I just bought my second generation electric car because my old car battery has finally reached the point that I can't reliably do my commute without hitting a fast charger. That would have happened sooner had the utility been sharing it.
Anonymous anti-nuclear indoctrination victim:
Actually, no:
"Intelligent use of vehicle to grid (V2G) technology can improve the battery life of electric vehicles according to a new study from the University of Warwick, potentially disproving a key criticism levelled at the technology."
He/she never read past the click-bait headline and certainly didn't read the study. It's no secret that one can optimize battery life by not letting it sit idle for long periods at high states of charge and by avoiding certain temperature regimes when charging or discharging it. But there are operational trade-offs associated with doing that.
When I first bought my Nissan Leaf (6.5 years ago) I charged it only to 80% to extend its battery life. However, after a few incidents where I wish I had that extra 20%, I stopped doing it. And as battery capacity fades over the years, the last thing you want to do is further reduce your range by reducing the charge on your car. Another option (other than not fully charging your car) would be to bleed electricity from your battery to lower the state of charge when it's going to sit idle for most of a day by turning on the heater (and hope you won't regret doing that when you don't have enough range one day). But you paid to charge the battery and dumping its energy to the air to extend its life would be a losing proposition. Ideally, you would instead use that electricity to save money by displacing grid electricity. Using the above ideas, the study concluded that it would not be feasible to use electric cars for energy arbitrage at the household level. However, it hypothesized that it might be feasible for large commercial buildings to use employees' electric cars in a "smart car parking lot" to buy and sell energy on the grid (sell when demand and price is high, buy when they are lower).
I wrote an article last year titled Which Electric Car Would you buy, Bolt, 2018 Leaf, Model 3, Model S, or Model X? and received some really excellent advice in the comment field. It's decision time because I'll soon be commuting to a location just out of round-trip range of my 2011 Leaf and I don't want to hit a fast charger as part of that commute. The Tesla Model 3 is (in theory) the Bolt's only competitor, but I couldn't get my hands on one of those in time for this commute if I wanted to, which isn't a problem because I wouldn't buy one if available (for the same price as a Bolt).
Why? Tesla may yet go the way of the DeLorean (popularized in the movie Back to the Future).
Bolt, Leaf, Model 3, Model S, Model X (Tesla images via Next Big Future)
Cue the Sesame Street song, "One of these cars doesn't belong here." That would be the Model 3, of which, none have been delivered. Is it just me, or do the Tesla's all look like they all came from a storyboard for a James Bond movie?
My Leaf's range is approaching the point that it will no longer meet my minimum criteria, which is to get to Everett or Renton from Seattle on a cold day without need to hit a fast charger. Musk and Trump share at least one thing in common, ah, make that two things: both are quite wealthy, both are consummate salesmen. Musk's Battery Wall pitch a few years ago was near total BS. His purported game plan has been to use the profits from his high-end sports and luxury cars to fund the development of an affordable electric car for the masses--the Model 3. But, I've been driving an affordable electric car for almost six years now. Lots of car manufacturers beat him to that punch. The Chevy Bolt also beat him to the punch, and the new Leaf, with similar range as the Bolt, may beat him to the punch again.
When I built my electric bicycle back in 2007, I had been waiting for a battery that was less volatile than what had been available. I didn't want to risk having a fireball under my seat. Tesla traded volatility for power density.
2007 cell phone photo of Hummer and Cherokee
I think electric cars are great for all kinds of reasons, which is why I bought one in 2011. But like any car, they are not created equal, and as marketers begin the process of differentiating them to get us to buy them, that inequality will grow and diversify as it has for conventional cars. And for any fellow electric car enthusiasts out there who think electric cars are going to make a significant dent in carbon emissions in the foreseeable future, read Robert Rapier's article on that subject. Even a strongly biased study by the UCS shows that electric cars, on average, presently produce about half of the emissions of conventional cars in a cradle-to-grave analysis. Eliminating fossil fuels (instead of nuclear) from our energy mix will improve that over time.
Although I disagree with the study's main conclusion, the above chart they put together (which I have modified) was of interest to me because it suggests that things are finally starting to happen when it comes to electrification of transportation.
The study authors combed through the New York Times archives for stories on energy topics. They summed up negative and positive articles to calculate the number of net positive articles about a given technology which they define as hype.
Has anyone else noticed how much a Tesla
Model S looks like a Jaguar XF (pictured below)? One of my neighbors
drives a Tesla Model S. I was following him down the street a few weeks
ago and heard his tires squeak three times in two blocks. Adequate
acceleration to maneuver in traffic can enhance overall safety but too
much acceleration potential can be dangerous, especially in the wrong
hands. Not sure I’d want that temptation.
Tesla is dead on with their promotion of fast charging stations.
The ubiquitous 240 volt chargers are next to worthless simply because
they take too long. A high voltage fast charger can provide a
significant charge in a matter of minutes. I recently deliberately drove
my Leaf beyond its range because we needed two cars to get supplies to a
wedding. My plan was to stop at a charge station on the way home for a
few hours to get enough charge to finish the trip. The rest of the
family came home in our Prius.
I had obtained my code to use a given
company’s charge station but it turned out that the station I chose was
owned by a different company so I had to move to the next closest charge
station, which was occupied by a Chevy Volt. So, I moved to the next
closest station, also occupied by a Chevy Volt! There was a Volt at the
fourth station as well but luckily, there were two chargers. However,
they were owned by yet a third company. Luckily they were in a municipal
parking lot so their use was free. By calling the number on the charger
I was able to get the operator to unlock it for me. Don’t invest in any
company providing 240 volt public charging stations.
Crash Safety
From the Tesla website: NHTSA Reaffirms Model S 5-Star Safety Rating In All Categories For Model Year 2014
That’s all well and good but a 2003 car safety study titled “An Analysis of Traffic Deaths by Vehicle Type and Model”
concluded what insurance companies have known for a long time: “…sports
cars, as driven, are extremely risky to their drivers…”
Personally, I never consider crash safety ratings when purchasing a
car. Why? Even with new, more stringent standards in 2012, roughly 95 percent of all cars tested by the NHTSA
received a four star rating or better (out of five). About 25 percent
received a five star rating. Although there are other organizations
that do safety ratings, the NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration) ratings are much less likely to contain bias. Five star
ratings are inevitably used for marketing, but if you were to buy a new
car that has a four star rating, the odds of being injured purely as a
result of not having that fifth star are very low. All new cars today
have safety features not dreamed of decades ago (three way restraints,
airbags, anti-lock brakes, crush zones, safety glass and on and on).
In reality, when it comes to crashing into other cars, the
overarching difference is mass; heavy cars crush lighter ones. If a
three star truck hits a five star economy car, the occupants of the
higher rated car are at greater risk of injury. But that does not
necessarily mean that heavier cars are safer. The vertical axis on the
above chart ranks risk to the driver of the other car. The horizontal
axis debunks the myth that trucks and SUVs are necessarily safer than
smaller cars. In a nutshell, driving a truck or SUV may not only put you
at greater risk but the greater mass also puts other drivers at greater
risk.
The Tesla is a heavy car for its size, thanks to its batteries
(roughly half-a-ton heavier than the Jaguar XF). On July 6th a Tesla (4,600 lbs) rear-ended a 2004 Corolla (2,500
lbs) at high speed, killing one adult and two children. However,
largely thanks to the five star crash rating, the Tesla driver had minor
injuries.
Obviously, a five star crash safety rating can only do so much. On
July 5th a stolen Tesla crashed into a pole during a high-speed chase and broke in half.
The batteries in the front part of the car caught on fire and the back
half of the car ended up jammed in the doorway of a synagogue, I’m
guessing, about 100 feet away from the front end of the car. The driver
was thrown clear but is in critical condition. You can see video of the
carnage here.
In response to the car fires earlier in the year, Tesla has
reinforced the car’s underbelly. Although Elon Musk said that additional “…underbody shields are not needed for a high level of safety”
(i.e., to reduce the risk of a Tesla being engulfed in a fiery inferno
after hitting road debris) …he did it anyway. The NTSB investigation did
not mandate a fix.
The U.S. government’s auto safety watchdog has closed an
investigation into Tesla electric car battery fires after the company
said it would install more shields beneath the cars.
To avoid the stigma associated with the word “recall” Tesla does not call this retrofit a recall (although, for the record, it is by definition a recall).
This is reminiscent of when extra “non-mandatory” reinforcement was
voluntarily added to the Chevy Volt after some caught fire as a result
of side impact. GM called it a “customer satisfaction improvement.”
The Tesla engineers looked under their car to see where they could
bolt more hardware on under the already existing quarter inch thick
“ballistic grade” aluminum plate. They cobbled together a titanium plate
along with a couple of aluminum extrusions. The Tesla website has three short videos of the car running over junk (which you can bet represent the best examples out of the 152 tests they ran).
They also did a software tweak that limits how much the suspension
will lower the car at highway speeds. Lowering the car at high speeds
does two things: it drops the CG for better handling and less ground
clearance can also improve range by reducing drag.
Tesla was quick to point out that the extra weight of the fix did not
meaningfully affect range but made no mention of the aerodynamic impact
of higher ground clearance.
Electric cars (including Tesla) have so far proven to be far less
susceptible to catching on fire than conventional cars. On the other
hand, not all electric cars will necessarily be equally less
susceptible. Although there are far more Leafs on the road than Teslas
(due to the lower price tag) I am unaware of any of them catching on
fire. The simple fact that Tesla uses quarter inch thick “ballistic
grade” aluminum plate to protect its battery pack is all the evidence
you need to know that Tesla was concerned about what could happen when a
car hit the wrong piece of road debris.
On Tesla’s own website forum, dozens of owners weighed in
with their tales of drive unit woes. “Every car in my area has had at
least one DU replaced,” noted one. “I’m on my fifth drive train at
12,000 miles,” reported another. One poor fellow was on his sixth–as far
as we know, the record for drive-unit futility.
The Gigafactory
Tesla will eventually run out of customers who can buy $80K cars. To
keep selling them, they have to get the price down. The only way for
Tesla to do that is to get the battery costs down. Because their car is
designed around their choice of battery cell, they are stuck with the
battery they have so the only way to get prices down is with greatly expanded mass production of the battery.
Aside from other concerns, the problem as I see it, is that they are
going to commit themselves to mass production of a soon-to-be obsolete
battery.
Unlike the Nissan Leaf, Chevy Volt, and Ford Focus Electric, which
all use a larger, flat, prismatic shaped battery, the Panasonic
batteries used by Tesla have been around for a long time (I wrote an
article about them long before there was a Tesla). Their cylindrical
shape wastes a great deal of space and their small size necessitates the
use of thousands of them in a car which can lead to thousands of
potential problems. Buying off-the-shelf Panasonic batteries was the
best Tesla could do at the time of its development.
In Conclusion
All companies eventually fail, or get bought up. That does not mean a
company was not successful. Tesla is a success. However, it is also a
monopoly of sorts. It is the only electric car in its price and
performance range. They can and do charge whatever it takes to cover
costs. How long will Tesla survive when a car with the same performance
arrives with a much lower price tag, as would be the case with a car
that has cheaper, more modern batteries?
Provision of an after-market battery pack is another electric car
first and an all important step for electric cars to gain greater market
share. Leaf owners now have the option to upgrade to a new battery
(with new, more heat resistant chemistry) when the old one wears out, or
of selling their car and letting someone else put a new battery in it.
An electric car with a worn out battery wouldn’t have much resale value
if you couldn’t replace the battery. The existence of a reasonably
priced battery replacement might stimulate sales by putting at ease any
prospective customers concerned about how they would sell their electric
car once its battery wore out.
All automotive lead-acid batteries have a
core charge to make sure they get recycled (parts store will pay $5-$10
for your old battery). The core charge for the Leaf battery is $1,000
(new battery would cost $6,500 without it). And you don’t have the
option of keeping your old battery. Nissan wants them back to recycle or
possibly become part of a study that uses old batteries for other
energy storage applications. Nissan may not want to be sued by tinkerers
who burn their garages down (like may biodiesel tinkerers have) trying
to use the old batteries for solar back-up and such. Modern lithium
battery packs require sophisticated charging and discharging controllers
to keep them safe.
It should take two or three hours for a dealership to replace a
battery and if you own a 2011 Leaf, you need to purchase a retrofit kit
for a few hundred more dollars as well. This cost is comparable to
having a dealership put a new engine in a conventional car, and
certainly no more than the cost of putting a new engine and a new
transmission in a car (it isn’t advisable to put a new engine in a
high-mileage car without also replacing the transmission). Having only
one moving part, the electric motor may last longer than the car.
It may come as a surprise to many, but there are still only two
electric car manufacturers that sell (and can maintain) your electric
car at any of their dealerships: Nissan and (of course) Tesla. The Ford
Focus electric and Mitsubishi MiEV are low volume cars. I just called my
local Ford dealership and was told that they had a Ford Focus Electric
on the lot about a month ago but wasn’t sure when there would be another
one. The Fiat 500e, Chevrolet Spark EV, Honda Fit EV, and Toyota RAV4
EV are even lower volume cars sold in states like California primarily
to meet zero-emission vehicle mandates. For this reason they are
sometimes referred to as compliance cars. Unfortunately, with an $80,000
price tag the Tesla is relegated to a niche market. Tesla can only sell
them to a relatively limited number of people willing and able to pay
that much for a sports car.
Nissan may provide an option for a 150 mile range battery pack in
the next year or two. Considering the Leaf’s passive battery cooling
system, I suspect that this upgrade is technically possible thanks to
the more heat resistant battery chemistry. A reasonably priced 150 mile
range electric car along with fast chargers sitting next to the coin
operated tire pumps at most 7-Elevens could be the beginning of the end
for market dominance of internal combustion engine automobiles.
Nissan is touring the country with a dozen or so electric Leafs to let people test drive them. It was exciting to be sitting in the first viable mass-produced electric car from a major car manufacturer. This car has the backing of Nissan dealerships for maintenance, warranties, and the quality control you can expect from a Japanese company. This is history in the making.
See this Treehugger article on the American version of the Mitsubishi i-MiEV due out next year.
The Drive:
The quietness and total lack of engine vibration was noticeable.
The steering was effortless. I don't know if that had anything to do with it being electric but I already own two cars with electric power steering, a Prius and a Yaris, and they are both harder to turn than the Leaf I drove. Maybe there is less weight on the front wheels. Even though the electric motor, controller, battery, and gear box are located there, the combination may weigh less than a front wheel drive engine with its attendant transmission, radiator, starter motor, and alternator, although the difference must not be very big. Or maybe they just tuned the steering to be that way for the test drivers.
Cars tend to be rated by how fast they can accelerate from zero to sixty because that is what you have to do to safely merge onto an interstate. Nobody talks about accelerating from zero to thirty, which is what you have to do to dodge other cars here in Seattle traffic.
I goosed it while in economy mode (computer softening the gas pedal) and was shocked by how fast it got up and went. That's the beauty of an electric motor's torque characteristics. A gasoline engine has to spool up to achieve peak torque.
There didn't seem to be enough regenerative braking compared to a Prius. It's possible they had it turned down for the test drives.
Under the Hood:
The tour guide claimed that the top of the motor controller was intentionally made to look like a conventional engine valve cover to give customers a sense of familiarity. I find it hard to believe than anybody would care about a detail like that but then, what do I know about mass marketing? I bought a station wagon just like everyone else when they started calling them SUVs.
There are still brake fluid, window washer, and coolant reservoirs. The coolant is used for the controller and motor. The batteries (under the car) are air cooled.
There is still the same old lead-acid car battery sitting there even though there is no starter motor. It's still used as a low voltage source and power reservoir for most of the electric things like wipers, radios, headlights, etc. The Prius does the same thing.
However, the alternator that is normally spun by a belt off the engine to charge that battery was nowhere to be found. I'm sure it has been replaced by something though, or maybe I just missed it. Miscellaneous observations:
I spotted a Tesla doing a drive by. I'll bet that every Tesla owner in the area test drove a Leaf to compare it to their $100K version. You can't blame them for checking out the competition.
One test driver asked the tour guide why the car doesn't just charge itself up when moving rather than have to be plugged in.
I didn't catch the standard answer they must all give. It certainly wasn't, "Because we would have to rewrite the laws of physics to do that ...you idiot. Next dumb question?" Or, maybe, "Snap! A perpetual motion machine! Why didn't Nissan think of that?"
Just before I got in the car I heard tires screeching and looked up to see a Leaf skewed sideways with an octogenarian in the driver's seat. He might have been testing its handling limits and ABS braking, or maybe he just confused the brake pedal for the gas pedal. Everyone survived.
There were two large tractor trailer rigs nearby with full body shops and maintenance facilities. The dozen or so Leafs being driven were all test cars that had been used to develop the production version although you could not tell by looking.
There was also a large generator on a flatbed truck that was being used to charge the cars.
I envision companies springing up to assist Leaf drivers who are worried they won't have enough charge to get home. All they need is a pickup truck and a couple of large battery packs that can be used to put enough charge in the car to get home. Maybe they can drop the battery pack off to charge the car for several hours as a kind of rental deal.
Electricians are going to get real busy installing plugs and chargers.
Charging:
There are three types of charging. The cars all come with a trickle charger that will take about 20 hours to top off a fully depleted battery. Because you will rarely, if ever, fully deplete your battery just as you roll into your driveway, you will mostly just be topping off a partially discharged pack and should have no problem doing that overnight.
The power cord that comes with the car looks like a giant version of the one for your laptop and plugs right into the same 15 amp, 120 volt outlet.
The level II charger will top off a dead battery in about eight hours. The charger itself isn't very expensive. Most of the money goes to the electrician who will install it in your garage.
The level III charger is for people where cost is no object. It will blow a charge into your pack in about 30 minutes i.e., a carefully controlled explosion. However, you are not going to find any of these chargers out in public for quite a while. There isn't even a standard plug for them yet here in the States. I will also wager that fast charging will tend to wear your batteries out faster. This is a special factory ordered option. You can't have this plug installed at the dealership after it leaves the factory. I imagine it involves extra cooling fans and God knows what else.
Local governments are spending a lot of time and money trying to figure out where to put public chargers. Personally, I think they are wasting most of that time and money as any government worth its salt is expected to do. Imagine taking a trip that is beyond your car's range so you plan to park it at a charging station. But when you get there, somebody else is charging. Snap!@? And what are the odds that a station is where you want it to be?
Range on all cars is highly variable depending on how you drive, city or highway, air conditioning etc. You just don't realize it until you drive an electric vehicle. Do eighty miles an hour and you won't go very far. In general you can expect somewhere between 80 and 120 miles on a charge, depending.
The only heavy metals used are in the old style lead acid battery that is in every other car.
The batteries will be recycled.
Lithium is not a rare earth and supplies are plentiful.
The Leaf uses an induction motor which does not need rare-earth magnets.
A representative from a local power utility was there selling green power credits. For a few bucks a month you can blow off critics who claim your car is burning coal, or better yet, you can Photo-shop an image of your car into the following picture:
