Future Energy Pathways

Feanor

Super Moderator
Staff member
In the name of necromancy most foul, I'm going to resurrect this. It appears Tesla batteries degrade much faster then was initially claimed. They're down to only 65% capacity after 3 years. I suspect as EVs become more common many other such nasty surprises await us. The technology is young and is being pushed by high optimistic people who see it as the way to eat their cake and have it too. No need to invest in proper urban development or mass transit. Just make people buy EVs. By force if necessary.

 

Terran

Well-Known Member
Is this for just cars or all batteries e.g. solar storage etc.
It’s the same chemistry in most cases. So depending upon conditions between 5-15 years. What’s the Lifespan of a Solar Battery?

In the name of necromancy most foul, I'm going to resurrect this. It appears Tesla batteries degrade much faster then was initially claimed. They're down to only 65% capacity after 3 years. I suspect as EVs become more common many other such nasty surprises await us. The technology is young and is being pushed by high optimistic people who see it as the way to eat their cake and have it too. No need to invest in proper urban development or mass transit. Just make people buy EVs. By force if necessary.

If the aim is to get activity…
Then First things First
Rant mode ON!
STOP CALLING THEM EVs!! They are B.E.Vs. Battery Electric Vehicles. Even more so Li-ion Battery Electric Vehicles. It irks me because well we instantly think of Tesla cars. Electric cars have over a century of history. The first official electric car dates to 1884 with previous attempts going back to atleast 1834. Primitive BEVs were operating as taxi cabs in major cities at the turn of the 20th century. Yes BEV Taxi cabs in New York and London in the 1900s!
So it’s really not EVs that are new it’s the battery chemistry. My European friends you should know this better than I. Because you probably have ridden in a EV a large fast EV that carries hundreds at a time across countries. Where in have only twice and only a few dozen miles before they switched to a Hybrid. I am talking about Electric Locomotives, Trains and Trollies. They have a history just as long as electric cars and well in the US and Canada they fell out of favor in Europe and Asia they remain strong.
Rant Off.

Really Batteries are just a storage medium and one that has limits. The chemistry deteriorates we know that.
BEVs are subject to those limits and it’s often the case that when those limits come into effect the BEV is on its third owner. Said owner then has a choice. Live with vehicle with less and less range or try and sell it to the next sucker.
The third option in theory be to replace the battery but it’s often the case that the battery pack replacement costs more than the car’s value. Electric Car Battery Replacement Costs
Some makers are and have been pushing the idea of battery changing stations but the infrastructure doesn’t exist yet and then you have the same problem of what to do with the used battery? Battery recycling is still iffy. Doesn’t help matters that if you BEV has any problems that can’t be fixed in an afternoon the Insurance companies often decide to consider it a total loss.
Unless you have a major breakthrough in battery life and chemistry “them is the breaks”.
Really BEVs should not be viewed as the solution to all the problems. They are part of a mix of different things but Battery Electric Cars are a product that should be viewed realistically in their limitations. They are very good if you’re trying to live the suburban lifestyle. Not great in the urban environment or the Rural environments. Optimally Yes a more sustainable lifestyle urbanization and expanding electric vehicles in the form of third rail and catenary powered vehicles is needed with redevelopment of suburbs into more traditional urban models so as to reduce the need of individual automobiles. This is particularly important in the United States and Canada as we spent the last nine decades ripping up trolleys and cutting railway. Yet that will never address every need or lifestyle. Cars came into existence for a reason. Though we remodeled much of the United States into “Autotopias” plenty of places that didn’t still have need of individual vehicles.

That’s the vehicles, We shouldn’t forget the grid. Li ion based house back up and grid storage system have been also introduced. These on the small scale are things like Power walls and on the large are basically a box container turned into a battery. They use the same chemistry even being built from the same cells. These systems are often used as a supplement to cover down time in generation of power like night for Solar plants or in the event of a power outage like during a storm or accident. Really what is needed to replace them is a more redundant more reliable more resilient grid with power plants and management that can bypass interruptions and source generation at smaller facilities that may handle more local need. Of course that’s not entirely a practical or more importantly cheap thing.
 

Feanor

Super Moderator
Staff member
It’s the same chemistry in most cases. So depending upon conditions between 5-15 years. What’s the Lifespan of a Solar Battery?


If the aim is to get activity…
Then First things First
Rant mode ON!
STOP CALLING THEM EVs!! They are B.E.Vs. Battery Electric Vehicles. Even more so Li-ion Battery Electric Vehicles. It irks me because well we instantly think of Tesla cars. Electric cars have over a century of history. The first official electric car dates to 1884 with previous attempts going back to atleast 1834. Primitive BEVs were operating as taxi cabs in major cities at the turn of the 20th century. Yes BEV Taxi cabs in New York and London in the 1900s!
So it’s really not EVs that are new it’s the battery chemistry. My European friends you should know this better than I. Because you probably have ridden in a EV a large fast EV that carries hundreds at a time across countries. Where in have only twice and only a few dozen miles before they switched to a Hybrid. I am talking about Electric Locomotives, Trains and Trollies. They have a history just as long as electric cars and well in the US and Canada they fell out of favor in Europe and Asia they remain strong.
Rant Off.

Really Batteries are just a storage medium and one that has limits. The chemistry deteriorates we know that.
BEVs are subject to those limits and it’s often the case that when those limits come into effect the BEV is on its third owner. Said owner then has a choice. Live with vehicle with less and less range or try and sell it to the next sucker.
The third option in theory be to replace the battery but it’s often the case that the battery pack replacement costs more than the car’s value. Electric Car Battery Replacement Costs
Some makers are and have been pushing the idea of battery changing stations but the infrastructure doesn’t exist yet and then you have the same problem of what to do with the used battery? Battery recycling is still iffy. Doesn’t help matters that if you BEV has any problems that can’t be fixed in an afternoon the Insurance companies often decide to consider it a total loss.
Unless you have a major breakthrough in battery life and chemistry “them is the breaks”.
Really BEVs should not be viewed as the solution to all the problems. They are part of a mix of different things but Battery Electric Cars are a product that should be viewed realistically in their limitations. They are very good if you’re trying to live the suburban lifestyle. Not great in the urban environment or the Rural environments. Optimally Yes a more sustainable lifestyle urbanization and expanding electric vehicles in the form of third rail and catenary powered vehicles is needed with redevelopment of suburbs into more traditional urban models so as to reduce the need of individual automobiles. This is particularly important in the United States and Canada as we spent the last nine decades ripping up trolleys and cutting railway. Yet that will never address every need or lifestyle. Cars came into existence for a reason. Though we remodeled much of the United States into “Autotopias” plenty of places that didn’t still have need of individual vehicles.

That’s the vehicles, We shouldn’t forget the grid. Li ion based house back up and grid storage system have been also introduced. These on the small scale are things like Power walls and on the large are basically a box container turned into a battery. They use the same chemistry even being built from the same cells. These systems are often used as a supplement to cover down time in generation of power like night for Solar plants or in the event of a power outage like during a storm or accident. Really what is needed to replace them is a more redundant more reliable more resilient grid with power plants and management that can bypass interruptions and source generation at smaller facilities that may handle more local need. Of course that’s not entirely a practical or more importantly cheap thing.
Activity is not the point, I was more bringing up that facts support my initial argument. However I do appreciate the context, and have memories of the Soviet-built trolleybuses that Russia has mostly foolishly ripped up. Where I live in the US now they're discussing using the old rail line to run lightrail, and I'm really hoping that plan goes ahead. It won't help my work commute directly, but it will take cars off the road, and on weekends it will help me get places.
 

Rob c

The Bunker Group
Verified Defense Pro
My problem with EV's and the change of any transport to battery electric is that it can make the situation worse in terms of carbon emissions. In most countries that do not have 100% renewable electricity any additional loading is met with fossil fuel generation. New EV's are additional loading. Fossil fuel generation generally runs at 25% thermal efficiency , petrol engines in the mid to high 30% range and diesels in the 40+% range. This means we just transfers the carbon usage to a more inefficient production point, making the situation worse. this is not counting transmission losses at up to 6% and all the carbon used to produce the lithium which I believe is 1500 times the finished product weight.
 

John Fedup

The Bunker Group
As an interim solution, I believe hybrid plug-in vehicles are the way to go right now. Range and temperature concerns are eased when you know a gas or diesel kicks in when the battery goes dead. No panic situations looking for charging stations either.
 

tonnyc

Well-Known Member
For Indonesia I predict a steady adoption of electric scooters, a slow adoption of plug-in hybrid, and a very slow adoption of full BEV. It's just the way it is. We are a nation of motorcycle users, with ten times the number of registered motorcycles to cars (not to mention unregistered motorcycles that can easily be found in rural areas) and price-wise a hybrid is significantly cheaper than a BEV car.
 

Ananda

The Bunker Group
In most countries that do not have 100% renewable electricity any additional loading is met with fossil fuel generation.
Thanks to 'greenies' campaign that slow down development for decades on the most promising non fossil fuel source, the nuclear power.

an interim solution, I believe hybrid plug-in vehicles are the way to go right now.
PHEV I believe will not be interim solutions but more as alternatives to full BEV. Hybrid out sell BEV in many markets. Recent studies on Tesla that shown batteries deteriorate faster then previously tought, really makes many customers don't want to abandon ICE.

Tech on batteries and ICE continues evolving, but ICE has benefits especially in many markets in Global South (especially) on something that already been familiar with and knows to maintain.


Toyota team up with Subaru and Mazda to introduce their new generation of ICE. Those three engines 1.5L, 1.5L turbo, and 2.0L turbo are also prepared not only for Hybrid and PHEV, but also for non fossils fuel like Liquid Hydrogen, Synthetic Fuel and Bio Fuel. Something that many market actually already preparing.


Even BYD doesn't abandoned ICE and offering PHEV to the market. PHEV is going to be alternate choices between BEV and ICE, because basically it bring the best factor of both. Increasing ICE efficiency and potential problems on battery raw materials, for me and many market analysts shown there're not going to be one solutions for fossil fuel replacement. There will be several choices, and who says fossil fuel will be abandoned entirely.
 

John Fedup

The Bunker Group
As long as battery performance continues to disappoint for range and durability, PHEV will indeed be the go to solution. Power charging station availability has a very long way to go in many regions. Then there is the capacity of existing electrical grids, lots of investment required.
 

Rob c

The Bunker Group
Verified Defense Pro
Thanks to 'greenies' campaign that slow down development for decades on the most promising non fossil fuel source, the nuclear power.
Yep, the most obvious choice for some countries without other resources to achieve the 100% goal. I do remember back in the e 1980's reading an article that claimed that over 250000 people around the world died from the resulting pollution from coal fired power stations each year. While a few nuclear accidents have happened and the results are nasty the death toll would be probably less than a days worth of what the coal fired stations achieve.
 

Feanor

Super Moderator
Staff member
Yep, the most obvious choice for some countries without other resources to achieve the 100% goal. I do remember back in the e 1980's reading an article that claimed that over 250000 people around the world died from the resulting pollution from coal fired power stations each year. While a few nuclear accidents have happened and the results are nasty the death toll would be probably less than a days worth of what the coal fired stations achieve.
Yes, that's the dirty little secret (no pun intended). Per unit of energy produced coal is far deadlier then nuclear, especially when you factor in resource extraction. You can include Chernobyl, Fukushima, the Mayak disaster, and whatever else you want, it still doesn't even come close. The reality is that the first world f*cked itself royally when it failed to pursue nuclear power for the past 40 years. As a result a number of countries who had very capable nuclear energy industries lost those assets, and that knowledge. Now the world leader in nuclear power is apparently RosAtom. If Russia hadn't painted itself into a very narrow and awkward corner, they could have been reaping the rewards of that right now. And even with the reality that nuclear power has to be part of the future unless you want a substantial decrease in quality of life (energy use is intimately connected to quality of life for the population) many European countries remain on the fence about pursuing nuclear power. What should be happening is a crash-program to produce something competitive and comparable to the Russian VVER-1200+ series, and it's mass-induction, simultaneously to a program to introduce nuclear waste recycling on a large scale. But instead we have some half hearted efforts, and a continued pretense that if we just put in a some more solar panels and buy electric cars all will be well.
 

Vivendi

Well-Known Member
In the name of necromancy most foul, I'm going to resurrect this. It appears Tesla batteries degrade much faster then was initially claimed. They're down to only 65% capacity after 3 years. I suspect as EVs become more common many other such nasty surprises await us. The technology is young and is being pushed by high optimistic people who see it as the way to eat their cake and have it too. No need to invest in proper urban development or mass transit. Just make people buy EVs. By force if necessary.

This article is highly misleading. EPA has a standard test that produce the "range" of a vehicle. However this test is during specific conditions (speed, temperature, etc.) If you drive at high speeds on the motorway the actual range you experience will be lower than the EPA range. Likewise if you drive at a fixed lower speed than the EPA test specifyies and other conditions are also favorable you will experience a longer range with your vehicle than the EPA range.

This article is mixing apples and pears and does not tell you how much batteries have degraded.

The following article explains this. On average people in this study experience around 70-72% of the EPA range when the car was brand new. So the drop in battery capacity is more like 6-7%, the rest of the "drop" is because they are driving under condictions that deviate from the EPA test specifications. Nothing wrong with that, it's just an explanation of what is happening.

Tesla Owners Get Only 64% Of EPA Range After Just Three Years: Study (Updated) (insideevs.com)

I have been driving a Tesla model 3 since summer of 2021, and the drop in my Tesla is not noticeable (less than 5%). This is probably partly because I take good care of the battery, and also because I live in Norway and batteries are degrading much less in low temperatures than high temperatures. In the US most Teslas are in California and Florida, and this probably partly explains the results in this study from the US.

I also often get very good range on my Tesla' mainly because in Norway only few roads have speed limits of 100-120 km/h (close to big towns). On the country side the speed limit is often 80 km/h, and at such a low speed you get a very good range in a Tesla, even after 3 years. I have not tested properly but I think at 80km/h and in general good conditions I should be able to get around 550km (340 miles) of range, perhaps even a bit more.
 

Vivendi

Well-Known Member
BEVs are still some years away from being fully competitive with cars running on fossil fuels, and the issue is really the cost of large batteries. For people that don't need a long range car, you can already today buy a BEV that cost less than a fossil fuel car. But for people that need longer range the price is still a bit high. In Norway the solution has been that whereas fossil fuel cars are heavily taxed, the BEVs (and Hydrogen cars) are not, and the price is therefore roughly the same.

Some countries would probably not accept such a high taxation on fossil fuel cars. However there is another potential solution that should probably meet the needs of most people and is technologically feasible today. Looking at my own driving pattern, 95% of the days I am driving a car, I use just a tiny fraction of the maximum range of the car. The other 5% I drive longer distances, and need much more range. Other people have other driving patterns of course, but a majority drive for the most part short ranges (to the shopping mall, work, etc) and only occationally drive long ranges.

Thus the solution could be to manufacture cars with swappable batteries. Even with a large buffer I would personally meet my driving needs for 95% of my trips with a battery of around 20KhW, other may need less, or more. On those few occations I need longer range I could simply drive to a swapping station, lease a much bigger battery (say, 80-100 kWh) and use for the longer trip, and then swap back to the smaller battery when the road trip is over. Nio has already demonstrated that this works. Their main selling point has been that you can swap battery (in around 3 minutes) instead of charging in perhaps 10-20 minutes. Whereas I would mainly use battery swapping to hugely expand the range of my car without paying a fortune (I have a home charger).

China's Nio to expand battery swap services to gain EV infra edge (cnbc.com)

Unfortunately nobody has really implemented this idea properly yet. If they did, I would definitely consider such a system for my next car. It would be an incredibly cheap car for daily driving and long range whenever I needed it.
 

John Fedup

The Bunker Group
Who does the battery swapping at these stations, the user or a station attendant? What is the weight of batteries?
 

Terran

Well-Known Member
Who does the battery swapping at these stations, the user or a station attendant? What is the weight of batteries?
From the Comments section an owner of a Nio in China it takes about 5 minutes it’s automated and the batteries are about 1100 lbs. the batteries you swapped are then recharged and used by one of the later customers as about 50 minutes later the station will have charged the same pack. So if the battery life is on the decline…
 

John Fedup

The Bunker Group
From the Comments section an owner of a Nio in China it takes about 5 minutes it’s automated and the batteries are about 1100 lbs. the batteries you swapped are then recharged and used by one of the later customers as about 50 minutes later the station will have charged the same pack. So if the battery life is on the decline…
A weight of 1,100 pounds will make it difficult for thieves to rob swapping stations for batteries.
 

Feanor

Super Moderator
Staff member
This article is highly misleading. EPA has a standard test that produce the "range" of a vehicle. However this test is during specific conditions (speed, temperature, etc.) If you drive at high speeds on the motorway the actual range you experience will be lower than the EPA range. Likewise if you drive at a fixed lower speed than the EPA test specifyies and other conditions are also favorable you will experience a longer range with your vehicle than the EPA range.

This article is mixing apples and pears and does not tell you how much batteries have degraded.

The following article explains this. On average people in this study experience around 70-72% of the EPA range when the car was brand new. So the drop in battery capacity is more like 6-7%, the rest of the "drop" is because they are driving under condictions that deviate from the EPA test specifications. Nothing wrong with that, it's just an explanation of what is happening.

Tesla Owners Get Only 64% Of EPA Range After Just Three Years: Study (Updated) (insideevs.com)

I have been driving a Tesla model 3 since summer of 2021, and the drop in my Tesla is not noticeable (less than 5%). This is probably partly because I take good care of the battery, and also because I live in Norway and batteries are degrading much less in low temperatures than high temperatures. In the US most Teslas are in California and Florida, and this probably partly explains the results in this study from the US.

I also often get very good range on my Tesla' mainly because in Norway only few roads have speed limits of 100-120 km/h (close to big towns). On the country side the speed limit is often 80 km/h, and at such a low speed you get a very good range in a Tesla, even after 3 years. I have not tested properly but I think at 80km/h and in general good conditions I should be able to get around 550km (340 miles) of range, perhaps even a bit more.
I appreciate the context. I'm in California and while I don't and have never owned an EV, I've heard complaints about battery life from owners. But California suffers from all the problems you mentioned, long commutes, high speeds, and hot weather.
 

Terran

Well-Known Member
A weight of 1,100 pounds will make it difficult for thieves to rob swapping stations for batteries.
It comes with a cost. BEVs weighing more than equivalent ICE vehicles. That has the effect of making tire life lower (in combination with the torque) and a number of areas are looking to slap restrictions due to potential road damage particularly on the larger BEVs. Like the pickup trucks and SUVs.
 
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