Friday 28 January 2022

ELECTRIC VEHICLE BUYERS BE WARE!!

 This article should be a warning to anyone tempted to buy an electric vehicle:

Mercedes owner ‘horrified’ new battery will cost him £15,000 – more than the car is worth | NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT (wordpress.com)

So be sensible and avoid them!

10 comments:

  1. How much does it cost to replace a Tesla battery? In April 2019, Musk claimed replacing the battery modules — not the complete pack — of a Tesla Model 3 will cost between $5,000 and $7,000.Oct 21, 2021

    Tesla battery life, replacement costs, and the solution to EV's ...




    FUD fear uncertainty doubt. I own an electric car. It is a Tesla Model S that I picked up used. My energy costs are 1/3 that of a gasoline car. Plug in every night and I leave the garage for the day with 80% in the battery bank. Being that it is recemmended not to go below 20% frequently, occasional dip into the territory is ok as long as the car is charged up right away. The car is very comfortable, performs wonderfully in the throttle, and is a really great drive. The battery bank is predicted to go 300,000 miles with 80% remaining. That outlasts about 98% of the ICE vehicles out there. Firehazard favors the electric car at 11 to 1. The electric car is the car of choice economically, sustainably, and in performance on the road.

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  2. EV's are still currently significantly more expensive to buy new than a petrol or diesel equivalent. The article in the link shows the experience of a Mercedes owner. There are still well known problems with finding a charging point at present. It is ok for someone who only does local journeys and has their own charging point. My concern is that they will be difficult to sell, as the battery will become less efficient and very costly to replace. Do not believe the figures for battery life or distance given by the manufacturers! Motoring is going to become a lot more expensive. It will also be much more awkward for those millions who do not have an off road parking space where they can have their own charging point. Also, if they do become the major type of vehicle there is the real fear that the grid will not be able to cope, leading to rationing. At the moment with a tiny percentage of EVs it is just a rich man's toy.

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  3. I am an experienced electric car driver. I have been driving electric for 6 and 1/2 years now. you can look up on the internet all the Tesla Chargers in the world. All you have to do is get to the next charger if you are taking a trip. Tesla has done very well with spacing out chargers across the United States.

    The other interesting part is you charge at home. This is not filling up with gas at a station for your complete travel needs. A full battery bank every morning awaits you. I did not buy either of my electric cars at full price. Used electric cars are quite affordable.

    I can tell you don't drive electric and are therefore inexperienced.

    As far as the grid goes, home charging is easily set up with a timer in the car when to charge. Utilities can easily provide incentives to charge at night when electric usage is low. Utilities can lower the cost of electricity to get charging in balance with the grid capacity.

    And then, it cheaper to own an electric over a gas car. Electricity is cheaper than gas and the electric car is 4 times more efficient than gasoline.

    It comes out a win for battery cars over gas.

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  4. You are right I do not have any experience of owning or driving an electric car. But the life expectancy of the battery seems to be an important issue when looking at second-hand purchase. Surely it is bound to affect the value as replacements are so costly, as my linked article shows.

    Electricity prices are rising steeply here in the UK. I gather they are cheaper in the USA, though I understand there is great variability from state to state, with California the most expensive. As far as efficiency is concerned, you have to take into account the fact that converting any form of energy into electricity is inefficient and costly. The wind may be "free" but the cost of wind turbines is not. Fossil fuels still produce the cheapest electricity as can be seen across the world.

    On the fire safety issue, take a look at this: EV Fires

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  5. EV fires: Tesla statistics are 11 gas car fires to 1 battery car fire.

    My used model S is 90 mpge. The comparable car to mine is 19 mpg. I am 4.5 times more efficient. That is where the battery car is king.

    Natural gas is soaring in price all over Europe now and even going up in the states. The sooner you get off natural gas, the less Russia will be a thorn in your side including ours. That can be done with 100% renewable energy. This would be energy security. Everyone in the world can be at 100% RE. No need for energy wars when this happens.


    Gas is 5.79 per gallon in Britain,, from the internet converting yours over to mine. Gas is at best 20% efficient in a reciprocating engine. Electric motors by themselves in a Tesla are on average about 95% efficient.

    The gas efficiency has hit a wall and cannot really get better.

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  6. LFP is lithium iron phosphate battery. As far as longevity goes, LFP has a 10000 cycle battery life. Which is huge.

    The lithium nickel cobalt aluminum battery is expected to go 300,000 to 500,000 miles with 80% origonal capacity remaining.

    THe LFP should go even farther. This outlasts the gas car quite easily.

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  7. You have great faith in batteries, but they have some serious disadvantages. They are very expensive. They are slow to charge up compared to filling a gas tank. They have a relatively low range in practice, when using heaters, lights, etc and climbing hills. There are still very few EVs here in the UK for theses reasons.

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  8. This morning I drove to a house to snow blow the mans driveway. I drove over in my electric car, snow blowed his driveway with batteries and returned home on batteries. I charge up at home and have a full charge every morning. In the states Biden now has a program that will put 7.5 billion into chargers.


    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/06/uk-carmakers-report-booming-sales-of-electric-vehicles


    Carmakers report booming UK sales of electric vehicles
    Around 190,000 battery electric cars were sold amid disruption to global supply chains

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  9. https://cleantechnica.com/2022/02/04/uk-drivers-cut-fuel-costs-69-switching-to-evs-from-petrol-diesel-cars/



    I was waiting for an article relative the Britain's experience with electric vehicles. The interesting point for the article is that electrics vs fossil fuels. Costs favor the electrics in fuel consumption hands down. Scroll down to see the chart and it is very informative.

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  10. The comments on this article are interesting. Some posts have estimated that the car has done 100k miles when the battery has ‘failed’, also that batteries gradually reduce usefulness not stop, especially on a hybrid which can just drive normally anyway, that the replacement cost is from Merc who also charge £200 per hour labour so hardly a cost effective option and if there are no other options in the market presently, that’s the risk of ‘early adoption’ and it will change as the problem becomes more common.

    I bought a 2nd hand VW e-golf and that has a 100k, 8 year battery warranty (that range won’t be less than 80% of new). I calculated the savings I was making on fuel (driving lots of miles) and the car would be paid off long before that sort of mileage, so the risk was low, I decided. In reality, market value for 2nd hand EVs meant I actually made a profit selling the car 2 years later. 🤷🏼‍♂️

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