Interested to hear of experiences of Electric Vehicles

[Baron von Lotsov]

Batteries are batteries, whether in vehicles, computers, flashlights, etc. The type of battery is more or less irrelevant — old electric delivery vehicles had lead acid. Now newer battery technology is used. R&D in battery technology is giving different materials and leading to increases in capacity and reductions in size and weight and/or other particular characteristics.

Modern EVs have a more appropriate equivalent of a CPU than its battery — that is the management control IC that looks after all the systems offered: power switching, video, navigation, A/C, comms, seating and wheel memories, and various other information processing requirements...

All the computer control stuff is cheap. The type of battery you use makes a huge difference. Have you come across the "memory effect"? Lead acid are shite and are really a non-starter. Li ion are much better, but the price is ridiculous. All the other versions are like variations on a theme, basically Li ion, which is the best we have to date. They do degrade but nothing like as bad as lead acid. Actually I just bought two Li ion batteries today. They are slightly larger than AA and 4AH at 3.7v and I paid £5 for two. Down at Properjob you can get similar batteries which are rechargeable and I think produced by a British firm that makes doorbells, but the energy is only 10% of the ones i have for the same size, so huge difference.



Li ion is the stuff that powers the world. Soon they will probably move over to supercaps, and they can be recharged in one second. That's an experimental, not theoretical, time incidently. Your car will not be the kind that could easily be converted. The architecture would be radically different to cope with mega charging currents. It's not like switching batteries in a torch. Each technology give a different cell voltage for a start.

[patman post]

Batteries are batteries, whether in vehicles, computers, flashlights, etc. The type of battery is more or less irrelevant — old electric delivery vehicles had lead acid. Now newer battery technology is used. R&D in battery technology is giving different materials and leading to increases in capacity and reductions in size and weight and/or other particular characteristics.

Modern EVs have a more appropriate equivalent of a CPU than its battery — that is the management control IC that looks after all the systems offered: power switching, video, navigation, A/C, comms, seating and wheel memories, and various other information processing requirements...

[Baron von Lotsov]

Apologies, but I don't follow. Cars have developed new features over the years, but that hasn't made the existing models obsolete. For a modern example, the Outlander PHEV originally had a 2000cc petrol engine component. The latest model has a 2400cc, but is more efficient. Nevertheless the earlier model still performs and exceeds all requirements to qualify for reduced road tax and congestion charge. So, sell it on when you want to upgrade, but it will still give good service to someone...

Well you could pay half the cost of your new computer on the CPU alone if it is the fastest Intel. There is always a premium to pay for the last bit of performance. If in three years you want to upgrade then you can, but the rest of the machine would serve a s a bottleneck. I see the same with these cars. Have you seen the price of Li Ion batteries? There are a lot of old ladies going around in motorised wheelchairs these days. It's a new thing but they use sealed lead acid batteries. This is because a Li ion one is five times the price. It's unaffordable for even the old ladies powered to cruise the pavements. If you want to shift several people in comfort at say 60mph then you will have a pretty high drag factor and need a lot of power. The power is not the problem but the amount of energy. So what you have is a car with far fewer components than the combustion engine version, and it can be made far lighter because these engines are heavy, but for the huge weight of very expensive batteries. The batteries are like the CPU in a computer in economic terms. Lets say in the future the new technology produced ten times the energy for the same weight and price. it's such a big difference that the new designs would be radically different from the old, as per you optimise on available technology. Mixing new with old is incompatible - never designed to do it. The same applies if you want to put a faster engine in a car. All sorts of things need uprating, like the suspension, the transmission, the subframe. So the choice is pay a premium have it now, sell it for nothing in a few years and get a better one or wait a few years. The first people pay the research costs you see.

[johnofgwent]

My experiences are from a couple of years ago The Nissan Leaf impressed me but the £5k battery cost didn't. The battery lease option is ridiculous if you do more than half a dozen miles a day.



The cars range of 120 miles was ok, but when I'd be driving 80 of them daily,the running cost was just stratospheric.



We stayed with petrol and then went back to diesel when the petrol car fell apart after something like four years.

Batteries on the Outlander PHEV are guaranteed for 8 years plus, I understand, can be replaced cell by cell. The £5k price you mention now seems OTT. But that's for hybrid.

Don't understand your running costing — looking at a Lexus, it would equate to about £10 for filling a tank...

My calculations were based on how fast five grands worth of batteries would turn to worthless slag. I agree things have moved in and maybe I do need to look again.

[patman post]

The way the market works is you pay a premium for new technology and it depreciates at a very fast rate, because newer and better solutions replace the thing you have, and they outperform the one you have, hence depreciating it. We had this with CPUs. You buy a new CPU and it is the latest Intel and it costs £500, then a few years later a £50 CPU would out-perform it.



The salesman tells the prole, no problem, just buy a computer and then in a few years time you can upgrade the CPU. The catch is of course that a faster CPU needs a faster bus, faster memory, faster disk and so on and so on. You actually find it is more sensible to replace the whole thing.



The chances are the EV market will operate in a similar way. The new batteries not yet invented might run at a different voltage and be incompatible with the rest of the system.

Apologies, but I don't follow. Cars have developed new features over the years, but that hasn't made the existing models obsolete. For a modern example, the Outlander PHEV originally had a 2000cc petrol engine component. The latest model has a 2400cc, but is more efficient. Nevertheless the earlier model still performs and exceeds all requirements to qualify for reduced road tax and congestion charge. So, sell it on when you want to upgrade, but it will still give good service to someone...

[patman post]

My experiences are from a couple of years ago The Nissan Leaf impressed me but the £5k battery cost didn't. The battery lease option is ridiculous if you do more than half a dozen miles a day.



The cars range of 120 miles was ok, but when I'd be driving 80 of them daily,the running cost was just stratospheric.



We stayed with petrol and then went back to diesel when the petrol car fell apart after something like four years.

Batteries on the Outlander PHEV are guaranteed for 8 years plus, I understand, can be replaced cell by cell. The £5k price you mention now seems OTT. But that's for hybrid.

Don't understand your running costing — looking at a Lexus, it would equate to about £10 for filling a tank...

[johnofgwent]

My experiences are from a couple of years ago The Nissan Leaf impressed me but the £5k battery cost didn't. The battery lease option is ridiculous if you do more than half a dozen miles a day.



The cars range of 120 miles was ok, but when I'd be driving 80 of them daily,the running cost was just stratospheric.



We stayed with petrol and then went back to diesel when the petrol car fell apart after something like four years.

[Baron von Lotsov]

The way the market works is you pay a premium for new technology and it depreciates at a very fast rate, because newer and better solutions replace the thing you have, and they outperform the one you have, hence depreciating it. We had this with CPUs. You buy a new CPU and it is the latest Intel and it costs £500, then a few years later a £50 CPU would out-perform it.



The salesman tells the prole, no problem, just buy a computer and then in a few years time you can upgrade the CPU. The catch is of course that a faster CPU needs a faster bus, faster memory, faster disk and so on and so on. You actually find it is more sensible to replace the whole thing.



The chances are the EV market will operate in a similar way. The new batteries not yet invented might run at a different voltage and be incompatible with the rest of the system.

[Streetwalker]

They are all right for a round of golf but otherwise Im in favour of diesel

[patman post]

Just finished a four-week trial of a Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV and I am now totally sold on the idea of EVs. Probably won't go with Mitsubishi (though I reckon it's good value for money) because it's a bit spartan, so we are currently looking at other makes. Interested to know of other people's experiences. Our choice will still be hybrid. But once the battery problem is sorted and the normal range between charges becomes 300-400 miles we'll go fully electric. I guess that won't be before 3-4 years, by which time hydrogen powered vehicles might have become viable. But currently I cannot find practical info on family-type vehicles...