be near impossible to repair components and even replacing whole units can be hard if they dont' subscribe to get the car reprogramming computer. There's a good number of pretty basic repairs and replacements that you can't do without needing access to the propitiatory computer to reprogram things.

Electric cars are even more a world away and it will take decades to get mechanics at all levels (from your top pro dealer through to your local garage) who have the proper skill and equipment set to be able to deliver effective repairs.

EVs are much more reliable than ICE/hybrid cars. There's fewer moving parts in the average EV (taking into account everything from switches and door handles to the motor itself) than there are in the average ICE gearbox nowadays.

Yes and no. Fewer moving parts sure, but when something goes wrong on the drive unit or the battery pack the recipe is a full replacement and those repairs are a good % of the car new value.

Ok, see, that's what we need good old yankee ingenuity (it it still exists.) to handle. Engineers look at the most fail prone components and engineer the design to make those parts replaceable as easily and efficiently as possible.


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Dukeofstuff wrote:
Hydrogen fuel cells as they exist incidentally are a great idea but crap. They convert electricity to hydrogen and lose 1/4 of it in the process.
They convert hydrogen to electricity, and lose 40 percent of that in the process.
so...
.75x.6= .45... you lose more than half the energy by using this fuel supply, while a battery itself will lose only about 10 percent, 5 going in and 5 coming out.
Please don't make me multiply .95x.95 to get nearly .91, k? Its about.

Point is, its an expensive as hell alternative to electric battery cars, that are (in the USA) already as expensive or more to run than a competently built and managed hybrid. Also, in the recent years, there have been several spectacular failures at hydrogen fuel production plants and fueling stations, which were somewhat similar to what happened to the beriut warehouse this year.

Sure, that's maybe not going to be the most common, but H2 blowey uppey real easy.
Given it has such a high inefficiency -- and especially given that most industrial processes for producing hydrogen are currently using fossil fuel power to do so -- its actaully likely worse for the environment than EV's are, and FAR worse than comparitively environmentally friendly hybrids and ICE cars.

That's why I recommended using solar or nuclear power to produce hydrogen and oxygen vcia electrolysis. The oxygen can be sold as a side hustle to industries that use it and supplied to the medical field to offset the cost. As to repairs and maintenance, let;s look at new technologies and marry them into the new ev designs and overall gestalt. Suppose the EV's were designed to use 'print on demand' parts that could be 3d printed and shipped to a repair shop assuming the shop didn't have a 3d printer of it's own to make it.

We're 20 years into the 21st century, guys. Maybe we need to start rethinking some long held precepts of our economy and other issues.

 Matt Swain wrote:

jouso wrote:

Slipspace wrote:

 Overread wrote:

jouso wrote:

 Tiennos wrote:

Getting rid of gas entirely is a lot more attractive with these prices.

Still a long way away. The cheapest electric Hyundai Kona costs just short of 30k Euro.

A petrol Kona with the same equipment costs 15K, 19K for the non-plugin hybrid version.

At roughly 6 l/100km those 15k are pretty much a lifetime of petrol for the car, not even factoring electricity costs.

You also have to consider repairs. Car mechanics already dislike electronics in cars because it can be near impossible to repair components and even replacing whole units can be hard if they dont' subscribe to get the car reprogramming computer. There's a good number of pretty basic repairs and replacements that you can't do without needing access to the propitiatory computer to reprogram things.

Electric cars are even more a world away and it will take decades to get mechanics at all levels (from your top pro dealer through to your local garage) who have the proper skill and equipment set to be able to deliver effective repairs.

EVs are much more reliable than ICE/hybrid cars. There's fewer moving parts in the average EV (taking into account everything from switches and door handles to the motor itself) than there are in the average ICE gearbox nowadays.

Yes and no. Fewer moving parts sure, but when something goes wrong on the drive unit or the battery pack the recipe is a full replacement and those repairs are a good % of the car new value.

Ok, see, that's what we need good old yankee ingenuity (it it still exists.) to handle. Engineers look at the most fail prone components and engineer the design to make those parts replaceable as easily and efficiently as possible.

As I understand it the main issue is that with computer design and efficient design you end up with designs which are very intricate and small; but which are ultimately a nightmare to actually get into. Because they are designed to be built on an assembly line once rather than, like most old vehicles, to be accessed to be repaired. It's basically a huge difference in the ethos of design where cars were once built to "last forever" even though they weren't (they used to rust like crazy); but now we have better materials and understanding ,but we don't built them to last forever - we build them to last until we want to sell them another car.

It's a design ethos that has infected design probably since sometime after WWII. It's why we live in a throw-away age. Not only have we insane advance of technology, but we have built in waste within the whole concept of how our economies work. Heck we see the same, if far faster on both advance and waste, with electronics. How many new mobile phones are really "new" and giving users better features and how many are just doin the same things they did last year, but perhaps a little faster (possibly because it has less bloat-ware auto installed onto it)

But why go through such a wasteful approach to generate hydrogen from electricity just to turn it back into electricity later?

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:


I work in a dealership parts department and your example is off. . . no way a $10 belt snapping causes 10k in repairs. . . .

Whilst not first hand (I'm a bit fussy about looking after my cars), I see fairly regular posts on a motoring forum where they've ignored a belt change and it's snapped mid journey and taken out a few other components with garages suggesting it's much easier to just replace the engine than replace the broken parts. I may be missing something though.

EV's should fail a bit more gracefully due to the lack of moving parts, though obviously they've got a few pretty expensive parts.