Are EV’s really the way to go?

Soldato
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but, you've got to watch something whilst waiting at the charger, netflix is passé.,
a battery report/evaluation like his, for 2nd hand owner would be great.


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Soldato
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I don’t really know why sandbagging is a particularly problem?

You pay for X usable range/WLTP figure, the longer it can maintain that, the better as far as I am concerned.
 
Caporegime
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The modules have cells in series. You can’t just leave some to use later. The ‘edges’ are for battery life to avoid full discharge or overcharge of a cell as no BMS is perfect. Remember a P85D has over 7000 cells.

If you lose a cell. Eg the wire short in a model S then you lose 1/6th of that model. 6S74P setup to get 3.7 x 6, 22V per module. X 16 gets you the 400V.

As you lose cells you also lose volts and hence motor performance not just range
 
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Soldato
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The modules have cells in series. You can’t just leave some to use later. The ‘edges’ are for battery life to avoid full discharge or overcharge of a cell as no BMS is perfect. Remember a P85D has over 7000 cells.
I agree the battery wiring is not reconfigurable to be able to use some cells later,
you don't think you can eat into those edges as the car gets older and the cells capacity declines, doing that would suggest overall the possibility of exponential decline;
however if you also reduce the maximum charging/discharging current you can mitigate that (the bjorn video, for example does look at charging current on the older cars to see if that has been throttled) .
On the discharging side , tesla gave the paid software performance boost, and hasn't that been suggested to be monies you pay effectively as an insurance policy to offset risk of premature battery degradation.
 
Soldato
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but, you've got to watch something whilst waiting at the charger, netflix is passé.,
a battery report/evaluation like his, for 2nd hand owner would be great.


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Looks like they've pulled the three worst Nissan Leafs on the planet, who's batteries have been completely abused and put them into a chart. What a ridiculous comparison. If you add my 2013 Nissan Leaf (and virtually any other Leaf), to the list, it looks a lot more comparable to other makes on the list.

2013 Nissan Leaf, 03-05-2022, 9, 58000, 24, 21, 85, 15%

How about we find the cheapest BMW 330d on ebay and use that as a benchmark of that models reliability. Pointless.
 
Associate
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I'm sure most people know that the early Nissan Leaf didn't have particularly good battery management. Despite this most of them are still extremely healthy unless they've been completely abused.

It's worth noting too that most degradation in a modern battery with a modern BMS happens early then flattens out, so if you start with something like 60 kWH (55 kWh usable) then:

- after a year it might be 58kWh (55 kWh usable)
- after 2 years it might be 57.5kWh (55 kWh usable)
- after 5 years it might be 57kWh (55 kWh usable)
- after 10 years it might be 56kWh (54 kWh usable)
- after 20 years it might be 54kWh (52 kWh usable)

So from the consumer's perspective there's minimal loss in usable capacity over a long time period. Even if there is a few % noticeable loss after, say, 10 years then a 10 year old 270-mile EV is still pretty much as usable as a 1 month old 300-mile EV.
 
Soldato
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I'm sure most people know that the early Nissan Leaf didn't have particularly good battery management. Despite this most of them are still extremely healthy unless they've been completely abused.
Yep, it was shown really early on that high temperatures (Arizona style, not typical UK temps) and leaving them at 100% could destroy the battery really quickly.

Hence why any competent owner avoids leaving it at 100% during the peak of summer.

It was proven with the Leaf that leaving care for the battery up to the owner didn't work (especially considering how many leased their cars, and couldn't give a toss about the long term health of the battery), and instead EVs now use more active battery management to cater for the masses.
 
Soldato
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Looks like they've pulled the three worst Nissan Leafs on the planet, who's batteries have been completely abused and put them into a chart. What a ridiculous comparison.
yes, of course I agree the Nissan examples look abused examples, owners didn't know at the time though ?
second hand owners of all ev brands will need to develop a checklist for potential ownership like you have for ICE cars. (smoke, steam, mayonnaise ..)
the e-golf with calender ageing of 6 years and just 6.5% looks acceptable to anyones standards, but, you'd want to know that at a test-drive.
 
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yes, of course I agree the Nissan examples look abused examples, owners didn't know at the time though ?
second hand owners of all ev brands will need to develop a checklist for potential ownership like you have for ICE cars. (smoke, steam, mayonnaise ..)
the e-golf with calender ageing of 6 years and just 6.5% looks acceptable to anyones standards, but, you'd want to know that at a test-drive.

With an EV that checklist is a lot shorter and quite easy to check. For example, no worries about a worn out gearbox, clutch, having been thrashed from cold, late/missed oil changes etc.

It's mainly just the battery. I expect most people will look at what the car says the range is when fully charged and make sure they're happy (I've seen Autotrader ads already showing this). More clued-up buyers might use a diagnostics cable and app on their phone to check the usable battery capacity in kWh to make sure they are happy before buying.
 
Soldato
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And baffling that Nissan removed the option to automatically stop charging at 80% from the 30kWh model.
There were some pretty damning charts about the 30kwh batteries that had that option removed, compared to the 24kwh's. Although I can't find any info about it being followed up with more recent data. All of the data appears to from the US, where they experience much hotter summers. I think you'd find battery health for all models generally fares much better in the UK and other 'milder' countries.

I think one of EVs achilles' heel is that most of them will start off life as lease car. And nobody cares for the long term health of a lease car.
 
Caporegime
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There’s still a reducer box in a EV still worth letting the oil warm up a bit before ragged as a pitted gear is going to be very loud
 
Soldato
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what’s the difference between a 6 year old EV and a 6 year calender aged one?
recent posts (not by me) acknowledged ev calender ageing -, disambiguating that versus cave/cask aged though ...
additional wear on batteries, going through multiple winters plus degradation of their electrolytes that comes from time, passed, versus , just having clocked up big miles (like the teslas in the list) over a short period of time.
a high mileage one year old tesla, that's more likely to have been supercharged - you might have more reservations than an ICE that had similarly been used on high motorway mileage,
still I suppose even with his 6 year old 50K e-golf you don't know exactly if those miles were uniformly distributed across the years.
 
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What will be really interesting is once we get out of the crazy second hand prices madness how the prices settle on second hand Evs, as by then there will start to be far more examples about.
There will probably still be a shortage, in regards supplying people who would jump into a second hand Ev if they showed the same typical (circa 50%) loss in value as a 3 year old ICE.
As such I expect their value to hold up somewhat more, but over time as availability goes higher in second hand market and more and more hit the 6 year old phase its going to be very interesting to see if they do hold their value more.
Whats going to be the expected lifetime of an EV.

But with that said, will insurers also keep their book values as high, or will you be in the risky area of a bad accident writing the car off and normal insurer levels of "real world pricing" become an issue.

I suspect all worry about battery life and degradation will be somewhat crushed by the reality that there has to be enough gap between cars as they get older for people to see a benefit of buying an older one, a depreciation curve. (Normal second hand prices being returned)
Evs will probably drop to a higher "low" where the value of the recovery of the batteries lines up with the price of the car, and maybe they will drop slower with a longer expected lifetime, but there has to be a drop and there will likely never be a bangernomics point for EVs

I see fixation on battery degradation of a 10 year old car along the same level of "who cares" like a 1.6 Focus that has had 50 extra oil changes over its lifetime. Its still one decent repair bill away from the crusher anyway.
 
Caporegime
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Agree with most of that but 50 oil changes doesn’t mean the car has lost performance or the fuel tank got smaller.
 
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