ALL THINGS EV - FSD - ROBOTAXIS, ETC. - ALL CONTENT - NO HATE

   #321  
BlueR32

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@Uwe - That's all well and good but EVs cost more to produce especially in low volume, are impractical for a high percenatge of the market who does not own multiple vehicles or want to spend thousands of dollars to install a home charging system, lack sufficient charging stations, have even worse resale value than an ICE vehicle and are your favorite overeach of gov'ment to tell the populace that they will comply no matter what the science shows regarding EV cradle-to-grave ex. pollution. ;)
 
   #322  
Uwe

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davisev5225 said:
consumers tend to want range for the exception/rare trip rather than their average trip distance.
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Thing is, most consumers have more than one car. Keep/use an ICE or hybrid for the exceptions and dedicate the EV to local use.

There are times I walk to the office in foul weather when I'd rather drive. Why? Because I can't bring myself to abuse an internal combustion engine by cold-starting it, driving it half a mile, and shutting it down, with a repeat later in the day. With an EV I'd have no compunctions about that kind of trip.

Conversely, I drive between SE PA, SW VA, and NE FL on a regular basis. The northern leg is ~450 miles. The southern leg is ~600 miles. I would not want an EV for that. We do make a couple of pit stops on those trips, but they're just long enough to pee and fill the up the fuel tank, and I agree, the "rest and charge" thing is lame.

For people who only own one vehicle, a PHEV might just be a good compromise. Local trips on battery power, but no range anxiety on longer trips. What bothers me about most of them is all the additional complexity.

-Uwe-
 
   #323  
Uwe

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BlueR32 said:
your favorite overeach of gov'ment to tell the populace that they will comply no matter what the science shows regarding EV cradle-to-grave ex. pollution. ;)
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I'm sure you're aware I'm vehemently opposed to governments interfering in consumer choices, whether it's via dictates or via subsidies.

-Uwe-
 
   #324  
BlueR32

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Uwe said:
I'm sure you're aware I'm vehemently opposed to governments interfering in consumer choices, whether it's via dictates or via subsidies.

-Uwe-
Click to expand...

REALLY????? Who knew... :D
 
   #325  
D

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Uwe said:
Thing is, most consumers have more than one car. Keep/use an ICE or hybrid for the exceptions and dedicate the EV to local use.
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There you go, using pragmatism and common sense. Most consumers lack both. :p

Uwe said:
I can't bring myself to abuse an internal combustion engine by cold-starting it, driving it half a mile, and shutting it down, with a repeat later in the day. With an EV I'd have no compunctions about that kind of trip.
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I'm the same way. Fortunately, any drive I do takes just long enough to warm up the engine, so it doesn't get abused in that way. Anything shorter is done on my bicycle, whenever possible.
 
   #330  
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Yes they were EV's, Chinnese crap.

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   #332  
BlueR32

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@Crasher - I know that at least one RORO ship, (Felicity Ace), with new Porsche, Audi, VW cars being shipped from Germany to the U.S. sank with the entire cargo after an EV fire started in the hold and the crew had no means to extinguish it after using all the fire extinguishing water available. I'm pretty sure that I read of 1 or 2 other ROROs being severely damaged from onboard EV fires. These fires are bad enough on land, but at sea it's a really bad deal.
 
   #333  
mihares

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While I wait for parts to show up and annoy with other diagnostic questions, I might just spam this discussion a little bit :D --actually there's a reason and it is: we are thinking of getting an EV, specifically an ID.Buzz.

Uwe said:
Thing is, most consumers have more than one car. Keep/use an ICE or hybrid for the exceptions and dedicate the EV to local use.

There are times I walk to the office in foul weather when I'd rather drive. Why? Because I can't bring myself to abuse an internal combustion engine by cold-starting it, driving it half a mile, and shutting it down, with a repeat later in the day. With an EV I'd have no compunctions about that kind of trip.
Click to expand...
I'm not sure how well "having more than one car" generalizes to Europe (writing from there), but I think it should: as you say, there's such a thing like the right tool for the job. I think an EV could be the right tool for the job, if the job is commuting at a distance that fits in the middle third of its battery --or if it entails mostly city driving.

That said, I have currently that job covered by a petrol city car and it does not make any financial sense to change it with an EV: the purchase price of even an used one is about one order of magnitude too high. So that's that.

Uwe said:
Conversely, I drive between SE PA, SW VA, and NE FL on a regular basis. The northern leg is ~450 miles. The southern leg is ~600 miles. I would not want an EV for that. We do make a couple of pit stops on those trips, but they're just long enough to pee and fill the up the fuel tank, and I agree, the "rest and charge" thing is lame.
Click to expand...
And that's exactly the use-case I'm planning, despite being suboptimal --the thing is: fuel costs and road taxes over here in Germany (of all places!) have rendered our diesel minibus too expensive for its own sake, whereas we have a photovoltaic array on the garage roof and, despite being small, would easily fill up (empty to full) an ID.Buzz LWB in one and a half sunny days.

Uwe said:
For people who only own one vehicle, a PHEV might just be a good compromise. Local trips on battery power, but no range anxiety on longer trips. What bothers me about most of them is all the additional complexity.

-Uwe-
Click to expand...
I wonder what happened to range extenders... I mean: you'd save a gearbox over a PHEV while retaining the range and ease of "charge" of a gas powered vehicle.
 
   #334  
mihares

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BlueR32 said:
Wanna drift your car while you stand outside with a camera????
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When I was a lad we used to do that with gas (OK, ethanol) powered R/C cars...
 
   #335  
Uwe

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mihares said:
I wonder what happened to range extenders... I mean: you'd save a gearbox over a PHEV while retaining the range and ease of "charge" of a gas powered vehicle.
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They're coming back, at least in the USA. Look at VW's new Scout brand, and pickups from RAM and Ford that are in the works.

However, no energy conversion is 100% efficient. So using an engine that produces mechanical energy, converting that mechanical energy to electricity via a generator, converting that electrical energy to chemical energy in a battery, converting it back to electrical energy, and lastly converting the electrical energy back to mechanical energy via the car's inverters and motor(s) is almost certain to be less efficient than just driving the wheels with the mechanical energy that the engine produces. The question is: Does that really matter in the overall scheme of things? I suppose the idea with these is that the range extender is only for occasional use and the efficiency loss compared to a mechanical drivetrain is not that important.

Personally I think the optimal "hybrid" drivetrain for a car would be a conventional FWD ICE drivetrain (with a true mechanical disconnect) and a EV drivtrain powering the rear wheels. Volvo has some models that come close to this, but they're not as fault tolerant as they could be. IMO, such a car should be able to run on either drivetrain completely independently.

-Uwe-
 
   #336  
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To me, hybrids are more of a fire risk than pure electric. When an EV spits its dummy out, it's bad enough but add a tank of petrol into the equation, the speculation is, this was an NYC government hybrid. Didn't get a lot of press, did it...

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   #337  
Uwe

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Crasher said:
When an EV spits its dummy out, it's bad enough but add a tank of petrol into the equation,
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At my first real job, about 45 years ago, one of the guys that worked there was also the Captain of one of the local volunteer fire brigades. He did a fire extinguisher training for us. He put about 5 gallons of a 50/50 mixture of gasoline and diesel into an old-fashined galvanized steel wash tub, and tossed in a lit 30 minute road flare. A single fire extinguisher put out the fuel fire just fine. But then as soon as that extinguisher ran dry, the still burning flare re-ignited it. We emptied a lot of fire extinguishers that day. :)

I picture hybrid batteries playing the same role as that road flare. :eek:

-Uwe-
 
   #338  
mihares

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I don't know if it's imported in the USA, here in Europe I think there's the Mazda CX-30 with a Wankel generator. I think it does like 60 km on battery alone and then uses the generator, with very average fuel consumption.

Uwe said:
However, no energy conversion is 100% efficient. So using an engine that produces mechanical energy, converting that mechanical energy to electricity via a generator, converting that electrical energy to chemical energy in a battery, converting it back to electrical energy, and lastly converting the electrical energy back to mechanical energy via the car's inverters and motor(s) is almost certain to be less efficient than just driving the wheels with the mechanical energy that the engine produces. The question is: Does that really matter in the overall scheme of things? I suppose the idea with these is that the range extender is only for occasional use and the efficiency loss compared to a mechanical drivetrain is not that important.
Click to expand...
The global efficiency of the system depends on so many things (and also on where you start considering, for an EV: should you consider from the battery, the plug or the power station?) that I would not be sure before running the numbers for two specific vehicles --for example: a manual transmission with good oil has a conversion efficiency between 95 and 97%, a very fashionable (especially in PHEVs) CVT tops at 83-85% --I think a good generator and inverter could do better, for example. Plus you can optimize aggressively, if your engine is always going to run at constant RPM.

Uwe said:
Personally I think the optimal "hybrid" drivetrain for a car would be a conventional FWD ICE drivetrain (with a true mechanical disconnect) and a EV drivtrain powering the rear wheels. Volvo has some models that come close to this, but they're not as fault tolerant as they could be. IMO, such a car should be able to run on either drivetrain completely independently.
Click to expand...
Here in Europe Peugeot had such a system (Hybrid4), with very Peugeot results.

Personally, I'd just attach a motor-generator to the differential of the driven axle and get on with it, leaving the electric-only operation for very low speed (30 km/h ~ 20 mph) and a couple doze miles, just enough for the part of the commute which happens in the city.

~~~

Yesterday I drove back to back the old V5 and the (relatively) new 1.0 TSI in my wife's Skoda... Honestly: if it has to be like _that_, it might as well be electric. I'll survive the boredom of waiting for it to recharge.
 
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