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Sales of electric cars up by 43% in 2020

theguardian.com

161–170 of 519 posts

Re: Sales of electric cars up by 43% in 2020

#161

I’ll be interested to see the lifespan of EVs for “normal” people. I’ve got a 2012 Nissan LEAF we bought post-lease in 2015. I love it still, and don’t have any plans to replace it. The battery is not in great shape, but it gets me where I need to go. I am genuinely considering replacing the battery rather than buying another EV when the battery finally fails.

The only cars having actual battery issues so far are older Leafs (shit thermal management for the battery) and Priuses (they're just old). No other EV has had major battery issues yet, so there really hasn't been time to develop a viable 3rd party battery replacement industry. Even the actual car manufacturers tend to quote insane prices for full battery replacements because they really don't have a process in place…

Some older Model S with 60kWh batteries also experience problems (slow acceleration, limited fast charging). The degradation is nowhere near as bad as the old Leafs, though.

Re: Sales of electric cars up by 43% in 2020

#162
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a local problem just because it's not a European problem. Plenty of countries don't have that reliable electricity.

SoCal is the exception and not the norm as a develop country with enough wealth to afford electric cars while having a non reliable electric grid. Most of the other countries with unreliable electric grid are not very much into the brand new premium electric cars market.

That's true, but I think most of North America has unreliable power grids.

In 2 years living in Canada I experienced 6 blackouts. In 28 years living in Germany I've experienced 3.

Re: Sales of electric cars up by 43% in 2020

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I suspect it syncs with the grids 60hz...) Yeah, that's the actual reason. I've seen someone use a small Honda generator to generate the frequency required to trick the solar generator into going... it's a weird setup because you basically tie in your generator using a breaker, so both generator and solar can be enabled at the same time.

That sounds borderline stupid, is there a technical reason you can't just generate the "clock" internally? Do most of the devices require grid AC?

It's a safety reason. If the company disconnect the grid upstream to work on it, and your house is still powering it, they have a problem. You need extra equipment to automatically disconnect the house from the grid too.

Re: Sales of electric cars up by 43% in 2020

#164

'Global sales' I hope everyone understands in China it is very hard to get a licence plate, the government allows you to get a licence plate if you buy a heavily subsidised electric car. The aim is to stimulate demand to develop an industry. Large cities also banned motorbikes and scooters, with the same aim. This is no way market driven demand, BYD is a very interesting company to look into. It is my understanding t…

Bullshit anti-China post. Electric vehicles sales are rising across the board, not just in autocratic China.

Calm down. If anything the post speaks to how forward looking China is with electric incentives. If anything it’s anti-electric (implying subsidies are driving most demand), not anti-China.

Re: Sales of electric cars up by 43% in 2020

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at this time. Charging in 2-5 minutes for 300 miles of range is still 5-10 years away, and is likely to cause accelerated wear on the battery pack. Also charging locations will be more difficult as you now need to supply 1 megawatt per station rather than the 120-250kW you need now. The charging station will likely need to charge your car from a bigger battery at the station as power companies are not fans of peo…

The Semi charger will probably be in the megawatt range on account of the larger battery. What will it take to power a truck stop with 100 chargers? Nuclear reactor maybe?

1.21 Jiggawatts, Mr. Fusion.

Re: Sales of electric cars up by 43% in 2020

#166

One thing I keep getting tripped up on with EV cars is the usability during an emergency. I grew up in SoCal when there were rolling black-outs. Just this week, a windstorm took out my parent’s power for 3 days. I don’t view electricity to be as reliable as gas. What fact am I missing that can change my view on this?

Buy a backup generator. It can both charge your car and power your house in an outage.

Re: Sales of electric cars up by 43% in 2020

#167
post #93
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An EV inverter for $200 can allow your car to power your refrigerator + router/phone/laptops for many hours (days for a LR Tesla).

A powerwall has what, 12ish KW usable (less in reality) which a single one can power a house for for up to a day if you're careful about what you're using. If you scale that up to the 75KW+ batteries being put into EVs today buying an inverter could be a good investment if you live in an area with frequent power outages (or a cabin or whatnot). There was also some talk about Teslas being able to send power back to th…

AFAIK there are other makers that are also ready for this. I seem to remember that the Leaf is.

What I think will be the hard part of including cars into the grid is the warranty issues. I.e. if a battery gets so much usage from the grid that it somehow gets broken or worn out, who should take that cost/ risk?

Re: Sales of electric cars up by 43% in 2020

#168
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a local problem just because it's not a European problem. Plenty of countries don't have that reliable electricity.

SoCal is the exception and not the norm as a develop country with enough wealth to afford electric cars while having a non reliable electric grid. Most of the other countries with unreliable electric grid are not very much into the brand new premium electric cars market.

Can confirm this is true for Australia. We frequently have outages and the network is in shambles.

Just to make sure, rather than provide any incentives (there are NONE) we're going to introduce extra taxes for EVs to make up for lost fuel excise taxes, which contrary to popular belief doesn't pay for our roads.

I guess the minimalist (by Norwegian standards) yet growing sales numbers in spite of our soaring electricity costs and Zero CO² taxes on ICEs (they're eg 40% in Norway) must be scaring the fossil fuel sponsored politicians (both Libs and Labor alike).

Yep, whiskey tango foxtrot indeed.

Re: Sales of electric cars up by 43% in 2020

#169

'Global sales' I hope everyone understands in China it is very hard to get a licence plate, the government allows you to get a licence plate if you buy a heavily subsidised electric car. The aim is to stimulate demand to develop an industry. Large cities also banned motorbikes and scooters, with the same aim. This is no way market driven demand, BYD is a very interesting company to look into. It is my understanding t…

> If a large part of the consumer sector is driven by electric powered by local sources (coal, hydro, nuclear)...

Didn't they have rolling blackouts in China earlier this month, due to a trade-spat with Australia + their reliance on their (our) coal?

Re: Sales of electric cars up by 43% in 2020

#170
post #112

'Global sales' I hope everyone understands in China it is very hard to get a licence plate, the government allows you to get a licence plate if you buy a heavily subsidised electric car. The aim is to stimulate demand to develop an industry. Large cities also banned motorbikes and scooters, with the same aim. This is no way market driven demand, BYD is a very interesting company to look into. It is my understanding t…

Electric car sales are up in Germany by similar amounts. Completely without any force applied. The same in many European countries.

https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/transport/vehicles/cars_...
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