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EV Batteries Are Dangerous to Repair. Here’s Why Mechanics Are Doing So Anyway
(www.scientificamerican.com)
this post was submitted on 25 Dec 2023
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Technology
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You should see what happens to actual mpg in the rain vs in the dry. Its almost like MPG can vary wildly dependent on environment and situation
Yeah the whole range issue is dumb to me. You can recharge it so what's the issue? I recharge mine on long trips and stop to eat at the same time. Who are all these people that want to sit in a car for over 400 miles without stopping? That sounds worse lol I always stopped with my case car to eat or pee anyways. If I stay 30 min to an hour I can get fully charged too.
Also the benefits of never needing to stop to charge or fuel when I'm just driving around town. I can go all over and not need to charge my car for a few days. Then I do it when I sleep.
Also single pedal driving was new to me and I love that! It is so much more responsive if I want to stop I just stop going lol I love it. It has crazy torque too and makes a fun spaceship sound when I drive around.
Depends on where you live and where you plan to go with it. Our EV at current range is fine to get to the nearby large city in the summer over a fairly long stretch of highway. In winter it would probably be doable but at the least it impact our stopping/charging schedule. At 70% range it might not be doable at all in winter and we'd have to be careful in summer. Governments pushing EVs absolutely should be pushing a reasonable recycle/replacement cycle for batteries and the infrastructure to support that.
You misunderstand me. I'm saying that unlike ice vehicles that will continue to get about the same mpg for the life of the vehicle, lithium batteries degrade with every charge/discharge cycle. When an electric is new and you buy one with enough range to suit your needs, every year you own it the max range on a full charge is reduced. So an ev with 120,000 miles on it that started off being able to go 300 miles max will now only go about 250 miles max. The batteries lose capacity. The federally required 8 year 100k mile warranty on batteries only covers if the capacity of the battery is less than 70% of the original capacity. Typically though, evs are usually in the range of 80 to 90% capacity at the 100k point. They don't start dropping off hard until they're closer to around 200k and over 10 years old most of the time. Total failure due to dead shorts in too many cells has been happening around the 14 to 18 year area. That's when you decide to sell it for $3,000 or pay $15,000 to install another battery.
If I get to 14 to 18 years on a car without every having to replace an engine, transmission, it never gets in a crash that writes it off entirely, and its still worth $3k at the end I consider that a win.
My old Volvo is 43 years old and has never had engine or transmission changed. It’s gone for 350,000 km and is still going strong. Is probably worth somewhere in the region of $2k. I don’t see any of the cars made today managing the same feat.
That's straight up survivorship bias
Here's the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:
^article^ ^|^ ^about^
You're making my point for me. The likelihood a car, any car BEV or not, is going to make it to your (unproven) theoretical point of being a problem is 1 in 4.
If your premise is that BEVs are good up until the 200k mark, then you're making a bad bet on your ICE or Hybrid needing to survive to the 200k mark to be worth it. With your numbers I have a 75% chance of being right, while you only have a 25% chance, and that's even if I agree with your premise (which I think is a bit suspect).
Gotcha, so we've exited the discussion on proven fact and you're well into your personal speculation. Thanks for the discussion up to now. Have a great day!
But what does that number even mean? There are also 278 million vehicles registered in the US and only 233 million registered drivers, so I'm betting a lot of those 16+ year old vehicles aren't people's primary mode of transportation. I spend 2-3 hours commuting on the freeway and certainly don't see 1 in 4 being 16+ years old. My own car is 10 years old now and I would say it's on the older side of what I typically see.
I have three working vehicles. Four if you count my motorcycle. Two are 16 years old. A prius and a sienna. One is 18 years old. A mazda tribute. My motorcycle is 28 years old. A Suzuki bandit. I don't even own a vehicle newer than 16 years old. Did just junk an 18 year old Nissan altima because my 16 year old kid blew up the engine after way over filling the oil.
Chances are you aren't seeing 1 in 4 vehicles on your route that are over ten years old. But part of the reason (but not all the reason) is the same reason you never noticed how many of the vehicle you drive were out on the road until after you bought one. You're never looking around and thinking about it.
Also your location and what you do for a living. You a white collar going into a nice office area at 8 am or so? Newer vehicles. Go head to the old or run down portion of a city and you'll see 20 year old vehicles abound. My area has several well off rednecks that drive old fixed up diesel pick up trucks just because they don't like all the tech and tracking and Def fluid requirements on the ones from the past 15 years. One of them is currently thinking about buying an early 90s dodge Cummins for like $30k he looked at.
Myself, I like doing shade tree mechanic stuff and think it's dumb to spend a lot of money on a vehicle that looses $5,000 of its value after you drive it out of the lot. I've never had a car payment, always paid cash, and always done my own automotive work. I've spent 25 years just buying 10+ year old vehicles. Newest I've ever owned was 8 years old. Even now we're about to downsize on the minivan we don't really need any more and replace it with a 2007 matrix if we buy it, tomorrow.
I swear, everyone on Lemmy have their heads shoved so far up their asses about how everyone should go full internal combustion and that they're great and have lower maintenance costs just down vote me to hell when I bring anything like this up. I know the tech and work on vehicles and combustion engines. It's dumb to buy a $40,000 vehicle with a 300 pound engine, 200 pound transmission, mechanically complex 4 wheel drive system with upwards of 3 independently locking differentials. The resale value when the head gaskets is blown is next to nothing, and the great 5 year 60,000 mile power train warranty doesn't even cover the average mileage people drive in 8 years. It only requires you mosty pay off the average loan length for a new vehicle. My Tesla costs 13 cents to drive about 4 miles, where the equivalent combustion car, with 400 horsepower and 400 foot pounds of torque, costs upwards of a dollar to drive the same. The high strung powerplants in performance cars require regular, expensive, maintenance, and if you actually push them will blow up in under 10,000 miles. An LS3 crate motor costs more than the car is worth and that doesn't even include the transmission or any of the other drivetrain components. No one should buy and keep a combustion engine for more than 10 years or you risk "being the bag holder" and stuck with a cancer emitting 4,000 pound paperweight.
I mean, I'm all for EV, but my car is over fifteen years old and still cranks every single time. Gets almost 40 to the gallon. Yeah, the resale is shit, but if I drive it until the wheels fall off, I don't have to worry about that.
Their argument was valid other than their martyr complex
It really isn't.
The whole point of the crate motor vs battery pack was it's ridiculous to compare the cost of a new battery vs a used engine. If you blow an engine in a regular car it's replaced with s used one, even if it's covered by warranty. Used battery packs will get cheaper with time, especially 8 years from now when the warranty on a new EV is done.
Good for you that your car hasn't broken yet. I have a friend who got a bad transmission in her Subaru, it was replaced after something like 500 miles. Are you claiming that every new ICE vehicle that had ever been sold have had 100% working drive trains for the entirety of the restraint period?
Or are you comparing your anecdotal experience with a FUD news story about one person who had a lemon of a vehicle that happened to be electric
You can buy a model 3 that goes 0-60 in 3.1 seconds, right now, on their website under 40k after tax rebate. Go look. Under existing inventory. All prices exclude the 7500 credit.
Are you claiming GM never made a lemon? That no car, ever, in the history of their company, was sold with a bad motor?
And stop it. You're comparing the cost of a new battery now vs what the cost of a used battery will be in 8 years. Claiming that technology doesn't get cheaper is absurd. You can buy a used Nissan leaf battery for $3,700.
https://www.partrequest.com/catalog/electric-vehicle-batteries/nissan/nissan-leaf
Dude. You obviously don't know how a used or refurbished ev battery entails (it's a terrible option) and a Honda leaf has an 85 mile range. It's a small battery (why they're cheaper. It's less battery) and you can replace it without ripping the car apart. An 85 mile range is a replacement for almost no one. Model 3 is the most sold ev in the US. Go educate yourself on what it actually takes to replace That battery. FYI- it's a 1,060 pound battery. You have to pull the back seats, disconnect it, raise the car up on a lift, drain the coolant, disconnect the lines, use a special jack setup to support and lower it (its across the entire bottom of the vehicle between the front and rear wheels) and then raise the new one up in its place. You can "man handle" a little leaf battery. The model 3 will cost you $20,000 between battery and labor.
Also, who cares how fast your car can do 0 to 60? Are you 17 and think it's cool?
What I seem to see most on Lemmy is split 50/50 between “EVs are way worse than cars because they are heavy and have tires and tire particulates are FAR worse than tailpipe emissions, and ICE vehicles weigh nothing and don’t have tires anyway” and “EVs are cars and cars are the devil - if you don’t live in a city center and use a bike exclusively you might as well be slaughtering children by the hundreds, because there is literally no moral difference.”