EV’s Have Officially Lost to the Tacoma!!

EVs turn charging stations into a parking lot in Chicago due to cold weather discharging batteries faster and slow charge times. Oops.
https://wgntv.com/news/chicago-news...eep-batteries-charged-amid-winter-freeze/amp/

 

The thing that interests me is the used EV market. Say you pay 75 grand for a top line EV with, let's say, a 220 mile range. In 4-5 years that range is going to double...so, in 2028 or 29, what is your 2024 going to be worth with 1/2 the range of the current product and very little of the battery warranty left?

 

TLDR - we just need a better battery chemistry.
It's the actual lithium metal that's our challenge. For chemistry and humanity reasons.

In Li-ion batteries, once a single cell enters thermal runaway, the battery cells themselves have everything they need to ignite and burn without outside fuel. Lithium is highly reactive to moisture. And Li-ion battery fires produces some real nasty gasses like hydrogen fluoride.

To me its a given that change is painful and people generally avoid change for that reason. But I think we also must acknowledge we need better range, grid infrastucture, and fueling infrasturucture in order to compete with ICE vehichle convenience on the road.

End of life is also a challenge. Current form factor of some brand battery packs makes them very hard to deconstruct, (see YouTubes). Direct reuse in grid banks is possible if the battery pack is still good. Recycling has limited options at the moment.

But please don't throw any used electronics with integrated Li-ion batteries in the regular garbage. Starting to see garbage truck and landfill fires from these battery integrated devices or other Li-ion batteries getting crushed by the heavy equipment.

-J

 

Not to say the battery tech won't get better and range increase more another decade from now but the 2013 Model S's got 260 mile ranges 10 years ago and that still seems to be around the norm today over a decade later.

 

Consumers don’t directly pay for subsidies so I didn’t even read past that note. Sounds like a biased study from a state that loves pumping oil and is pissed someone else might get their subsidies.

Fancy computers don’t magically make ICEs 21st century tech. They’re 19th century tech no matter what way you slice it. We will move on from them sooner than later

 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-el...ficiency-falsehood-2798b4ab?mod=djemalertNEWS

The Electric-Vehicle Cheating Scandal
A government rule makes them look nearly seven times as efficient as they are.

It’s hard to think of a worse environmental scandal in recent years than Volkswagen’s 2015 diesel-emissions cheating. The German automaker was rightly pursued by regulators, enforcement agencies and class-action lawyers.

The scandal ended up costing Volkswagen an estimated $33 billion in fines and financial settlements—and revealed that diesel-emissions cheating was endemic. In 2020
Daimler AG made a $1.5 billion settlement over emissions cheating in Mercedes-Benz diesel vehicles. (One of us helped secure that settlement.) Last year engine maker Cummins agreed to pay $1.7 billion to settle claims that it skirted diesel-emissions standards.

In all of these cases, regulators punished carmakers that had cut corners and misled the public. But when it comes to electric cars, the government has a cheating scandal of its own. That scandal, grabbing far fewer headlines, is buried deep in the Federal Register—on page 36,987 of volume 65.

When carmakers test gasoline-powered vehicles for compliance with the Transportation Department’s fuel-efficiency rules, they must use real values measured in a laboratory. By contrast, under an Energy Department rule, carmakers can arbitrarily multiply the efficiency of electric cars by 6.67. This means that although a 2022
Tesla Model Y tests at the equivalent of about 65 miles per gallon in a laboratory (roughly the same as a hybrid), it is counted as having an absurdly high compliance value of 430 mpg. That number has no basis in reality or law.

For exaggerating electric-car efficiency, the government rewards carmakers with compliance credits they can trade for cash. Economists estimate these credits could be worth billions: a vast cross-subsidy invented by bureaucrats and paid for by every person who buys a new gasoline-powered car.

Until recently, this subsidy was a Washington secret. Carmakers and regulators liked it that way. Regulators could announce what sounded like stringent targets, and carmakers would nod along, knowing they could comply by making electric cars with arbitrarily boosted compliance values. Consumers would unknowingly foot the bill.

The secret is out. After environmental groups pointed out the illegality of this charade, the Energy Department proposed eliminating the 6.67 multiplier for electric cars, recognizing that the number “lacks legal support” and has “no basis.”

Carmakers have panicked and asked the Biden administration to delay any return to legal or engineering reality. That is understandable. Without the multiplier, the Transportation Department’s proposed rules are completely unattainable. But workable rules don’t require government-created cheat codes. Carmakers should confront that problem head on.

 

https://www.reuters.com/business/au...rtz-sell-about-20000-evs-us-fleet-2024-01-11/

Jan 11 (Reuters) - Rental firm Hertz Global Holdings (HTZ.O), opens new tab is selling about 20,000 electric vehicles, including Teslas, from its U.S. fleet about two years after a deal with the automaker to offer its vehicles for rent, in another sign that EV demand has cooled.
Hertz will instead opt for gas-powered vehicles, it said on Thursday, citing higher expenses related to collision and damage for EVs even though it had aimed to convert 25% of its fleet to electric by 2024 end.
CEO Stephen Scherr had last year at the JPMorgan Auto Conference flagged headwinds from higher expenses for its EVs, particularly Teslas.
Hertz even limited the torque and speed on the EVs and offered it to experienced users on the platform to make them easier to adapt after certain users had front-end collisions, he said.
Shares of the company, which also operates vehicles from Swedish EV maker Polestar among others, fell about 4%. Tesla's (TSLA.O), opens new tab stock was down about 3%.
Hertz also expects about $245 million in charges related to depreciation expenses from the EV sale in the fourth quarter of 2023.
Its decision underscores the bumpy road EVs have hit as their sales growth slows, causing carmakers like General Motors (GM.N), opens new tab and Ford (F.N), opens new tab to scale back production plans.
Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas said in a note Hertz's move was another sign that EV expectations need to be "reset downward".
While consumers enjoy the driving experience and fuel savings (per mile) of an EV, Jonas said there are other "hidden costs to EV ownership".
"Expenses related to collision and damage, primarily associated with EVs, remained high in the quarter," Hertz said in a regulatory filing on Thursday.
The company, which had earlier planned to order 100,000 Tesla vehicles by 2022 end and 65,000 unitsfrom Polestar over five years, said it would focus on improving profitability for the rest of its EV fleet.

German rental car company Sixt said in December it had not purchased Tesla vehicles since 2022 and was selling its fleet of Teslas "as part of our regular de-fleeting process".
It still plans to offer a range of electrified vehicles and "stick to our goal to electrify 70-90 percent of our rental fleet in Europe by 2030", it said on Thursday.
USED-EV PRICES DROP
Meanwhile, wholesale used-EV prices fell for most of 2023 as prices for new EVs fell and inventories of unsold electric vehicles rose, according to Cox Automotive data.
Cox forecast before Hertz's decision that used-EV prices would decline more than overall used vehicle prices in 2024.
"While 20,000 cars isn't a large number in the total used vehicle market, it does mean Hertz will be taking a major loss on each of these sales while further contributing to the trend of falling used EV values," iSeeCars.com analyst Karl Brauer said.
Hertz is selling some Tesla Model 3 for as low as about $20,000, nearly half the purchase price for the cheapest variant of the compact sedan, its used car website, opens new tab showed.
It lists more than 700 EVs on sale, including BMW's i3, Chevrolet's Bolt and Tesla's Model 3 and Model Y SUVs.

 

ah, it's asbestos all over again. the miracle that is no more.