Electric Cars - the discussion continues.

[kgwilson]

There are lemons with every brand and model. Toyota have a reputation for the most reliable of all. I have owned a number of Toyotas but my 91 Camry station wagon was a lemon. The engine management system had an intermittent fault & got fixed several times & kept failing. Even the replacement wasn't right. The auto transmission died as well as a number of other more minor things. never had any issues with my 84 Corona or 2006 HiLux.

[facthunter]

It's pretty difficult for the average person to get any real idea which cars etc are doing good service and which are not.. Sales gives some indication but you have to look into which vehicles are considered a similar model. IF  you cover a wide range your figures look better but it's not a true comparison..  Find out HOW you get treated when a warrantee claim is sought also.. Fixed service Prices often cause the dealers to do a few shortcuts.. IF you ring around the wreckers and find a motor for a fairly late model is about $7000 there IS a problem with them.  Nev

[red750]

Caterpillar Successfully Completes Massive Electric Mining Truck Test

 

Read story here.

[nomadpete]

But you'll never pull a heavy load with an electric vehicle. They will ruin the Australian weekend!  (Scot Morrisson)

[facthunter]

The Final Blow. "They're coming for YOUR UTE!!".    Nev. 

[kgwilson]

Electric drive has been around on heavy load vehicles for many years. Direct drive from a diesel or petrol engine is terrible requiring many gears to get going. It is much more efficient to generate electricity & then use electric motors to provide the driving power as in diesel electric locomotives. It is only recently that we have had batteries of sufficient energy density and small enough to fit in a vehicle that fully electric trucks have become viable. Electric trains have been around for 100 years or more and there is no advantage having a battery one when they have to stay on the tracks anyway so the overhead power supply is the solution that we have always had.

 

We have the Janus Electric truck in Australia with a removable & 15 minute replaceable battery & 600km range & the Tesla Semi just released has a 800 km range on a single charge & can be charged with another 450km range in 30 minute on the Tesla megacharger. 

[Jerry_Atrick]

If you start the video from about 4:30, it will be relevant to EVs, (but go earlier if you are into engineering drill chucks).

 

 

Interestingly, as I understood, Albo is introducing a legislative change to effectively remove FBT from EVs under the luxury car tax threshold. Progressive, I guess.

 

JC is highlighting the issue of electrical infrastructure... and battery disposal

 

 

Edited December 15, 2022 by Jerry_Atrick

[red750]

There was a story on the news a week or two ago about a couple who decided to try before you buy. They hired a Tesla in Sydney and drove to Echuca. The car needed recharging, but they didn't have a cable compatible with the charging station. They drove to another small town with a compatible charger, but it was out of service. The battery ran out completely and the car hire company had to supply a tow truck to retrieve the car.

[facthunter]

Wasn't the cars fault if the problem was non inclusion of the right cable. Plenty of cars can't have fuel added from a drum without the "special" funnel required.   Nev

[willedoo]

I don't know if I'll live long enough to see the battery storage problem fixed for good. It will happen one day, and batteries won't be an issue. The research into batteries based on waste radioactive material and synthetic diamonds is encouraging. I think the people doing it have been able to create very small batteries, but the challenge is to be able to scale up into functional batteries for our needs. They talked about a small battery that would power a watch lasting for a few thousand years.

[spacesailor]

Melbourne has scored the ' Petrol ' racers ' for many years ,

Just hope the sevo,s have ' petrol ' that far in the future! !! .  LoL

spacesailor

[facthunter]

They might go for electric Power but If the cars are worth over one Million dollars they'll find the fuel for them.  Aeroplanes that everyone takes for granted are far bigger a problem... Nev

[kgwilson]

Development of sodium battery technology is surging ahead. The latest break is a sodium battery with 4 times the energy density of lithium. So far this is only in laboratory conditions and very small batteries but this is generally where most successful new technologies begin. CATL & BYD have also announced that sodium batteries will be manufactured for EVs in 2023.

 

Sodium is of course plentiful & cheap being half of the chemical composition of common salt & both CATL & BYD say that the use of sodium will reduce battery cost by 30% over its lithium based counterpart. It may be a good time to think about divesting shareholdings in lithium based companies.

[facthunter]

Have you ever handled sodium? It's one of the most active elements known.   There certainly is plenty of source material but  getting the Pure sodium from NaCl. would be a high energy thing. Chlorine is also pretty hazardous. Nev

[Bruce Tuncks]

Yep, I had a good one and reckon it was the best car I ever had...  the p76 that is. I've had holdens and falcons and mitsubishi's too, but the p76 was the best.

Because of getting old, I reckon I've bought my last car though, if there is any next one , it will be electric I think.

The worst design car I ever owned was the first one, a Renault 750.

[red750]

[octave]

44 minutes ago, red750 said:

I did a little fact checking on this.   Firstly it is a genuine estimate although there are reasons for the exorbitant price.   I would imagine this is a quote was not accepted being that a new Chevy Bolt is $32k (note there are 2 cars a volt and a bolt).

 

The battery for this 10 year old vehicle is no longer manufactured and this particular replacement would have been made by a third party supplier.    

 

Whilst the estimate is legit it represents the extreme end of the spectrum.  The average cost for a hybrid battery replacement is about $6000 and should be good for 100 000 miles-150 000 miles (160 000km-240 000km).   

 

As is common with cars of that age, second hand is an option.  I believe the occasional battery for this old model appear on Ebay occasionally for about 2.5k   https://www.ebay.com/itm/225232507470?fits=Model%3AVolt|Make%3AChevrolet&hash=item3470e7524e:g:KlQAAOSwuJ9jYTvx

 

To sum up, yes the story is genuine but it is very much an outlier and it does not the average replacement cost.   

 

Is This Estimate for a Chevy Volt Hybrid Battery Replacement Real?

 

Fact check: Dealership quoted $30,000 for new hybrid car battery, but that's unusually high

 

 

 

 

[kgwilson]

An old hybrid is hardly worth spending that sort of money for a replacement battery with only about 80km of range on the battery alone. It may have been OK in 2012 but it is completely out of its depth now with current hybrids. There won't be many new hybrids hitting the market in future anyway. They are the worst of both worlds and appeal to those who do little or no research into what current EVs can do and have predisposed range anxiety.

 

Within 5 years 1000km will be the range average, EV owners will mostly have their own 10-15kw chargers at home, the car will be the house battery backup for outages and/or used when power cost is at peak and range anxiety will be a joke from the past.

Edited December 24, 2022 by kgwilson

[red750]

BUT, if you are not likely to travel more than 10 Km per day (shops, doctor, etc.), the other is a lot of money.  If you go for a longer 'run' in a 2nd hand hybrid once in a blue moon and can recharge the battery while running on the ICE, it might just suit your needs AND purse.

[Jerry_Atrick]

 My partner is a mini aficionado, and when her last mini departed to the heavens, we decided a Countryman would be the go, as it is all wheel drive and we have a steep driveway that can get icy.. as well as the "roads" (more like lanes) often get surface flooding after a decent downpour. The flooding could be easily negotiated by a 2wd, but, there have been times where others have stopped and decided to turn back, but we have gone though no worries, even if there were a couple of slips on the way. 

 

We were looking at getting a new one, but when we were looking, they only came in hybrid. A battery in the boot took away a decent amount of boot space for c. 20 mile of range. We had a demo ca for the weekend and in electric, it was fine. But, as we live about 7 or 8 miles from where we needed to take the kids every day, it was not feasible on two counts - first, it would have to be charged in between the morning and afternoon school run. As my partner often goes and does the trips during the day, it would be inevitable that petrol would be kicking in at some stage, anyway. And, my partner is not the sort that would, after getting the kids and shopping in, in the dark evenings in winter we have, with the wind and rain/drizzle, be bothered to go back out and plug in the charger when she knows there is petrol in the tank to take here where she was wanting to go. So we eschewed the extra £10K between the price of the previous petrol only model and the new hybrid model and went for a very low mileage used last of the petrol model. In the end, that saved us £20K of the price of the new.

 

If it were pure electric, with a realistic range of about 200 miles of standard motorway/highway driving, we would have gone for it, as every two weeks, the mini does 170 mile of motorway driving, so would have suited the mission quite well. Unless you are doing < 15 miles a day, it was not worth it. And, if you are travelling < 15 miles a day, then an efficient ICE engine is probably not going to destroy the planet. 

 

Re the Chevy Volt replacement battery costing $29K, I would be really pissed off if it were me. The car is 10 years old and GM have decided to stop making (or licensing, I would suggest) the battery. In other words, they no longer support a car that is only 10 years old. As the car is a hybrid, it is not worthless, but I bet it has depreciated more than one with a working battery. The $2.5k batteries on eBay come with a 60 day warranty.. I am not sure I would be willing to fork out $2.5k for something with a 60 day warranty that is used and may not last to long, anyway. 

 

 

 

 

[facthunter]

Hybrid give you the worst of both Worlds. Short running of ICE will wreck them. ALL the maintenance, cost and extra weight....  It's for the indecisive who don't think deeply about it. Think about it.  Nev

[facthunter]

Bit like the "Flying Car" concept or even a "sea plane" to a lesser extent where you can have big troubles  even after you've landed and shut down  the engine(s).. Nev

[onetrack]

I'm afraid I'm going to be a hold-out on the EV changeover, as I tow a big trailer fairly regularly, I have a traytop diesel Hilux and I'm always transporting goods and materials around.

A lot of places in W.A. are a days drive apart. I did a quick trip to Kalgoorlie about 18mths ago, 600kms there, and 600kms back. I left at 6:00AM and was back at 7:00PM.

It took me half an hour to load up the 2 x 1000L oil tanks, 2 big trestles, plus a pile of smaller miscellaneous items that made up a fair load. I sat on 110kmh most of the day, apart from the dozen towns along the way, where I had to slow down. I couldn't see myself being able to do that trip in any electric ute.

 

The subtle attraction of extremely low fuel cost for EV's is not enough to counter the massive cost of them, for me. I do about 20,000kms annually, and my annual diesel fuel cost is a bit over $3000.

My Hilux (2013 model) cost me just over $15,000 in 2017 with 27,000kms on the clock. I had to build a (steel) tray for it, as I bought it cab-chassis, due to the previous owners having a dedicated service body on it, that they transferred over to their new replacement Hilux. The tray cost me less than $1000 in materials to build, using a mix of new and surplus steel, but it did take me over a month to build.

The advantage in the tray build was being able to build a tray to my own high strength design with RHS steel, not put up with a penny-pinching lightweight commercial alloy tray design.

 

When I move the Hilux on, in probably another 5 years, I reckon I'll still get pretty good money for it. What to replace it with, is going to be the $64 question. I think a lot of other people are in the same position as me, trying to look into that crystal ball, and see what the motoring world will look like, in 5 and 10 years time.

Another angle with EV's is the massive shortfall of good electricians, a lot of EV's will be sitting around waiting to get fixed in 5 and 10 years time.

 

I bought a 2010 Ford Ranger 4WD (diesel) project traytop ute a little while back. An ex-council vehicle, it was a non-runner, with numerous electrical and other "gremlins". I had a go at trying to get it to run and succeeded for a short time, then it stopped again. I have a good little OBDII code reader, but there were no fault codes - typical of ECU's.

It needed the bigger diagnostic Ford workshop analysers - and the technical bulletins that are vital to pinning down faults. So I had to chase up some "professional" repair people.

 

Every single auto electrician I called, couldn't look at the Ford for 3 to 4 weeks, such was their workload. I finally wangled a spot within a week, in a local Ford dealer. First off, they found a broken wire in the engine wiring harness, so that got repaired. Then they found a faulty MAF sensor - yet I had no fault code for the MAF, as the OBD is supposed to find.

 

Then they found a faulty common rail fuel injection high pressure solenoid, so that went in. It still wouldn't run well, so new fuel injectors were on the cards. With 180,000kms on the clock, I reckoned that was fair enough. I managed to pick up a set of 4, low km, guaranteed fuel injectors for $800 in total (as compared to $800 each from Ford). They were installed.

 

The Ford place then got it running, but after leaving it sitting, it took 15 seconds for it to start from hot, and 30 secs from cold. They reckoned it was a possible air leak in the suction side of the fuel system, so they buggered around with it for another day, and reckoned they couldn't find any leak. So they gave it back to me as "fixed". But it wasn't. The slow starting was unacceptable. 

 

In the meantimes, I'd had a good discussion with the young Pommy diesel expert who sold me the low kms injectors. He told me the common problem with the Ford/Mazda diesel with common rail injection, was the relief valve on the back of the common rail, leaking down. This valve has to hold high pressure in the rail for rapid starting over weeks and months.

I bought a new, genuine Bosch relief valve off eBay and installed it myself (it took all of 10 mins) - and the difference in the Ranger was amazing. Instant starts every time.

 

Then my OBD brought up an EGR valve fault code. The EGR valves are notorious for jamming up with accumulated carbon and oil residue. I grabbed a can of Penrite "Foaming Air Intake Cleaner" and gave the engine a good dose of the stuff. The engine promptly ran far better, and I deleted the fault codes, and they haven't returned.

 

Admittedly, a lot of the diesel engine problems with the Ford would not happen with an EV. But the electrical problems can only increase with an EV, and they will get worse with age, and with poor operating environments (floods, salty soils, dust, aged wiring causing deterioration of insulation - and the worst one - rodents chewing wiring!).

Couple that with deteriorating battery performance (they will just keep reducing in range), and the EV world is going to be an interesting scenario.

 

Hopefully, someone will start producing cheap hydrogen, and us diesel aficionados will be able to convert our diesels to hydrogen, and keep going in the brave new world of low pollution.

 

Edited December 25, 2022 by onetrack

[nomadpete]

Clearly even the next gen of ev's won't fulfill your requirements OT.

As regards the shortage of competant automotive diagnostic technicians, that situation will only worsen in the forseeable future - for infernal combustion engines and ev's equally. That is the nature of fast developing technology.

[facthunter]

IF the dealer knows his stuff the fault diagnosis function is critical to positively identify the issue,,but knowledge of the vehicles performance in service is also  part of the picture.  The local Ford dealer  replaced a sensor under warrantee and polished and detailed the "truck"  as well in double quick time even though they'd never seen the vehicle before.

     Councils have accountants who decide doing oil changes doesn't affect  what they  get for a trade in. This is a common attitude making purchasing high mileage vehicles a chancy thing from such a source. Fixed price servicing  encourages the dealer cutting corners on things like oil quality . A mate of mine specialises in EXPENSIVE CARS servicing. Some marque dealers use him. He's seen 80,000 Km  Ferrari's that have not had the original oil filter changed because it's very hard to get to. The owners have still been paying for it though and thinking their Pride and Joy (Chick magnet) is being serviced properly.   Nev

Edited December 25, 2022 by facthunter