I have it, it's pointless. What was so hard with pressing a button? All it's done is make cars easy to break in to and use more battery power as it's continually sending a signal out.
When are you going fully electric?
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I have it, it's pointless. What was so hard with pressing a button? All it's done is make cars easy to break in to and use more battery power as it's continually sending a signal out.
Soldato
Ok
The only thing I find with key less start is I keep forgetting where I put my key fob when I go to get out the car...
Looks in centre console pocket, Looks on passenger seat, Looks in jean pockets, Looks in Jacket pockets, Looks in work Bag etc
When we start getting 200kWh battery packs in some vehicles (Pickups and large SUVs for example) you could literally run off grid for a couple of weeks at a time.
That said, the $40 a charge will increase the electricity bill about, but better than $100 for a tank of fuel.
It’s one of the reasons companies like Ford are already pushing the electrical power of PHEV vehicles for worksites. You could run your power tools and equipment off the batteries - currently with inverters it’s linited to recharging batteries.
There’s also the size misunderstanding as well. Take the Audi E tron battery - 95kWh - it’s about six foot long, 4 foot wide and up to a foot high (amthougm most of it around 10cm). The batteries in the Model S weigh close to half a ton and the predicted weigh of the 200kWh battery in the Tesla Roadster 2 (or 4 depending on which nomenclature) is around 850kg.
Not easy to swap!
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Soldato
Or you know use tech that already exists, shock horror
We have 750kg or so battery packs in our forktrucks (they are in two halves), they are moved in and out by a system that uses a few pullies. There are semi automated and fully automated versions.
We have the semi automated, the operator has to do a few of the actions, nothing strenuous. They pull up next to a fullt charged battery station, and commence the switch.
We would have gone fully automated, (takes about 4 minutes, quite good fun to watch) but the supplier who did this version the operators didn't like the trucks as much.
We have 750kg or so battery packs in our forktrucks (they are in two halves), they are moved in and out by a system that uses a few pullies. There are semi automated and fully automated versions.
We have the semi automated, the operator has to do a few of the actions, nothing strenuous. They pull up next to a fullt charged battery station, and commence the switch.
We would have gone fully automated, (takes about 4 minutes, quite good fun to watch) but the supplier who did this version the operators didn't like the trucks as much.
That doesn’t solve any of the offers with battery swapping.
With the forklifts you have:
Total control over the charging system
Total control over the forklifts in use
Total control of the spare batteries
A standard chassis
A standard battery placement across the range
Only dealing with a very low volumes of vehicles
No one cares what they look like
The only realistic place to put a battery pack in a passenger vehicle is in the floor using the ‘skatebaord’ approach (which everyone has adopted). They would all need to be the same for it to work.
Without creating a single standard chassis, battery, motor, inverter and control electronics for every single vehicle within everything from a Yaris to a Range Rover battery swapping just isn’t going to happen.
Not only is it not really feesable when you scale up to millions of cars across 10’s of manufacturers and millions of cars, it’s also undesirable because it will eliminate inervation and competition from the sector. Thus pushing up prices for consumers.
With the forklifts you have:
Total control over the charging system
Total control over the forklifts in use
Total control of the spare batteries
A standard chassis
A standard battery placement across the range
Only dealing with a very low volumes of vehicles
No one cares what they look like
The only realistic place to put a battery pack in a passenger vehicle is in the floor using the ‘skatebaord’ approach (which everyone has adopted). They would all need to be the same for it to work.
Without creating a single standard chassis, battery, motor, inverter and control electronics for every single vehicle within everything from a Yaris to a Range Rover battery swapping just isn’t going to happen.
Not only is it not really feesable when you scale up to millions of cars across 10’s of manufacturers and millions of cars, it’s also undesirable because it will eliminate inervation and competition from the sector. Thus pushing up prices for consumers.
Caporegime
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Bit surprised at the 0-60 here, thought it would be a bit quicker.
Looks better than the Mercedes EQC though.
Soldato
I've got a Renault Zoe as a loaner while the heated seat element in my i3 is fixed under warranty.
I was expecting worse but was actually not bad at all for the money. Still a comfortable car and relatively quiet. Decent enough handling with the same low CoG feel of other BEVs. Though on paper it's slow, in normal traffic it's fast enough off the line to hide that somewhat. I even preferred the sat nav (TomTom) which was zooming in and out better to match speed and found my route around Bath which I had to add way points to the BMW system to stop it switching.
BMW has more polish in the fit n finish but the Zoe did not rattle or creak by any means. The Zoe definitely felt FWD and heavier plus the turning circle was ordinary where the i3 is like a London Taxi which I've found very useful. Obviously the i3 has faster acceleration and I missed that straight away.
Also the range may be less on the i3 (80 vs 100) but the range predictor is extremely accurate and the ECO PRO modes and regenerative braking work so well that you can totally rely on the figures being shown. Total contrast in the Zoe which showed 57 miles range on a 100% charge. The dealer said ignore it and work to 1% per mile. It went down much slower than real miles and just didn't match how you are driving. Regen is very weak as well and can't reliably be used for braking unlike the i3 which replaces the brake pedal most of the time unless you need an emergency stop.
So as an entry level BEV I wouldn't turn my nose up at a Zoe.
By going cross country, using ECO PRO and staying to 50 mph I was at 45 miles and 50% charge in the i3 when I arrived. So that 80 miles is a good average guide but driving style and especially temp will affect that. I've already seen a 20% drop when the temps dipped to 2.5 DegC recently so my advise is to add at say 25% to the range when selecting a suitable BEV to match mileage requirements.
I was expecting worse but was actually not bad at all for the money. Still a comfortable car and relatively quiet. Decent enough handling with the same low CoG feel of other BEVs. Though on paper it's slow, in normal traffic it's fast enough off the line to hide that somewhat. I even preferred the sat nav (TomTom) which was zooming in and out better to match speed and found my route around Bath which I had to add way points to the BMW system to stop it switching.
BMW has more polish in the fit n finish but the Zoe did not rattle or creak by any means. The Zoe definitely felt FWD and heavier plus the turning circle was ordinary where the i3 is like a London Taxi which I've found very useful. Obviously the i3 has faster acceleration and I missed that straight away.
Also the range may be less on the i3 (80 vs 100) but the range predictor is extremely accurate and the ECO PRO modes and regenerative braking work so well that you can totally rely on the figures being shown. Total contrast in the Zoe which showed 57 miles range on a 100% charge. The dealer said ignore it and work to 1% per mile. It went down much slower than real miles and just didn't match how you are driving. Regen is very weak as well and can't reliably be used for braking unlike the i3 which replaces the brake pedal most of the time unless you need an emergency stop.
So as an entry level BEV I wouldn't turn my nose up at a Zoe.
By going cross country, using ECO PRO and staying to 50 mph I was at 45 miles and 50% charge in the i3 when I arrived. So that 80 miles is a good average guide but driving style and especially temp will affect that. I've already seen a 20% drop when the temps dipped to 2.5 DegC recently so my advise is to add at say 25% to the range when selecting a suitable BEV to match mileage requirements.
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Soldato
It's a big boy at 2400KG which just happens to be twice my i3 and at least twice the power/torque so not too shabby really.
Caporegime
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It'll be a while before I get one, and I was definitely a Tesla guy but I actually think the Jaguar i-pace might be the better daily driver.
The screens look a bit old-hat, but performance is good (0-60 in 4.5 seconds) and it's supposed to be a good drive. Looks a bit odd, but it's more practical than the Model 3.
Great in-depth review here:
The screens look a bit old-hat, but performance is good (0-60 in 4.5 seconds) and it's supposed to be a good drive. Looks a bit odd, but it's more practical than the Model 3.
Great in-depth review here:
Soldato
What jibberish.
Who said there has to be one design. And yes I agree it would be a different mechanism to forktrucks, of course. But it was to counter Nashers post about dropping it from a Crane, which is just as unlikely.
There is nothing stopping some manufacturers setting some standards, they dont all have to be the same. Plus they could also build in some flexability. It would also add the ability to replace faulty cells far more easily than builing them into the chassis
The only reason the current filling system works is because every car takes one of three liquids which can take any form and be stored very flexibly. If you could only visit a filling station that only dealt with VW group vehicles for instance it would seriously limit your options.
When you are dealing with something as large as a 75kw hour battery pack (both size and weight) makes it such a fundamental piece of the car (inverters and motors are configured to the design of the pack).
They would all need to be the same otherwise you are going to need a version for a each class of vehicle and each group of manufacturers creating loads of different packs needed to swap and loads of different machines needed to swap them. By having a common chassis and drivetrain you remove that need but it’s never going to happen and it’s undesireable.
If you start breaking up the battery into smaller packs and had many of them in the car you either have to safrafice a huge amount of capacity or reduce cabin volume due to the packaging required in the event of a crash. Neither are desirable. Doubling the pack capacity doesn’t double its volume, far from it.
It also doesn’t deal with the ownership problem and anyone with a driveway will do 90%+ of their charging at home.
Battery swapping sounds simple but there are such fundamental issues with it when you get into the nitty gritty of what it actually means.
Soldato
Agreed.
Soldato
As I said my post was to point out the fundamental problem with Nashers crane dropping a battery scenario, and how basically that technology already exists. Yes i completely get how it would have to function differently for cars, but the point was this sort of thing already exists and is used daily all over the world.
Now going back to the actual dynamics of specific cars, I suspect will will see the following, if batteries do end up going the replaceable way.
There will be a decent amount that will be built into the cars as static "base load", lets say some 60kwh in a mid range size car. what they could also easily do is make some provision for shared space that can be used as storage or have one of a few standardised batteries fitted, doing this safely isn't a challenge. So as we now have AAA,AA,C,D etc batteries we may end up with car manufacturers and battery manufacturers coming up with 3-5 designs for standard swappable batteries. The car manufcaturers then integrate these into their designs.
This gives the base car the ability to do most peoples short trip frequently, but offer expanded range when wanted.
The model then for the extra batteries could be quite simple based on usage, frequent long distance travellers would be best to sign up to say "esso never run out scheme" where you can for a fixed monthly plus small per transaction fee drop into one of their service stations and swap out depleted batteries for charged ones. You would never own these, but just lease them.
Very infrequent long distance, but say for an annual holiday would just hire some for the same duration, again same model but with a one off payment for say two weeks and a similar transactional fee per swap.
Some people may prefer to own their own and charge them themselves.
What I am getting at is you don't have to have one thing or another, its completely feasible to have some integrated and some swapable in the same platform. It actually makes a load of the issues with both more acceptable. Like I said range for most people is only low normally, but maybe high occasionally.
To be honest I see the charging vs replaceable as like VHS vs betamax, one will start to dominate and will by default win, all bets are off as there are advantages and disadvantages to both.
But do I see massive batteries being hoisted into and out of cars, no. Can i see smaller modular batteries being part/all of the chargeable resource, absolutely. Just because you can remove them, doesn't mean you have to, you can have a charge controller and also make them removable.
Now going back to the actual dynamics of specific cars, I suspect will will see the following, if batteries do end up going the replaceable way.
There will be a decent amount that will be built into the cars as static "base load", lets say some 60kwh in a mid range size car. what they could also easily do is make some provision for shared space that can be used as storage or have one of a few standardised batteries fitted, doing this safely isn't a challenge. So as we now have AAA,AA,C,D etc batteries we may end up with car manufacturers and battery manufacturers coming up with 3-5 designs for standard swappable batteries. The car manufcaturers then integrate these into their designs.
This gives the base car the ability to do most peoples short trip frequently, but offer expanded range when wanted.
The model then for the extra batteries could be quite simple based on usage, frequent long distance travellers would be best to sign up to say "esso never run out scheme" where you can for a fixed monthly plus small per transaction fee drop into one of their service stations and swap out depleted batteries for charged ones. You would never own these, but just lease them.
Very infrequent long distance, but say for an annual holiday would just hire some for the same duration, again same model but with a one off payment for say two weeks and a similar transactional fee per swap.
Some people may prefer to own their own and charge them themselves.
What I am getting at is you don't have to have one thing or another, its completely feasible to have some integrated and some swapable in the same platform. It actually makes a load of the issues with both more acceptable. Like I said range for most people is only low normally, but maybe high occasionally.
To be honest I see the charging vs replaceable as like VHS vs betamax, one will start to dominate and will by default win, all bets are off as there are advantages and disadvantages to both.
But do I see massive batteries being hoisted into and out of cars, no. Can i see smaller modular batteries being part/all of the chargeable resource, absolutely. Just because you can remove them, doesn't mean you have to, you can have a charge controller and also make them removable.
Soldato
I really can't see replaceable batteries ever being a thing, it'd be kind of like forcing all cars to go back to being body on frame rather than monocoque construction as the battery is generally quite a fundamental part of the floor of the car.
Also manufactures can't ever standardize on a sodding plug for electric cars so i think there's exactly 0% chance of them standardizing something as fundamental as the battery, there's just no reason for them to ever do it. It's way more worthwhile investing their resources in higher current rapid charger tech instead.
Edit: Thinking about it it's just like mobile phones, you could swap out batteries in the distant past but to make a sleek usable phone with decent battery capacity it needed to be more embedded and therefore no longer user serviceable. The phone companies came up with fast chargers to counter this so i can get 90% charge in half an hour so i'd never actually need to swap my phone battery out.
Also manufactures can't ever standardize on a sodding plug for electric cars so i think there's exactly 0% chance of them standardizing something as fundamental as the battery, there's just no reason for them to ever do it. It's way more worthwhile investing their resources in higher current rapid charger tech instead.
Edit: Thinking about it it's just like mobile phones, you could swap out batteries in the distant past but to make a sleek usable phone with decent battery capacity it needed to be more embedded and therefore no longer user serviceable. The phone companies came up with fast chargers to counter this so i can get 90% charge in half an hour so i'd never actually need to swap my phone battery out.
Even if you were only doing a partial change of a small part of the battery, say 25kw worth. That would only get you 120 miles range at the most and it would still be a huge volume of battery and would weigh close to to 200kg. You could get that amount of power back in under 15 mins on a supercharger, it just doesn’t seem worth the effort.
You might save 5 minutes if the swap was really quick.
You might save 5 minutes if the swap was really quick.
Soldato
I do agree, don't get me wrong, my view is that the tech that will win out is charging.
There is nothing to stop you having multiple charge options, things like embedded near field charging. But
My main point is that there would be nothing to stop having part fixed, part removable.
So take the 25kwh in 15 minutes.
Car 1, all built in, stops for a quick break, plugs in at supercharger, ready to set off in 15 minutes with 120 miles worth
Car 2, 60kwh inbuilt, a replaceable 25kwh battery, plugs in supercharger, replaces replaceable battery at same time, sets off in 15 minutes with 240 miles worth
Which car would you buy? If you hardly ever exceeded the range of car 1, probably car 1. If you regularly did longer trips I would bet car 2
There is nothing to stop you having multiple charge options, things like embedded near field charging. But
My main point is that there would be nothing to stop having part fixed, part removable.
So take the 25kwh in 15 minutes.
Car 1, all built in, stops for a quick break, plugs in at supercharger, ready to set off in 15 minutes with 120 miles worth
Car 2, 60kwh inbuilt, a replaceable 25kwh battery, plugs in supercharger, replaces replaceable battery at same time, sets off in 15 minutes with 240 miles worth
Which car would you buy? If you hardly ever exceeded the range of car 1, probably car 1. If you regularly did longer trips I would bet car 2
Just found this forum post today. It's a thread discussing the range drop of a Model 3 in cold temperatures (33% at -15C). One of the posters on the third page posted a table with their actual efficiency vs temperature which was interesting.
https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/33-range-loss-in-cold-winter-conditions.106072/
I decided to graph it up to see the trend clearer (and converted it to Centigrade) (the last three points in the >25 Mile efficiency are extrapolations based on the trend line of the actual points). Outside of the anomalous 107.7% reading at 35 degrees there's a pretty good trend.
Now, for the UK it doesn't matter as much, temperatures only drop to -10 so maximum efficiency loss due to temperature would be around 25%. Not great, but liveable. For here temperatures get a bit lower which is why I did the extrapolation - I've never seen any actual data down to -30 or -40c. While it's probably not completely accurate at the extreme end it does tell a worrying story, suggesting to me that BEV's are not going to be a real option for a fair chunk of people unless we have a step change in technology (or come up with a way of heating batteries with a separate system). -30 isn't uncommon here, and further north -40 is common in winter. If that extrapolation is even remotely right something with a 300 mile EPA range at 10-30C gets a real world range of 100 miles at -35 (with pre heating of battery).
That also blows cost saving out the water as well. Suddenly electricity costs 3x the amount you think it would, and becomes far more comparable with petrol, even more so if you recharge at a commercial location rather than at home - which you'd have to do more as the range reduces so significantly.
And no, this isn't a theoretical study for me - the thermometer hit -35 a couple of times last winter during >100 mile trips. It does make me wonder if having a BEV as a primary vehicle will ever actually be feasible if I continue to live here. Even with the 350 mile BEV mentioned earlier I still wouldn't be able to do trip to my local ski hill without having to charge both directions when it's -30.
There may be solutions to this. Some people already use diesel heaters in their BEV's in winter to extend their range. Perhaps the use of similar systems on battery packs may help (although would be a bit comical) - alternatively (half joking admittedly) some form of radiation based heat like they use in space probes. Would be interesting if you crashed though...
https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/33-range-loss-in-cold-winter-conditions.106072/
I decided to graph it up to see the trend clearer (and converted it to Centigrade) (the last three points in the >25 Mile efficiency are extrapolations based on the trend line of the actual points). Outside of the anomalous 107.7% reading at 35 degrees there's a pretty good trend.
Now, for the UK it doesn't matter as much, temperatures only drop to -10 so maximum efficiency loss due to temperature would be around 25%. Not great, but liveable. For here temperatures get a bit lower which is why I did the extrapolation - I've never seen any actual data down to -30 or -40c. While it's probably not completely accurate at the extreme end it does tell a worrying story, suggesting to me that BEV's are not going to be a real option for a fair chunk of people unless we have a step change in technology (or come up with a way of heating batteries with a separate system). -30 isn't uncommon here, and further north -40 is common in winter. If that extrapolation is even remotely right something with a 300 mile EPA range at 10-30C gets a real world range of 100 miles at -35 (with pre heating of battery).
That also blows cost saving out the water as well. Suddenly electricity costs 3x the amount you think it would, and becomes far more comparable with petrol, even more so if you recharge at a commercial location rather than at home - which you'd have to do more as the range reduces so significantly.
And no, this isn't a theoretical study for me - the thermometer hit -35 a couple of times last winter during >100 mile trips. It does make me wonder if having a BEV as a primary vehicle will ever actually be feasible if I continue to live here. Even with the 350 mile BEV mentioned earlier I still wouldn't be able to do trip to my local ski hill without having to charge both directions when it's -30.
There may be solutions to this. Some people already use diesel heaters in their BEV's in winter to extend their range. Perhaps the use of similar systems on battery packs may help (although would be a bit comical) - alternatively (half joking admittedly) some form of radiation based heat like they use in space probes. Would be interesting if you crashed though...