Electric Cars Likely Won't Save You Money

[Vaulter98c]

Besides my earlier post about requirements for trucks, I still think the biggest problem is the charging time vs mileage. When you run out of gas in a car you just pull into a gas station and in 5 minutes you are good for the next 300-500 miles. You can't do that in electric. You can't go on a long trip in an electric. Even the super expensive (and rare) rapid chargers are what, 45 min for a 200 mile charge? Who the hell is going to go long haul and stop every 3 hours for another hour while the car charges? And that's if you can find one of those chargers, not to mention the logistics of an "electric gas station" where people are stuck there for 45 min waiting on the charge. Can you imagine lines, or the sheer sq footage you'd need to make that work?

Or what about if temperatures affect your mileage and you run out short of a charge point? Some giant battery truck going to plug into you on the side of the road and give you a quick boost? Much easier to get a gas can out and be moving again in 60 seconds.

 

[pcgeekesq]

Everyone over here arguing about which pint sized car is best to carry their purse around in
I'll go electric when they can get me a truck I can fit 4 grown adults comfortably in that can still fit a full sheet of plywood or drywall in the back.

Tesla has an electric F150 competitor in the works, they drove a prototype of it onto the stage when Musk introduced the Tesla Semi tractor.

 

[Vaulter98c]

Tesla has an electric F150 competitor in the works, they drove a prototype of it onto the stage when Musk introduced the Tesla Semi tractor.

So he hinted at a truck that may BE ANNOUNCED in the next 5 years that will cost what, 80 grand? A model 3 is going to be their most "affordable" car, and that's estimated to cost what, 50 grand? A truck version from Tesla is going to be like 80, at least. This segment has been ignored for a decade now, not expecting anything good to come along anytime soon.

I just don't get why no other manufacture has jumped at this wide open zero competitor market

 

[KevinG]

Keep in mind, traction control is MUCH better in an electric car than on a traditional internal combustion vehicle. The response to the road conditions and the electronic traction calculations is damned near instantaneous, since you can control torque instantaneously by just changing a current. Some people have even suggested that AWD isnt really necessary in slippery conditions with Tesla's RWD cars and traction control. While I am not sure I buy that, I do know that the traction control is much better than what any of us have experienced on ICE vehicles.

Thanks for pointing that out...I guess that's why it just seems "fine" in the i3. It just works.

 

[pcgeekesq]

... I still think the biggest problem is the charging time vs mileage. When you run out of gas in a car you just pull into a gas station and in 5 minutes you are good for the next 300-500 miles. You can't do that in electric.

There are already battery technologies with 5C and 10C (to 70%) charging rates. A 10C battery could charge to 70% capacity in under about 4 minutes. That's 4 minutes out of a 5+ hour long trip: not a big deal to most people.

Cars that can do that may not be out there yet, but the technology exists and is mature. Might be pricey, but that's usually a solvable problem. You'd need to have the infrasturcture, of course, but gasoline takes infrastructure too.

 

[Deleted member 93354]

Keep in mind, traction control is MUCH better in an electric car than on a traditional internal combustion vehicle. The response to the road conditions and the electronic traction calculations is damned near instantaneous, since you can control torque instantaneously by just changing a current. Some people have even suggested that AWD isnt really necessary in slippery conditions with Tesla's RWD cars and traction control. While I am not sure I buy that, I do know that the traction control is much better than what any of us have experienced on ICE vehicles.

Power is clamped nearly as fast with brakes and throttle reduction. Is it as fast? No. But close compared to DC Motors of similar torque. Current generation ABS Traction control clamp down at over 100 Hz.

As to traction being better, that depends if it's an AC motor or DC one. DC Motors will spin as fast as torque allows them. Torque is a function of the power input. AC Motors meanwhile maintain a constant speed following the frequency input and automatically change the current to match by their nature. Wheels slip with DC motor will lead to an out of control spinning wheel. Wheel slip with AC Motor = wheel moving at set frequency and no faster.

Problem is AC Motors cost a lot more as you have to regenerate the high power frequency to feed into the motor. This is considerably more juice than say your UPS, and has to be a lot more reliable long term. One way to do this is with large caps and really fast PWM switches.

 

[Deleted member 93354]

There are already battery technologies with 5C and 10C (to 70%) charging rates. A 10C battery could charge to 70% capacity in under about 4 minutes. That's 4 minutes out of a 5+ hour long trip: not a big deal to most people.

Cars that can do that may not be out there yet, but the technology exists and is mature. Might be pricey, but that's usually a solvable problem. You'd need to have the infrasturcture, of course, but gasoline takes infrastructure too.

Great now the tough questions:

1) Production Cost
2) Long term stability
3) safety issues (chemistry not prone to blow up)
4) Where to get a cable thick enough to handle that current/voltage? (Infrastructure)

I'm not routing against electric cars. They are inevitable. But there are still significant roadblocks.

 

[nutzo]

Still, if you just added blown in/loose insulation in the attic, you probably would have gotten better performance by using foam spray to make an air barrier between the attic and the top floor. It would have been labor intensive, but may pay off in the long run.

Just added encapsulated fiberglass insulation on top of the existing insulation.
Doesn't get cold enough (or usually hot enough) here in Southern California to justify the cost of spray foam.

Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow, so that means 6 more weeks of winter.
Guess that means we will have 6 more weeks of our 80 degree winter days

 

[/dev/null]

I think with the technology in it's current state, people should be leasing electrics vs buying them. As I've seen a few times in this thread, you don't need a massive home super charger.. and a lot of public places offer free charging or cheap charging. I've seen a lot of folks with dirt cheap leases on electrics.. like $2500 down, $100/mo.. lets say 3 years, that's $6100.. I think even a Honda Civic would cost more on a 3 year lease. In California, there is about $10k in total incentives to go electric, so it more than makes up for that price differential.

It's inevitable that we will all be driving electrics in 10 years, and I almost bought an electric due to cost savings 2 years back when gas prices were $4.60/gallon. I calculated I would save about $200/mo just by buying an electric and driving it instead of my normal car. Seemed like a no brainer until I really thought about it and the fact that I would actually have to drive the electric everyday instead of my normal car. May as well just chop off my nuts and call it a day.

Anyways, back to the point, you will save money by going electric. I know someone mentioned they had solar panels as well for charging.. well, really depends on your system.. if you have a longer commute as I do, you will need an oversized solar system with local batteries so you can charge at night. Not really going to be cost effective. But, if you do go with an electric car, a lot of power companies will change your billing so that you can use a lot more power at the lowest cost pricing tier. So there is quite a significant amount of savings to be had there if you ever get billed at the higher pricing tiers. BTW, I have a solar system as well, and while it is enough to power my home and earn me enough credits for my electrical usage through the winter, it is far from enough to power an additional car being charged... I would probably have to double the size of my system to accommodate.

10 years? I doubt I will....my car will be under 200k and my bike under 30k. I have nothing against electric long as it's cheap and fun. I highly prefer stick though...

Also: need the car's batteries to be able to last 15+ years with seasonal lows of -15F and highes of about 104F in an unheated/uncooled garage & be able to do 100-150 miles round trip every day at highway speeds with heater on full blast & other electronics working. It needs those ranges 15 years after I purchase it. If that is doable, the car is sub $15k new and it's fun -- count me in.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Power is clamped nearly as fast with brakes and throttle reduction. Is it as fast? No. But close compared to DC Motors of similar torque. Current generation ABS Traction control clamp down at over 100 Hz.

As to traction being better, that depends if it's an AC motor or DC one. DC Motors will spin as fast as torque allows them. Torque is a function of the power input. AC Motors meanwhile maintain a constant speed following the frequency input and automatically change the current to match by their nature. Wheels slip with DC motor will lead to an out of control spinning wheel. Wheel slip with AC Motor = wheel moving at set frequency and no faster.

Problem is AC Motors cost a lot more as you have to regenerate the high power frequency to feed into the motor. This is considerably more juice than say your UPS, and has to be a lot more reliable long term. One way to do this is with large caps and really fast PWM switches.

Well, I don't know ow what method Tesla uses but every review I will read suggests that their traction control is leaps and bounds above any in traditional cars.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Has anyone driven a batch of Teslas 500,000 miles?

Some long term reliability lifetime statistics ate based on accelerated studies which do not mimic the real world.

For example lightbulb testing...do you think they test cfl for 10,000 hrs? That's almost 2 years around the clock with at least a couple dozen bulbs. What they do is run 100 bulbs running at the same time and invariably one will fail early. They then add up all the running times for those 100 bulbs. So if they ran for 200 hours each before the first failed, they count the mtbf as 20000 hours mtbf. Yes this is a way they actually test some products. Never mind temperature variance and mounting position can shorten life as well as multiple switching on and off and power spikes which occur more often with time

As I said, it was simulated.

There is - however - lots of data for 100k mile cars. For some weird reason I can't seem to find the article now which had a list of cars and their range at 100k miles, but the average between all models seems to be that they lost about 23 miles of range for every 100,000 miles driven.

I'd imagine that in reality this loss makes more sense on a percentage basis, and that 100KWh batteries lost more miles than 60KWh batteries, but I could be wrong.

This was a collection of a large sample size of customer cars driven on actual roads.

 

[pcgeekesq]

I'm not routing against electric cars. They are inevitable. But there are still significant roadblocks.

Absolutely. And if I live another 50 years, I expect I'll be driving hybrids the entire time. Probably plug-in hybrids eventually, with small fossil-fuel engines. Maybe turbines, jet engines are getting pretty small.

 

[Randall Stephens]

Maybe turbines, jet engines are getting pretty small.

If you thought the FX5800 was annoying

 

[Grimlaking]

So wait... if a bitcoin miner gets several Antman box's to mine bitcoin, uses that power/income to buy a EV. Is he hurting the planet or helping it with his carbon footprint? Further.. and more importantly.. do video card prices finally go the frack down?

 

[rgMekanic]

So wait... if a bitcoin miner gets several Antman box's to mine bitcoin, uses that power/income to buy a EV. Is he hurting the planet or helping it with his carbon footprint? Further.. and more importantly.. do video card prices finally go the frack down?

lol, nice thought, but don't get me started on the environmental impact of electric cars

 

[Mugato]

Which is why the only people driving them are older richer people. It's usually their 3rd or 4th car.

I always just assumed it wasn't about saving money. It was about saving the environment.

 

[Nanogrip]

If you're on a tiny island in the Pacific, why are you concerned with what car you drive? Sounds like you need to get a bicycle if the place is so small.

I'd get one if I was single, without family, and lived close enough to work. A motorcycle with a sidecar would kind of work but then on daily basis... and the roads are a mix of asphalt and pot holes, incredible heat and humidity (my meetings with donors and aid grantors would be entertaining with a full body sweat eh?) don't forget the blindingly heavy Pacific rains that happen often... it's just safer and convenient in a car man. You have to live here to understand.

 

[SCSI-Terminator]

Has anyone driven a batch of Teslas 500,000 miles?

Well, maybe not 500K miles, but I know of at least one tesla model S with over 300K miles on it:

http://www.tesloop.com/blog/2017/8/...0k-miles-with-less-than-11k-maintenance-costs

REAL MILES, not simulated. Article seems to say that in terms of maintenance, this is a cheap car to own.

 

[Joust]

So, I wanted to sound off here but have not read through all the posts. My thoughts are thus:

On the topic of lower emissions for battery-operated (plug in or hybrid) vehicles: if it is being imported, shipped on a boat across the Pacific, more sulphur has been put into the atmosphere getting it here than the vehicle will use in it's lifetime. It's not marine diesel that's burned out there, folks. If you truly want to lower emissions, one must look at the full production cycle.

For those dismissive of mining rare earth minerals for batteries: I agree that many, many devices use those materials in their batteries, however, one of those batteries is significantly greater in materials usage than even the sum total of many, many consumer electronics.

Efficient battery tech is THE KEY. However, you're talking about taking admittedly immature tech into mass production. Whether that is reasonable and environmentally wise is a sibject upon which rational minds may differ.

On the subject of economics dependent on subsidies - that money is not free, guys. Consider the whole transaction.

Often the narrative is polluted by interest groups. Think independently. Think thoroughly.

 

[Randall Stephens]

Well, maybe not 500K miles, but I know of at least one tesla model S with over 300K miles on it:

http://www.tesloop.com/blog/2017/8/...0k-miles-with-less-than-11k-maintenance-costs

REAL MILES, not simulated. Article seems to say that in terms of maintenance, this is a cheap car to own.

God, think of the savings if it hadn't been driven by a dumbass through deep water...

 

[STrooperTK421]

As soon as me and my wife can afford to do so, we WILL BE going all electric for the commuter vehicle. What a relief, no more gas, no more goddamn $250 emission related sensors going bad, no more oil changes, no more $1200 timing belt / chain replacements (jesus, this is fucking 2018 why are we still using goddamn timing belts and chains - that's some fucking grandpa shit)...

...so I have to worry about the battery packs, beats all the other shit we have to put up with when you are talking about ICE based vehicles.

 

[Krenum]

^This

ProTip of the day: Drive almost any good econobox until it blows up if you wanna save money.

Yep! My car doesn't have enough power to get out of its own way, but I can fill that sucker up for 12 bucks and it'll last me 1.5 weeks!

 

[buttons]

I am or at least was a big gear head. 5 years ago i leased a Volt for my wife because i couldnt stand the notion of seeing a prius in our driveway. They might be efficient reliable cars, but truly hideous to behold in my opinion. As i drove the volt home from detroit, i was just blown away with the electric drivetrain. No vibration, no sound, not stopping for gas except once every 6 weeks for $18 of premium. Oil changes? Not even sure its once a year. When the lease was up we went and bought a 2012 volt for 10k. We have put 19k miles on it in the past year and havent had an oil change due yet. There is no gears to shift, power is instant and torque abundant. Far as commuter cars go, id say most stylish as well. We drove it 800 miles to north carolina once without issue as well, but to me one of the biggest perks of an EV car is doing away with the gas tank, combustion engine, there will be a lot less to go wrong and maintain. Considering 75% of our miles is probably EV the gas engine should hopefully last a long time though. Our gas bill went from $500 a month to about $220. Our family car is a 6.0 Yukon but we rarely drive that to and from work.

 

[northwoodsf]

Not owning more cars than you really need would save money and save resources.

 

[Miikun]

Agreed. Aside from the fact that internal combustion engines are horribly inefficient at some point oil will again be considered scarce well before it actually becomes scarce. One can say the same thing about the chemisty of Lithium ion batteries but I'd wager that by the time those metals are scarce on Earth we will be a well established, space fairing species that will at least have easy access to those metals floating around in space (asteroids).

I'm not sure that's even actually a huge problem. Lithium in batteries can be recycled, since batteries degrade because of physical damage from dendrites in the battery structure, not because we somehow lose the lithium through a gradual chemical process. As electronics get more efficient, the amount of lithium we need for non-transporation purposes trails off so if we mix in self driving taxis and public transportation, I suspect we won't run out of lithium (or will switch to something like nanostructure carbon capacitors before we do).

 

[Miikun]

Tax credits are not rebates. The $10k off group buy's web page no longer exists and I have no idea how many people had to buy in order for it to kick in. And 1 power company in 1 city in 1 state does not a discount make.



Batteries degrade. Replacement costs from CR there are for completely failed cells. If you haven't been following the iPhone battery drama, people want they battery powered shit to run like it did when they bought it. I know if one of my cars was down 50% on power/capacity/economy, I'd be fixing it instead of waiting until complete failure.

That hasn't really been a problem with actively cooled lithium cells used in cars and industrial applications, only portable electronics since they'll blow a wad to shave 1mm off the next iphone so batteries have only the most basic charge management. Even today, only a few laptops include software to allow you to keep your charge level under 90% in order to significantly extend battery life, because for portable electronics, they want you to buy a new one in 2 years. Why make them last?

 

[Miikun]

As I said, it was simulated.

There is - however - lots of data for 100k mile cars. For some weird reason I can't seem to find the article now which had a list of cars and their range at 100k miles, but the average between all models seems to be that they lost about 23 miles of range for every 100,000 miles driven.

I'd imagine that in reality this loss makes more sense on a percentage basis, and that 100KWh batteries lost more miles than 60KWh batteries, but I could be wrong.

This was a collection of a large sample size of customer cars driven on actual roads.

There's a large group of owners tracking Tesla Battery degradation so it's a pretty reasonable data set, it will be interesting how this plays out over the next couple years.

 

[pcgeekesq]

Not owning more cars than you really need would save money and save resources.

Or more generally, "Not owning more than you really need would save money and save resources."
But it'd make it pretty hard to be [H]ard.

I don't really need 1 32" 4K monitor and 4 24" 1440p monitors, driven by a GTX1080 and a GTX1060 respectively, on my work rig.
"But I like it. Love it. Yes I do." -- Mick Jagger.

 

[krotch]

None of my vehicles have timing belts. But I do maintenance as it is needed or suggested. My mothers' Blazer just rolled over 100k. She is bringing it to me this weekend to do plugs, wires, transmission drain and fill and a couple other things. Total cost? About $100.

I just spent $560 last night on parts to fix my car for inspection. Inner tie rods and boots, outer tie rods, lower ball joints, and front adjustable end links, which also exist on an EV. Previous owner must have been offroading the car, as those went out like 50-60k miles too early. Well, it's a 1996 Impreza Gravel Express, so kind of expected.

TBH, I'm not sure...The only time it has ever kicked in, I've been glad it did. Not at all intrusive...more along the lines of "Oh, hmm, didn't realize it was all that slippery out there, thanks!" So, I haven't been inclined to figure out how to turn it off (unlike, say, the 94 Supra which was TERRIBLE, and I always turned it off...but the technology has come a long way...)

I turn it off, if I can. Depending on your driving, it can be quite intrusive. I was driving a like 2012 Ford Fiesta in the snow and was going to slide through a turn (for uh...experimentation), but the stupid traction control kicked in. Went around the turn fine, but freaked me the fuck out when the car started doing some weird shit on it's own.

All my cars are 2000 or older, so I don't have any of the weird traction control going on. Most I have to worry about is ABS, which I'm contemplating on disabling, as the car I've owned/drove the longest (1996 Impreza Brighton) never had it. It's a bit unnerving having the car do things on it's own.

 

[///AMG]

I would get an electric car not so much to save money but because its more convenient and because of the torque which makes them insanely ease to drive. But I would have at least one car with an ICE until they make charge times less than 5 minutes which will be a long long time from now.

 

[lilbabycat]

The "core concept" I was refuting was that rich people aren't spendthrifts (because they had to invest to get rich).
This is demonstrably untrue. Diamond-studded iPhones, supercars, mega-mansions, private jets, Tesla roadsters: all common examples of rich people spending money without economic justification.

Not all rich people are camera-whoring celebrities. They are anecdotal and most of them are the poor "renting" access to the rich life, and find themselves back to being poor from buying the things you describe.

To be lazy and wiki:

Many Politicians, heirs to fortunes, top business executives, CEOs, successful venture capitalists, those born into high society, and some celebrities may be considered members of this class. Some prominent and high-rung professionals may also be included if they attain great influence and wealth. The main distinguishing feature of this class, which is estimated to constitute roughly 1% of the population, is the source of income. While the vast majority of people and households derive their income from wages or salaries, those in the upper class derive their income from investments and capital gains.

http://time.com/money/2866580/baroness-rawlings-guide-frugal-living/ (this one has a dozen links to articles and studies on rich frugality)

Some of America’s super rich are also renowned for their penny-pinching habits—most famously, Warren Buffett, who lives a unfancy life in Omaha, Neb., in the home he bought in 1958 for $31,500. This is the man who is CEO of the fourth-ranking company on the Fortune 500. Dick Yuengling, Jr., the owner of Yuengling, the oldest American-owned brewer, is another very wealthy character who refuses to give up his cheapskate ways; he’s been known to drive a 2002 Taurus (bought used) and reuse Styrofoam cups.
The author Thomas J. Stanley has long chronicled the habits of the wealthy, and while the huddled masses may assume rich folks live wildly extravagant, spend-spend-spend lives, the truth is often just the opposite. In one of his surveys from a few years ago, Stanley found out that 75% of millionaires pay less than $20 for a bottle of wine, and 4 in 10 prefer wine that’s $10 or under.
Other studies have found that affluent people tend to use coupons more than those in poverty, and that rich people don’t buy on impulse and prefer quality over prestige in products, among other somewhat surprising habits.

I think to also consider is that there are many levels of "rich". Making enough money that you can live a normal life and never really worry about finances only takes being a millionaire. Making enough to buy any consumer good without concern takes a few million. Being able to buying any object takes tens of millions. Being able to buy power and influence takes hundreds of millions, and at this point you're doing private jets and mega-mansions almost out of necessity.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Long live the superior machine: the internal combustion engine.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

There's a large group of owners tracking Tesla Battery degradation so it's a pretty reasonable data set, it will be interesting how this plays out over the next couple years.

Thank for that link!

That conclusion that frequent supercharging is actually better for the battery took me completely by surprise. Did not expect that at all.

 

[zkostik]

I made no such assumptions. I was responding to the context of installing a charger in the garage being expensive. The existing context was already restricted to the subset of people with garages. I made no further assumptions. You're assuming you need to be in the garage to charge, you don't. There's these things called "extension cords" you might have heard of, or is that a bad assumption for me to make?

And no, you don't need a dedicated 20 amp circuit in the garage. You don't need that at all. All you need for level 1 is a regular ol' 10a 120v household outlet. Nobody even gives you a 20a 120v charger in the first place, the ones that come with the car top out at 12a.

You also seem to be making the bad assumption that apartments/condos have no access to power. There were L2 chargers in my previous apartment that cost at-rate. It's not unusual for offices to have car charges, as well, so some people can get away with only charging at work, regardless of their domestic housing situation.

At my work police just started enforcing no charging as people kept plugging their cars all over the garage into the service outlets. The garage has no car chargers or dedicated spots for them but folks charge their hybrids at work so they can get to and from mostly on battery alone. You're right though, that chargers are slowly coming about but overall, it seems there are very few spots that have them or even a place where you can officially plug your car in other than own garage (if you have one). I'm in DC area btw.

 

[Jagger100]

I would get an electric car not so much to save money but because its more convenient and because of the torque which makes them insanely ease to drive. But I would have at least one car with an ICE until they make charge times less than 5 minutes which will be a long long time from now.

"Filling" a battery that fast would rule out anything you could do from home.

 

[Deleted member 93354]

Not all rich people are camera-whoring celebrities. They are anecdotal and most of them are the poor "renting" access to the rich life, and find themselves back to being poor from buying the things you describe.

To be lazy and wiki:


http://time.com/money/2866580/baroness-rawlings-guide-frugal-living/ (this one has a dozen links to articles and studies on rich frugality)



I think to also consider is that there are many levels of "rich". Making enough money that you can live a normal life and never really worry about finances only takes being a millionaire. Making enough to buy any consumer good without concern takes a few million. Being able to buying any object takes tens of millions. Being able to buy power and influence takes hundreds of millions, and at this point you're doing private jets and mega-mansions almost out of necessity.

Being rich is a highly subjective term. But it generally starts when you are in the upper 10% income wise. To reach the upper 5% you'll have to run a business or invest heavily or a combination there of. But at the upper 10% in the USA you can

1. Save enough for retirement. (Put away 12% and let company match at least 3%)
2. Pay for healthcare for your family
3. Pay for college for one or two kids
4. Can survive on one income if you have to
5. Have money to handle emergencies or equipment when you need it <$10,000 (ie: Replace a furnace or hot water heater)
6. Have car, car insurance and car maintenance money
7. Pay your utilities.
8. Pay for a house and the cost associated with it (like insurance, taxes, repairs and upkeep) (<$200K mortgage)

It won't leave a lot of extras for sure, but it's more than enough to survive comfortably without worry.

If you can't, then there's something wrong with your budget. It won't be enough to buy a Tesla or a Corvette or a 3000 sq ft home. But you should be able to buy a nice sized car/SUV with that kind of money.

As psychology has showed us over and over again, once you reach that point on Maslow's hierarchy, more money doesn't make you happier.

 

[RC-Heli-3D]

How about using water to power our vehicles, nearly unlimited?

 

[///AMG]

"Filling" a battery that fast would rule out anything you could do from home.

I wouldnt need to do that at home. But there are days I have to drive a lot for business reasons and I dont want to sit at a charger waiting for my car to charge. But for regular days I like coming home and plugging it in.