How can I get my Nissan Leaf to read this paper? Its range has dropped to 50% of new and a refurbished replacement pack cost 150% the value of the car, which is in otherwise excellent condition. It has only 70k miles.
what is fascinating about your comment to me is thag the value of your car has dropped precisely because people fear battery issues. my friend had a 2015 Tesla S in pristine condition, just a ridiculous car. replaced the battery so now we have 50k miles new battery like-new Tesla S that he could not sell for more than $30k. wild stuff…
even though most people don’t do it, on more expensive cars it actually makes serious financial sense to replace the battery but on cheaper cars it does not!
THIS. The ARIYA is the first EV they've widely released (last year) with any active thermal management. I live in AZ, and all my friends with Leaf's all have had to have their batteries replaced at least once.
All my Chevy based EV/PHEVs have had great battery life (so far) - knock on wood.
I think this is the answer.
That is also a problem for hybrid powers vehicles, the battery is small and it gets charged and discharged 0-100 / 100-0 very often, if you use the hybrid as intended.
Some manufacturers limit this, but in a few years we will see a lot of hybrids that have batteries that barely work and will not deliver the expected ev only distance by a lot.
A lot of Toyota hybrids (but I believe not PHEVs) use NiMH batteries, which are longer lasting than the Li-ion batteries used in EVs and can withstand more charge cycles.
It's unexpected because batteries are rated based on full charge/discharge cycles.
But in reality it's comparatively very rare for those full cycles to happen. People overwhelming drive <40 miles a day and top off the battery regularly.
This has always been true for anyone who knows anything. Batteries rapidly deteriorate from 100%, but the degradation gets slower the more capacity has already been lost.
Even for consumer devices, battery aging and capacity loss is very slow after 70%, and they are exposed to much harsher conditions than EVs (no temp control, daily full cycling, etc).
Very slow degradation after reaching 70% capacity is cold comfort when EV batteries are barely adequate for many people at 100%. EVs typically start with ~300mi range. 70% of that is 210mi. I live in the city, but my parents live ~150mi away from the city along a route that has zero superchargers and only a handful of slow chargers along the way. I couldn't even visit my parents reasonably on a single charge, therefore my next car(s) will be a hybrid. Hybrid sedans can give me the traditional ~600mi range so I can drive from Austin to Ft. Worth and back before filling up a small tank.
Hybrids are great. If they had slightly larger battery range (50ish miles), I'd probably go that route myself. More people should probably be choosing them.
But I think that the situation you are posing: quasi regularly driving a trip that is >100 miles with no ability to charge at all is actually pretty uncommon. And even in your case, since you are driving that far (and visiting family), I assume you are staying overnight. You can get a portable lvl 2 charger for a couple hundred bucks that will plug into a dryer plug and charge your vehicle back to full overnight. (admittedly. this assumes the drive is in ideal conditions and you get the full 210 miles; given where you are going and the apparently lack of infrastructure, if this is mountainous at all, then yeah....very well might not make it)
To me, the issue that actually affects more people is that if you need a family sized vehicle, your options are A) pretty limited and B) almost all >$60,000. For a single person, or a childless couple, EVs are pretty accessible, for families, that's much less true.
There is a ton of infrastructure between Austin and Ft. Worth, it’s almost a contiguous city at this point. And there are no mountains in the vast majority of Texas, it’s very flat. There are a lot of chargers on that route, not sure what OP is talking about.
I totally missed that they had actually specified the route, and was just commenting on a generic one (which is why I guess it might be mountainous, definitely places in the West where you can drive >100 miles without charging infrastructure....just also not many people to visit).
That's fair. I was basically taking my family's "worst case" scenario (10+ hour drive, 2 kids, 2 dogs, + luggage) and assuming that was typical, when in actuality that's probably as rare a situation as the one I was replying to. We can, just barely, make our current vehicle + roofrack work with 1 kid and 2 dogs when we visit my parents, but since we are planning a second kid, we are looking around for something larger.
For anyone not trying do to both kids + dogs, there are probably a lot more options.
Temple Buccees has a supercharger, as do many other places. Still, Texas is not a great place for EVs. Everything’s so far apart. Instead of a Hybrid, how about a PHEV or an EV with a range extender? The problem with hybrids is they have all of the complexity of an ICE as their main drivetrain, whereas an EV drivetrain is much simpler, more powerful and more reliable. If you can get a vehicle where the gas / diesel is just there as a power plant for the EV, you get the best of all worlds, plus the gas engine can run at peak efficiency which gives you better fuel economy and if the ICE has issues you can still drive with just the EV part.
We have a Volkswagen e-Up with a max range of maybe 150 miles, we drive it every day with longer trips on the weekends and I literally never even had to charge it outside of home in the few years I owned it.
This was always "expected" by people in the know ever since the Model S came out in 2012 and there was real world data on cars with 100K+ miles.
Didn't stop the oil lobby anti-EV myths from spreading far and wide. And now both political factions hate EVs so expect even more people to continue to think batteries die in a few years.
EV companies wouldn't be warranting the battery degradation for hundreds of thousands of miles and several years if batteries died easily.
A significant fraction of people have now actually driven them. It's going to be increasingly tough to tell spooky stories about EVs when your neighbor/friend/coworker has been driving one uneventfully for 4 years.
How can I get my Nissan Leaf to read this paper? Its range has dropped to 50% of new and a refurbished replacement pack cost 150% the value of the car, which is in otherwise excellent condition. It has only 70k miles.
what is fascinating about your comment to me is thag the value of your car has dropped precisely because people fear battery issues. my friend had a 2015 Tesla S in pristine condition, just a ridiculous car. replaced the battery so now we have 50k miles new battery like-new Tesla S that he could not sell for more than $30k. wild stuff…
even though most people don’t do it, on more expensive cars it actually makes serious financial sense to replace the battery but on cheaper cars it does not!
> a refurbished replacement pack cost 150% the value of the car
When I researched evs, I couldn't make the economics make sense. 7 years for a car lifetime seems outrageous.
The economics of that seems solid to me. If the battery is bad in year 7 it's replaced under warranty.
Where do you get 7 years? That is not true of most EV. Even the worst ones, like the early Leafs did better than that.
Since the Leaf has a smaller battery, it get's more wear and tear per trip.
It also lacks active thermal management. That's more or less a requirement for long battery life.
THIS. The ARIYA is the first EV they've widely released (last year) with any active thermal management. I live in AZ, and all my friends with Leaf's all have had to have their batteries replaced at least once.
All my Chevy based EV/PHEVs have had great battery life (so far) - knock on wood.
I think this is the answer. That is also a problem for hybrid powers vehicles, the battery is small and it gets charged and discharged 0-100 / 100-0 very often, if you use the hybrid as intended.
Some manufacturers limit this, but in a few years we will see a lot of hybrids that have batteries that barely work and will not deliver the expected ev only distance by a lot.
Not only that, those small batteries do cost a disproportionate amount of money to replace.
If you want a real world opinion, check the EVClinic blog…
A lot of Toyota hybrids (but I believe not PHEVs) use NiMH batteries, which are longer lasting than the Li-ion batteries used in EVs and can withstand more charge cycles.
It's unexpected because batteries are rated based on full charge/discharge cycles.
But in reality it's comparatively very rare for those full cycles to happen. People overwhelming drive <40 miles a day and top off the battery regularly.
This has always been true for anyone who knows anything. Batteries rapidly deteriorate from 100%, but the degradation gets slower the more capacity has already been lost.
Even for consumer devices, battery aging and capacity loss is very slow after 70%, and they are exposed to much harsher conditions than EVs (no temp control, daily full cycling, etc).
Even for consumer devices, battery aging and capacity loss is very slow after 70%,
My laptop, power tools and iphone beg to differ....
> This has always been true for anyone who knows anything
Not sure that's true. I have seen comments on HN multiple times over the years claiming batteries die in a few years and were almost never downvoted.
This might not be quite as strong a rebuttal as you were hoping for!
HN downvotes are not signal for truth, just popularity.
Very slow degradation after reaching 70% capacity is cold comfort when EV batteries are barely adequate for many people at 100%. EVs typically start with ~300mi range. 70% of that is 210mi. I live in the city, but my parents live ~150mi away from the city along a route that has zero superchargers and only a handful of slow chargers along the way. I couldn't even visit my parents reasonably on a single charge, therefore my next car(s) will be a hybrid. Hybrid sedans can give me the traditional ~600mi range so I can drive from Austin to Ft. Worth and back before filling up a small tank.
Hybrids are great. If they had slightly larger battery range (50ish miles), I'd probably go that route myself. More people should probably be choosing them.
But I think that the situation you are posing: quasi regularly driving a trip that is >100 miles with no ability to charge at all is actually pretty uncommon. And even in your case, since you are driving that far (and visiting family), I assume you are staying overnight. You can get a portable lvl 2 charger for a couple hundred bucks that will plug into a dryer plug and charge your vehicle back to full overnight. (admittedly. this assumes the drive is in ideal conditions and you get the full 210 miles; given where you are going and the apparently lack of infrastructure, if this is mountainous at all, then yeah....very well might not make it)
To me, the issue that actually affects more people is that if you need a family sized vehicle, your options are A) pretty limited and B) almost all >$60,000. For a single person, or a childless couple, EVs are pretty accessible, for families, that's much less true.
There is a ton of infrastructure between Austin and Ft. Worth, it’s almost a contiguous city at this point. And there are no mountains in the vast majority of Texas, it’s very flat. There are a lot of chargers on that route, not sure what OP is talking about.
I totally missed that they had actually specified the route, and was just commenting on a generic one (which is why I guess it might be mountainous, definitely places in the West where you can drive >100 miles without charging infrastructure....just also not many people to visit).
As someone with two kids, a Model Y or a Mach E are very reasonable vehicles for a family. Both are under $60k.
That's fair. I was basically taking my family's "worst case" scenario (10+ hour drive, 2 kids, 2 dogs, + luggage) and assuming that was typical, when in actuality that's probably as rare a situation as the one I was replying to. We can, just barely, make our current vehicle + roofrack work with 1 kid and 2 dogs when we visit my parents, but since we are planning a second kid, we are looking around for something larger.
For anyone not trying do to both kids + dogs, there are probably a lot more options.
Temple Buccees has a supercharger, as do many other places. Still, Texas is not a great place for EVs. Everything’s so far apart. Instead of a Hybrid, how about a PHEV or an EV with a range extender? The problem with hybrids is they have all of the complexity of an ICE as their main drivetrain, whereas an EV drivetrain is much simpler, more powerful and more reliable. If you can get a vehicle where the gas / diesel is just there as a power plant for the EV, you get the best of all worlds, plus the gas engine can run at peak efficiency which gives you better fuel economy and if the ICE has issues you can still drive with just the EV part.
We have a Volkswagen e-Up with a max range of maybe 150 miles, we drive it every day with longer trips on the weekends and I literally never even had to charge it outside of home in the few years I owned it.
Not everyone's use case is the same.
Discussion (33 points, 3 days ago, 14 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42207110
This is why I opted for a hybrid Camry over a new Tesla. I kept my previous car for 13yrs and still sold it for $11k.
After break pads, another good news I see :)
This was always "expected" by people in the know ever since the Model S came out in 2012 and there was real world data on cars with 100K+ miles.
Didn't stop the oil lobby anti-EV myths from spreading far and wide. And now both political factions hate EVs so expect even more people to continue to think batteries die in a few years.
EV companies wouldn't be warranting the battery degradation for hundreds of thousands of miles and several years if batteries died easily.
> And now both political factions hate EVs
A significant fraction of people have now actually driven them. It's going to be increasingly tough to tell spooky stories about EVs when your neighbor/friend/coworker has been driving one uneventfully for 4 years.
2014 Tesla S, 80k miles, battery still getting me 230 range - not too much drop off.
99% of charges are at supercharger (which is also not supposed to be good for the battery)