The problem with the battery pack serviceability are proprietary technology and lack of standardisation, making fixing and getting replacement parts hard. Also a lot of closed source software contributes to this. This could change in the future, though.
I don’t know this is significantly different than modern engines. They require special tools and software too.
The bigger issue I think is most of the cars are teslas, which didn’t behave like a normal automaker for better or worse. For example the work done during the pandemic to avoid supply chain crunches may result in a maintenance headache a few years from now.
I encourage you to try driving one. Even if you don't care about the possibilities for improved energy efficiency and reduced pollution, or don't care for the latest technology, the driving experience is wonderful. Instant power, smooth, quiet. Up here in Canada it's even better: no spending 10 minutes for it to warm up - about 60 seconds before it's blowing hot air and otherwise no need to warm up an engine. I've driven older manual vehicles for two decades, but after two years driving an EV I never want to go back.
Even if the driving experience is better, the charging infrastructure isn’t there yet. Outside SuperChsrgers, the stations are of inconsistent quality/availability. And if you don’t own a garage/driveway, you don’t get the one big upside - topping up at home.
I completely agree, but that's something that will change over time, especially as more people have EVs. Consider what it was like when the first ICEs came out: there weren't gas stations every mile like there is today; they popped up more often as more people had more vehicles and drove them further. The same will happen with EV charging stations.
I'll be the first to admit that the infrastructure is lacking. I live in the Canadian prairies. There are only a few cities and there are towns every 10-20 minutes apart. Every town has a gas station (if they are open when you are driving through), but the same can't be said for charging stations. Thankfully there are enough stations for me to drive anywhere from Edmonton to Winnipeg without getting stranded, but only just. In two years of ownership over yet to run into a situation where the only chargers are all down, and I've only once seen a single machine that is down. Many of the stations are about 100km apart and my vehicle's range is practically 250km (from 90% to 20%), down to 200km in winter. It also doesn't help that within Saskatchewan almost all of those charges are the original 50kW, meaning it takes about an hour to charge every two hours of driving. It's definitely at the early adopter stage. But my car is capable of charging at 227kW. Stopping at a more modern 200kW charger it only takes 15 minutes - that's just enough time to use the washroom and grab a snack. Even with the 50kW charges all I end up doing is sitting down for a quick burger or sandwich. I don't mind the every two hours part at all; even with my ICE I would stop everyone two hours for washroom and a stretch and a snack, and that takes 15 minutes anyway.
Having home charging definitely makes a huge difference. I never fast charge unless traveling to see family. Within the city I plug it in at home every few days just to top it up. The efficiency really shows itself in the city. In my area the winters are cold enough that everybody plus in their cars to keep their engine block warm. Availability is universal at homes, including apartment buildings. Using even 120V charging is practical at these places and that's plenty to keep a vehicle topped up for daily city driving. Still, I won't deny that at-home level 2 driving really makes it a painless experience.
As far as practically today, I agree, it's not easy for everyone just yet. As far as the general sentiment that EVs are worse vehicles, I encourage people to try driving one. The people who think they are slow and weak couldn't be any more wrong. My lowly SUV has the power and torque of a large truck, but without the noise and smoke. I absolutely love driving it and I never want to go back.
I expect that as more people have them, infrastructure will follow and that will make them even more accessible to more people. That's just how new technologies work. EVs are just at the point of crossing the chasm as they say. It won't be long until they are commonplace. Vehicle manufacturers are already going all in.
The driving experience has some advantages - fast pickup, low center of gravity but the overall experience is far from wonderful. The build quality of a tesla specifically is horrendous - like a chevy malibu or worse. The controls are _awful_ as they lack buttons or door handles or a steering wheel. Highly unsafe to drive. Everything is enshitified to benefit the manufacturer. Nevermind the absolute lack of privacy and the redefinition of 'ownership' that seems to be bundled with 'EV', where you both purchase and subscribe to heated seats, cruise control, GPS or whatever else. The gaps between panels are not uniform or aligned. Zero consideration for repairability or replacement of body panels such that repair bills are through the roof (cybertruck not even insurable on many carriers). Endless recalls. Waiting an hour to fill your gas tank when an ICE takes 2 minutes. The list goes on. Yet the tesla envy is so strong that every other manufacturer just apes tesla such that much of the above is present on every single EV whether tesla or not. EVs at present feel like products worth $10-15k if. China seems to get this - they're inferior products but at 1/3 to 1/4 the price the value prop starts to make sense.
Agreed. Tesla makes the worst EVs out there, which really sullies the perception of EVs. I've test driven both a Model 3 and a Model S and I've never had such a bad driving experience. Everything is hidden: How do you unlock the doors? How do you turn it on? How do you put it in drive? Everything is hidden behind a terrible UI on a glorified tablet. There were no backup cameras - instead, it showed some wiggly outline of the curb that would come and go at random. Once on the road, the accelerator felt like jelly - slow to respond, required a lot of travel, and had a strangely nonlinear curve. The blind spots were unbelievable. The "yoke" was even worse - I couldn't access the turn signal while turning! I couldn't imagine a worse driving experience and I've driven some absolute breakers over the years.
I have owned two EVs: a 2020 Hyundai Kona and a 2022 Hyundai Ioniq 5. I only switched because I had my heart set on the Ioniq 5 and only bought the Kona because the Ioniq 5 was really hard to find.
My Kona was exactly the same as the ICE version, just with an EV conversion. The interior and controls were identical. All of the EV specific stuff just replaced the ICE equivalent in the instrument cluster. Yes, it had an infotainment system and you could control a bunch more stuff from there, but that's true of all new vehicles. That Kona was the perfect example of how EVs don't have to be any different than the familiar ICE. Anyone could just get in and drive without even knowing it was an SUV.
My IONIQ 5 is certainly different - that's part of the appeal - but that's largely only in the exterior aesthetics. The controls and driving are still exactly like a regular ICE. They have adopted the full LCD panel instrument cluster, but again, many new ICEs have. Steering wheel, stalks, accelerator and brakes - they are all designed to feel just like the familiar automatic transmission. The only difference in controls is that the "transmission" control is now also on a stalk, since there's no need for it to be down on the center console. The default drive mode is set to feel just like driving an automatic with the same amount of delay and ramp up in power and the slight engine braking. Press a button and now it's full EV - instant response, no engine braking - it's the ideal race car that does exactly what you ask without imposing mechanical restrictions. It's truly a unique experience in a good way.
Elon Musk certainly doesn't help. His push for different for different's sake, trying to convince everyone that EVs will change the world, pressuring governments to let him bypass regulations and workers' rights, and his quickly declining sanity really hurt the image of EVs, since he is the image of Tesla and Tesla is the image of EVs.
I sincerely look forward to a future where the traditional automotive manufacturers become a large part of the EV market and some semblance of standardization and normalcy returns to the automotive world.
Very core parts of modern cars are essentially single use. Older engines could have the cylinders resurfaced or bored and sleeved. Newer engines have coatings and construction methods that disallow this. One scratched cylinder is now the end of a whole engine given the various matched parts that can’t be swapped block to block.
In the standard case this doesn’t matter as things last a long time inside an engine. The same is probably true for EVs.
When things go wrong all the repairability issues mean you’re out a car unless you’re willing to invest in repair. Is a 30K car worth a 20K repair bill? The Audi service department is happy to walk you to the sales department if not.
You can rebuild modern engines by boring out the block and installing a sleeve of the same block material and coating material, it’s just a lot more expensive. For a valuable car like a Porsche 911 this is typically done- the sleeves alone will cost 5-10k: https://lnengineering.com/porsche-996-997-987-3-4-or-3-6-96m...
Alusil sleeve job ~$4K for 6 cylinder, BUT you can go ~$1500 cast iron sleeves.
Mahle manufactures those sleeves in Poland https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GgPPIZHl-c always surprising to see how they "season" new parts by letting them rust in open air to relieve casting stresses. There is a good story about BMW racing engines being build from selected used blocks just sitting rusting away behind factory building for years.
Thank you! My daily driver is an early Boxster and this is great info on the Alusil. However, general advice I’ve seen on forums is that the iron sleeves don’t last in Porsche engines. The idea of sleeving with dissimilar metals sounds like a bad engineering idea as there will be constant relative motion with heating and cooling, and a galvinic cell near coolant passages.
This particular job from video was 996. In another video shop owner mentioned Alusil goes on most of them over >$100K range and iron sleeves will last at least that long. With iron sleeves you need different pistons/rings to match expansion rate.
It's a very controversial topic in the Porsche community, but overall it seems like the people that really know what they are doing and build reliable good running engines avoid the iron sleeves (e.g. https://flat6innovations.com/cylinder-bore-scoring/). Like you said- it requires using loose clearances which makes for a noisy, oil burning, short lived, and low performance engine... not what you want in a Porsche.
The factory coatings do fail in some cases- usually in specific engine configurations with issues, but very often last 300k+ miles... on the smaller bore M96 engines cylinder/coating failures are almost unheard of, even with very high mileage and lots of hard track use. Personally, I'll just stick with the smaller bore engines, and in the unlikely event it fails get a good used block where the factory coating is still intact. There's tons of the 2.7 and 3.2 M96 Boxster engines out there still running great with 300k+ miles, and you can buy a good used one for a few grand.
>Like you said- it requires using loose clearances which makes for a noisy, oil burning, short lived, and low performance engine... not what you want in a Porsche.
Thats opposite of what I said :) Only the startup noise applies, but lets not pretend M96 sound great :)
When something becomes veblen good logic goes out the window. >$100K 30 year old car restorations arent meant to make them peak performers, it becomes matched numbers everything as factory wankfest for cars sitting in a collection or driven only occasionally on the weekends. There is very little incentive doing cheap repair when everyone believes in expensive ones.
>There's tons of the 2.7 and 3.2 M96 Boxster engines out there still running great with 300k+ miles, and you can buy a good used one for a few grand.
Wanna bet they all have scored cylinders? :) Same goes for BMW Nikasil, no such thing as cheap used block with intact coating.
An electric motor is dirt cheap compared to the ingenuity of an ICE. The battery is expensive because it’s a lot of mass of peculiar rare earths, but motors aren’t.
> The battery is expensive because it’s a lot of mass of peculiar rare earths, but motors aren’t.
It's the other way about. Batteries in Chinese cars are mostly lithium iron phosphate. Not a lot of rare earths there. The motors are mostly permanent magnet motors and they definitely do have rare earths.
But anyway the name rare earths is mostly a misnomer, they aren't especially rare, less so than gold, copper, etc. They are just not conveniently located for extraction.
The batteries are expensive simply because the replacement battery market is not yet a large low risk mature market. This is in part because the batteries are lasting longer than most people, the manufacturers included, expected.
In the context of the motor alone, those don't fail.
The circuits driving it probably have a higher failure rate, but we've gotten so good at manufacturing electrical circuits it still seems much easier and cheaper than a mechanical engine.
In theory yes, but electric motors can be very complex in much the same way that ICE engines can be. Batteries of the kind used in modern EVs are single-use and far too expensive and dangerous to service. The level of effort required to maintain an EV past 20 years will be way higher than that required to maintain an ICE car that long. Very few ICE parts have a limited shelf life, and the ones that do are either consumable or else easily substituted such as rubber seals and belts.
This analysis is really just relevant for cars that someone would want to keep well-maintained for 20+ years at significant expense. Most EVs are boring so I don't expect them to be in that category either. But if you did really get attached to one, you might have to rebuild it from scratch with totally different internals to keep it going, and it would only look like the original on the outside.
I’ve replaced three engines in the past ~15 years. The first was caused by a head bolt over-torqued from the factory, which led to a non-visible gasket failure and ultimately coolant making its way into the cylinders and destroying the block. The second was a failed pistol skirt. The third seized due to a manufacturing defect in a cam bearing.
All of those problems would have been cheaper and easier to fix in a 1980s-era vehicle. The oldest of these was a 2000, though, and it was cheaper to replace the entire engine than it would have been to buy the parts to repair them.
That doesn’t even include labor - and the labor required for many things these days is much higher than it once was.
Yup, this exactly. I don’t think engine failures are particularly common but I have had a few friends quoted roughly what their cars are worth to rebuild the engine from a new block or about 1/3 to replace the engine with a manufactured unit. Mostly Japanese and Korean cars.
I guess the $10k service bill for just changing a water pump in an Audi won’t impress you. Mercifully for me this 40K Mile time bomb went off under warranty. In a sibling comment they’re talking about getting a deal on cylinder sleeves for $6,000. In 2005 I had a top end rebuild done for $1200. I am 100% not spouting BS, times have just changed.
Shop fees and hours are very expensive for repair. When basic repairs involve disassembling the entire front of the car they add up. This is why YouTube mechanics often just drop an engine subframe and get an alignment after.
Third party mechanics don’t get access to all the tools and software anymore. VAG decided to increase the pain by requiring a license fee to access alignment information from next year onward for Audi, Porsche, and other brands.
Normally for anything I won’t wrench myself I’m happy enough with Pepboys service but increasingly they have to turn me away because they lack the tooling, software, or expertise for a job, and we’re no where near talking about machining an engine.
Rebuilding that damaged engine needs a specialty shop. They’re not just spinning a bore hone on a drill anymore. Coupled with overall improved designs and there just isn’t the same market for the work that there used to be.
The difference is, ICE car parts don't generally require replacement of everything at once. They can be made by 3rd parties, and defective parts usually break in boring ways. Batteries have none of these nice properties. You have to change the whole thing at once, it requires proprietary high tech to make a compatible battery, and any defect could burn down your house or a parking garage with unextinguishable metal fires. Yikes!
It is possible for an EV to be serviced and remain operable for long enough to become an antique, but no modern EVs are built that way. Most modern ICE cars aren't built that way either but they have a much better chance at longevity because their parts don't really have a limited shelf life, and there is a large aftermarket for many of them.
All three of those properties do apply to a Nissan Leaf. There are third party batteries and you can replace individual cells. But the lack of integrated cooling that enables this means the battery doesn't last. Better to get a car where the battery lasts the life of the vehicle.
> defective parts usually break in boring ways
I think this is far more true on an EV than an ICE. Batteries generally fail very predictably and are generally still usable even when degraded.
>There are third party batteries and you can replace individual cells.
I think one could argue this but the fact is that any one of those cells can destroy the battery, giving you thousands of little time bombs stacked on top of each other. The labor to change one cell is also approximately as much as to change the entire battery on any EV, and labor is a huge part of the cost of replacement. Nobody is going to take an EV apart to just change one cell. On the other hand, people do often take whole engines apart to change seals that cost $20.
>But the lack of integrated cooling that enables this means the battery doesn't last. Better to get a car where the battery lasts the life of the vehicle.
Better to not get an EV if you want it to last or even be a collector's item. "Life of the vehicle" can mean "practically as long as you feel like fixing it" if the design is good.
> Batteries generally fail very predictably and are generally still usable even when degraded.
We don't know how unstable these EV batteries will become in 10, 20, or 50 years. An ICE car would not explode or burn down after such a long period, even with the heaviest use and abuse. But an EV can easily do so. Then there are the flooding and accident risks. I am seriously nervous having old lithium batteries in my house inside of old consumer gadgets, and those are tiny. EV batteries magnify that problem 1000x.
> Nobody is going to take an EV apart to just change one cell. On the other hand, people do often take whole engines apart to change seals that cost $20.
Hobbyists regularly do both. Professionals charge thousands to do either.
> Better to not get an EV if you want it to last or even be a collector's item. "Life of the vehicle" can mean "practically as long as you feel like fixing it" if the design is good.
Neither are going to be a straightforward to keep running 50 years from now as a car from the seventies, but a Tesla is going to be far easier to keep running for 50 years than a modern gasoline car. 1/10th the number of moving parts, far less wiring, far fewer computers, far fewer part count, et cetera, far less regular maintenance, et cetera.
> We don't know how unstable these EV batteries will become in 10, 20, or 50 years
Yes we do.
> An ICE car would not explode or burn down after such a long period, even with the heaviest use and abuse.
Yes they do, and at a higher frequency than electric cars do.
> I am seriously nervous having old lithium batteries in my house inside of old consumer gadgets, and those are tiny. EV batteries magnify that problem 1000x.
No they're not. EV batteries are properly managed, unlike random gadgets. They're safer, not more dangerous.
I wish I had put this in my other reply. Here is a guy trying to fix used Teslas that are only a couple of years old: https://youtube.com/watch?v=5rwEIo-PWP0 If it's that difficult and expensive now, how much more so will it be in 50 years? Even the door locks are overcomplicated. When that central computer or display goes out and the only ones available are from wrecks, and you don't have the software to install them, good luck with all that. So much for "less moving parts" lol
>Hobbyists regularly do both. Professionals charge thousands to do either.
Hobbyists are also building cars that run on steam power. I did not mean literally nobody is taking EV cars apart to change one cell. But it is actually very dumb to do so, and it makes zero sense to do professionally given the tremendous liability and expense involved. Taking an ICE apart to change rubber seals might cost a few thousand. And the car cannot really explode if you do that wrong, like an EV battery mistake can. Changing an EV battery costs tens of thousands. One of those things is more economical and reasonable than the other.
>Neither are going to be a straightforward to keep running 50 years from now as a car from the seventies, but a Tesla is going to be far easier to keep running for 50 years than a modern gasoline car. 1/10th the number of moving parts, far less wiring, far fewer computers, far fewer part count, et cetera, far less regular maintenance, et cetera.
Hahaha you've got no idea. Tesla is probably the worst example. Everything is proprietary, they don't sell parts or software to consumers. Other cars don't require a mechanic to also be a reverse engineer. You can whine about moving parts all you want but there are many ICE's still in service a hundred years after they were manufactured.
>>We don't know how unstable these EV batteries will become in 10, 20, or 50 years
>Yes we do.
I didn't realize I would have the honor of meeting a time traveller today.
>>An ICE car would not explode or burn down after such a long period, even with the heaviest use and abuse.
>Yes they do, and at a higher frequency than electric cars do.
They DON'T. And even when they do somehow catch fire, usually due to some external factor, they can easily be extinguished with WATER. EVs cannot be extinguished and all the water sprayed on them becomes heavily polluted.
>No they're not. EV batteries are properly managed, unlike random gadgets. They're safer, not more dangerous.
Again you prove that you don't know what you're talking about. Random gadgets have charge and thermal regulators for their batteries, so they are much like EVs in that regard. Furthermore, any one of the thousands of cells inside an EV can ignite the rest. That has happened many times, for example in the case of an Australian cement truck EV. The manufacturer discovered the problem, after the truck burned to the ground in a huge disaster.
No ICE car has ever caught fire from being splashed with water. EVs do this all the time! But sure, we're supposed to believe that they will be maintainable and economical to fix 50 years from now. Give me a break and gtfo with that nonsense.
New cars definitely have the same problem, they're computers on wheels with sensors every where. You can bring a 1980s shit box anywhere and unless it's totalled they'll get it running. For anything build after 2010: good luck. Let's see what happens when you bring your vintage 2012 tesla to a garage in the 2050s
I still dream of the US/EU coming up with a standardized set of chassis/engines instead of having dozens of companies independently spending millions trying to solve the same problems
Deep down I know all this complexity is needed because it generates a shit ton of money from fake competition, maintenance schedules, parts price gouging, &c. The inefficiency and waste is a feature
> I still dream of the US/EU coming up with a standardized set of chassis/engines instead of having dozens of companies independently spending millions trying to solve the same problems
BYD has done that, with their E-Axle. The E-Axle has the axle, wheels, and motor. It goes with a BYD "8 in one" electronics power box and a battery. Here is their pitch to Japanese carmakers.[1] Google translated version follows. (Google Translate has become much better at Japanese lately.)
The automaker buys the E-axle, power box, and battery, plugs them together, and hooks it to the driver interface with CANbus. This approach seems to have cut the cost of BYD's cars.
Other companies are now marketing E-axles for trucks.[2] Trucking has a lot of builders who start with a bare chassis and add industry-specific bodies and equipment - ambulance, tow truck, etc.
BYD itself sells light truck sized versions, and Dana sells heavy truck dual axle versions.
It's quite possible that a mounting point standard will emerge for this, like NEMA motor mounts
or jet engine pylons. Then you can use different E-axle vendors.
Nothing wrong with the E-Axle concept, but why would I buy any EV based on the E-Axle, when I can get the exact same thing buying the BYD vehicle for less.
It makes sense for brands that are not big enough to develop their own power train.
For example, whoever buys the Jeep brand next might put a Wrangler body on a BYD powertrain.
(This would be an improvement over the present Stellantis product. Stellantis, the parent of Jeep, Chrysler, Fiat, Peugeot, etc. got a Boeing-type financial CEO, who ran the business into the ground while being paid a record salary.[1])
At what point would you have standardized this rapidly improving category of product? Would you have frozen the interfaces around the time of the Dodge Intrepid[1]? Perhaps after considering that example you start to see the problem with standardization.
You hear the same think about electric bikes, and the argument has the same fatal flaws. Current e-bikes are massively better than what was on the market 3, 5, and 10 years ago. Standardizing them at any point would have been catastrophic, and we must assume that standardization now would also be catastrophic.
[1: That said, all cars are converging on the exterior shape of the Intrepid, in a process similar to carcinization among animals. Weird!]
I can't imagine what experience could have possibly led you to that conclusion. Current generation custom bottom bracket motors from Trek from Specialized and from Bosch and from Yamaha are all radically different and some of them are way better than others and none of them are interchangeable.
After that, you'll start losing out on lost innovation that wasn't allowed to happen.
"Dozens of companies independently spending millions solving the same problems" only seems wasteful if you don't think about this in terms of at least a couple of steps of game theory. Competing co's come up with a variety of different solutions, leaving us in a more robust state with lots of different options.
Also, good luck getting a standard that the US and EU agrees on - look at how differently the free market solved the car problem in both of those places. Europeans and Americans want different things from their vehicles.
why is that insane? Some have liquid cooling in between cells and high levels of integration. I'm guessing heat transfer compounds may be in there as well. Given the scale of what re-celling a whole automotive pack would entail, this strikes me as way out of scope for an average consumer, though I appreciate the DIY attitude and wish more products were made to be consumer repairable!
Since cars are all more or less solving the same problem, hopefully it will standardize on a set of parts and procedures. I meant trivial for a mechanic- on the order of swapping out an engine. It would still be work for a professional mechanic or a skilled DIY person not your average consumer. You’d still be dealing with big voltages, toxic chemicals, and major chances of fire or overheating if done wrong.
You can still swap out a battery just like swapping out an engine. Both require extensive knowledge, specialized tools, and a lot of time, but it's definitely possible.
Yeah but usually you have to get an identical pack- which is expensive for common EVs and nearly impossible for older ones. My point is these parts could be standardized with a simplified process to more easily recell any car. Batteries don’t need to be as unique to a car as engines do. Eventually I think EVs will last nearly forever, with the only major wear items being suspension and battery- both easy to replace.
You want to share the road with a hillbilly driving at 80 mph who just hand soldered his battery pack together with the cheapest cells he could find on ebay?
Yes- I’m already sharing the road with people that DIY repair their cars. I’m an ex pro mechanic, most mechanics shops are in such a hurry they are not doing better work than DIY repairs. Your average hillbilly has been repairing things their whole life and knows what they’re doing.
You're alredy sharing the road with people who don't maintain their cars, don't have insurance, and people who could intentionally crash into you at any time, yet you still drive. This type of scaremongering is nonsense and does nothing except make corporate executives smile.
I'm pretty glad that maintenance and insurance are mandatory, and that most alterations to a vehicle require passing a special inspection.
And it would be great if batteries, including their mounting frame and cooling system, were standardized in such a way that one would not only be able to let a shop replace the battery, but also have the option to buy a car without a battery and either reuse the old one or buy a new one from a better brand.
ICE engines and transmissions are the same way. And batteries are proving to last way longer on average with no regular maintenance needed. In Norway there are already many dedicated EV repair shops and more and more are popping up in the US.
Some of them are pretty serviceable at the module level. Ford has done a good job here. Of course, it won't be economical to service them unless someone starts mass-producing aftermarket modules.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed that someone will start making solid state replacements at some point. That could be a nice business if the costs ever get down low enough.
The point of the original article is that the battery pack may outlast the rest of the vehicle. Eventually it needs to be recycled, but not repaired while in service.
Anecdata: bought a used off-lease 2019 Model 3 in 2021 (NCA chemistry.) The battery had degraded a typical amount (<10%) as they do in the first few years. Since then, I have been doing a pretty good job of following the advice to basically keep the battery >20%, and <80% as much as possible, and only supercharge when absolutely necessary. It hasn’t really degraded much further at all, if the range estimate can be believed.
At the current rate, the suspension and other components seem more likely to fall apart (it was constructed in a hurry, in a tent after all) before the battery hits its EOL. Regardless, I hope to be able to reclaim the degraded cells to use in home energy storage if it is economically viable.
Anecdata as well: I own a 2022 Jeep Wrangler 4xe that comes with a 17KW battery pack with Samsung Prismatic Cells, battery management includes liquid cooling with chiller, liquid heating for winter months. I've seen about 10% degradation over 3 years, referencing battery SOH data from the onboard battery management module. The last 3 or so months have really slowed down the rate of loss, I'm hoping this continues throughout my ownership of the vehicle.
From my understanding Jeep was really cautious with the battery, on the display you will see 0%, but it's always at least 20% of remaining charge in actuality.
Operating outside of the 20-80 percent range of a battery is what kills it (and high current draw), inside of that range and it acts like a spring. There should be product design laws that make it difficult to sell products that abuse batteries in this way.
NASA did a bunch of longitudinal studies (long time duration , same components over that range) with Lion batteries and found almost no long term degradation after the initial capacity loss. Same for solar panels.
If you could somehow attest (via the BMS?) That a battery pack (and the individual serialized? Replaceable cells?) wasn't operated outside of some bounds, the aftermarket value of that battery pack and individual cells could be quite a bit higher.
I have been toying with a spec for a BMS that monitors and logs the health of every single battery both on charge and discharge.
What is more exiting, is that Sodium cells are much tougher and can be discharged to zero volts and stored in a discharged state. That also means that they can be shipped discharged and items incorporating them don't degrade while on the shelf or in shipping.
They would be if the makers had the parts widely stocked. One of the issues with Tesla, at least in the past, is they pretended to have nothing to learn from Toyota and Honda, and there just weren't any ball joints, control arms, and wheel bearings on the shelves. Getting your Tesla chassis fixed is a 2-hour job with a 6-month waiting list.
That’s interesting. I had the upper control arms replaced on my model 3 a few years ago. It was a 1 hour job with a 1 week appointment lead time, and that was because I got a mobile appointment where they came to me.
Can any service replace them, or only official tesla(tm) one? Is there a healthy ecosystem of original oem parts and good 3rd party ones?
I'll never buy a car that a random service cant fix, bmws for example so far seems easy peasy to achieve this, which brings TCO almost down to cheap basic brands.
Depends on where you live, in New England the salted winter roads tend to win and few cars last more than 10 years before there are holes in body panels.
The body panels are more and more often plastic or aluminum these days. There's still often steel in the suspension and subframe, though.
The point of the article, though, is lots of people still spread FUD a out EV batteries and the data we have shows that batteries are not a problem. They last longer than transmissions and engines on average.
I've noticed so many "common knowledge" things being anchored into the past, especially as I age - and especially for vehicles.
The "rotting frames and body panels" thing was certainly common where I'm from when I grew up, but these days it's very normal to see 20+ year cars on the road with very little salt related damage. I have a 2007 Acura MDX that is stored outside for the past 8 years, never washed by my parents who I gifted it to, and driven through some of the worst winter road conditions possible. Visiting in the winter you'd think it was a grey vehicle (it's black) from all the salt spray adhered to it which stays on until it's driven in the rain come springtime.
It shows utterly zero frame or body rust even today. I expect the rubber seals and such to fail before anything else. This is pretty much the norm.
Cars are not made like they were in the 1980's and 90's any more. The coatings and type of materials are vastly different and improved. There are certainly models out there that have problems and you can get unlucky, but it's no longer a rule of thumb.
It's not just vehicles though. It's pretty much endemic to all things. People get anchored to their "formative years" and then never update their priors. I assume it takes a generation or two for such things to die off and the "common knowledge" to be updated. EV battery tech will be one of these things - we will be anchored to the common tropes that were true for first and second generation vehicles but no longer are for quite a long time.
On the other hand, I drove my 2009 Toyota Corolla in upstate NY for 10 years until the exhaust system literally fell out of it on the highway.
There was very little visible rust on the body.
(To be clear, if I didn't need more space inside nowadays I would absolutely be delighted to get another Corolla; I think it's a trooper for making it 10 years in this weather. I also replaced the exhaust system and then sold the car for significantly more than the repair cost to someone who wasn't planning on keeping it in quite a snowy climate.)
A bigger issue I'm seeing is ordinary corrosion at metal-plastic interfaces where the magic coatings which keep the rust at bay get worn through due to vibration and dissimilar thermal coefficients. Another such problem sometimes occur when windows are not mounted with enough of a gap between the glass and the surrounding metal, again leading to the coating being worn through due to vibration and such. Look for the former problem at wheel wells, the latter at the bottom edge of rear windows.
It persists because incompetently-managed cities and their sycophants need a convenient scapegoat for why they can't properly clean roads in the winter.
While I suspect you’re right about newer cars because of galvanized steel etc, but I also wonder how much of the contrarian viewpoint is due to sampling bias. Maybe your Acura was just good luck? I’ve had a domestic wagon of similar vintage that went through many Midwest winters. The exhaust rusted off and so did the sub-frame leading me to offload it many years ago. We really need better data than our personal anecdotes to understand the problem.
Definitely need more than anecdote. Exhaust system though is a wear item, I'd expect to replace that every decade or so.
Sub-frame, not so much!
A quick google shows graphs for "Average age of the US used car fleet" to be around 6 years in 1975, and increasing to 12 years today. Not enough time today before family arrives to really dig further though.
Very true, and car longevity has been steadily increasing. Although, I don’t think the bulk of them failures are attributable to “rotting body panels”. I remember when a car with 100k miles was considered essentially dead, whereas more drive trains routinely last twice that long.
Ah this might be an in-industry definitions thing[1], I was taught most anything thin, especially the pieces that are welded to the unibody, are panels. Not just the outer skin. So floor pan, pillars, trunk panels, roof, subframe, maybe control arms, etc are all panels. Basically anything stamped out of sheet metal. It is the way they're often constructed that leads to corrosion, thin pieces of metal in close parallel proximity are especially hard to clean. Think two flat pieces spot welded together one on top of one another as many seams are. I'm sure capillary action doesn't help those either. They'd have to be sealed in paint or epoxy entirely to avoid the seam corroding. Welding itself changes the structure of the steel and leads to corrosion near the weld. If not spot welded, a different steel might be used for the weld that has higher strength to compensate for welds weakening the steel - but to get that they trade-off higher carbon content, making it more prone to corrosion.
There are very few all-aluminum cars. Audi A8 was for a while and might still be. I am not aware of anything cheaper.
You're right that there's more parts that don't rust on modern vehicles. However, newer vehicles tend to be unibody compared to the older body-on-frame. When it comes to salty corrosion, parts sandwiched together often create places for the saltwater to be trapped, making the problem worse.
The more I look at newer cars, the more I tend to believe that they will last exactly as long as the warranty, then disintegrate into repair hell.
My theory here is that in the past many things have been over engineered or designed. Now all this fat is being optimized out and the weak spots are showing. But there is still a delay between the engineering change and the weak spots emerging.
The nostalgia based belief that "things were better before" is generally not supported by the facts. Cars in the past were much less reliable than they are today. This goes for most consumer products. That doesn't mean there aren't problems today that should be addressed, but the golden times of the past are largely imaginary.
This is a frequent trope employed in places with comically inept snow preparedness - like the Pacific Northwest - ignoring the existence of automatic carwashes. With how many persistently dirty Subaru Outbacks I've seen on the 5 I question if they know this alien technology exists.
It's not the salt alone as far as I understand. It's the salt, the moisture, the dirt, the micro damages/cracks, temperature changes all working together to foster starting points for corrosion on surfaces or crevices. Leaving all this on does give it time to work.
Regular washing dies remove some of the culprits (salt, dirt,...) thus reducing the attack vector on the surface. Wax might even add some protection.
(I read the "time is not the issue" comment but am not sure how to understand it, surely time plays some role in it, else the corrosion should start immediately at contact with salt?)
To elaborate, the failure rate does not change with time, but with some other stressor like temperature. The failure distribution may be modeled as a random process, instead of a time-based one. An exponential failure distribution is an example of a time-invariant process, while a Weibull or Gamma distribution would be time-variant, because the failure rate changes with the age of the item.
A point of anecdata: my 2010 Prius has nearly 200,000 miles on it and it's still going strong.
The Prius has a traditional lead acid battery for starting the engine that's been replaced a couple of times. The traction batteries (the ones that help push the car forward and are charged from regenerative braking) are the originals.
The Priuses have a 12v AGM lead acid battery (about the size of a small motorcycle battery) to power the computers when you hit the power button. They don't have a starter. Instead, the 200v NiMH traction battery spins up the CVT, which spins the engine's crank shaft and to start it they simply apply spark to the plugs. The Prius Prime has the above batteries plus a separate Li-ion battery that can be charged overnight from an outlet at 120v or 240v.
I know two people who have had battery degradation in their Priuses, but in their case it was just 1 or 2 cells that crapped out, not the whole battery. They were able to fix it themselves, which sounded like the sort of thing that isn't too hard if you're moderately handy
Yes, I replaced one bad cell in my 2006 Prius. I got the cell on eBay for $20 and it took a few hours to remove the traction battery, replace the cell and put the traction battery back in. Add an hour if you clean the copper battery connectors. The battery has worked fine now for 10 months. Now my biggest problem is body rust.
If those patents hadn't been, or had they been shorter lived, or if antitrust law was more robust, we might have seen a lot more investment in optimizations on and variations of the NiMH chemistry.
I guess part of the reason is that the "M" in "NiMH" stands for Lanthanum - a rare earth element which happens to be used in catalysts facilitating oil refinement.
Of course catalysts are consumed slowly, but you still don't want any disturbances in the supply of a key element.
By those living in the delusion that the US will be 100% EV production in the next few years when the charging infrastructure is woefully inadequate. No one is questioning EV drivetrains but there are very real logistical and electrical supply issues that are being ignored.
California can barely keep the lights on as it is. This doesn't even scratch the surface that most are not the privileged few with at-home charging.
Nobody thinks EVs will replace 100% of vehicles in the next few years. This is the premise I constantly hear from people trying to argue that the power infrastructure isn't ready. EV ownership, charging availability, and per infrastructure are all growing slowly and in tandem and there's no reason to expect otherwise.
Nobody does, except some people. The belief that EVs will promptly replace the entire fleet is implicit in the claim that EVs can solve short-term greenhouse gas emissions goals by 2030, 2035 or 2040. Such claims are often used to naysay pedestrian, bicycle and transit projects that have a higher likelihood of achieving those greenhouse gas emissions goals. Obviously the belief is ridiculous because even if EVs were 100% of fleet sales today, they would not be 100% of the fleet on the road for a long time. And in America they are not remotely close to 100% of sales.
Are you sure you didn’t exaggerate? Any examples of those who believe EV will be 100% sales, or that EV can solve greenhouse gas emission goals in the next 15 years?
I’ve never heard of that, and even in countries like Norway where new car sales are predominantly EVs, it will be a long time until it can replace the entire fleet.
I am sure there are loads of people in America who say we don't need to do [thing] because EVs are coming. I don't press these people on their arithmetic because they aren't arguing in good faith, they just hate [thing].
More anecdata: I recently bought a 2014 Nissan Leaf (to dip my toes into the EV world) and it's range is about 120km, down from the originally advertised ~135km.
So in 10 years the distance capacity has degraded by 11%.
Further info:
In deciding to buy an electric car we looked at our driving usage patterns, and almost 100% of our regular car trips are less than 50km. It was also going to be the third car for the family since we've got a newly licensed member.
We've only had it a couple of months, but it's been perfect so far. It's already everyone's preferred vehicle.
Nissan Leaves are supposedly notorious for having the worst battery longevitey of all EV:s, as they didn't include any thermal management at all in the first generation design.
I was researching them for a second car some years ago, and already then it seemed like many had lost almost half the range after 150kkm or so. That according to what people wrote in the ads when trying to sell them, so I assume it was not an overly pessimistic view. :-)
Congratulations on snagging one with excellent battery health. Perhaps your car spent its life in a very friendly climate, where the battery never got either hot nor cold?
Edit: For the record I've driven a few of them over the years and found them excellent A-to-B transport devices. Boring, but great.
After my WRX, which was garaged six years ago, all our current cars are boring. I actually find the Leaf a bit more interesting in that it has pretty good pickup when you turn off Eco mode; very nice off the line for what looks like a granny car. The last X years, I've only ever driven with the purpose of getting from A to B, not "for the sake of the drive", so that adds some context to where my opinion comes from.
The place I bought the Leaf from imports them from a Japan, so I assume he's fairly selective in choosing which ones to bring across.
He also said that the Nissan themselves were expecting shorter life from the batteries than what ended up occurring - along the lines of setting up battery recycling / refurbishment / repurposing facilities.
I'm actually considering getting a newer model (ZE1, 2018+) to replace one of the other ICE cars, but two months isn't enough time to form a definitive opinion. I think the newer model has options for Vehicle-to-X charging, which makes things interesting. But I'm probably getting way ahead of myself.
There's an interesting new development in the world of batteries. Turns out single-crystal electrode batteries are particularly durable, which was confirmed after tests lasting six years:
They found it lasted more than 20,000 cycles before it hit the 80 per cent capacity cut-off. That translates to driving a whopping eight million kilometres.
This lab has ties with Tesla, so we can expect to see such batteries in their offerings eventually. My bet is stationary storage will be their first application as any capacity thrown at it will be charged/discharged on a daily basis if its levelized cost in low enough.
Had a nice XMAS surprise this morning when my model 3 charged to 415KM up from 410KM yesterday, its the first LFP model from Feb 2022 when it was new it reported 431KM dropped to 419KM in the first year then lost another 9KM the next two years. I assume it is some bum-fuckery with the software updates (it dropped 5KM overnight after one a few years back) but at this rate it could be a keeper.
> Their report showed that, on average, EV batteries have 90 percent capacity after 100,000 kilometers of driving, and at 300,000 kilometers they still have 87 percent of their original kilowatts left
Another example of how KWh is the wrong unit for energy storage — gets so many people confused and they don’t know the difference between storage and power.
Let's go full SI. One watt is one joule per second, so 1 kWh = 3.6 MJ. Model 3's battery options are from 180 MJ to 295 MJ.
Looks readable, human-scale, easier to type than kWh.
To compare, 1 gallon of car fuel is about 120 MJ of thermal energy content, so about 40 MJ of mechanical output energy content, if we acccount for the ICU efficiency and transmission losses.
Except electricity is billed in kWh, everything consumes power on kw, and kWh is by far a more intuitive unit of consumption once you get past the basic of educational step of explaining 1 kw for 1 hr = 1 kWh.
As an EE I much prefer kWh, though its not all that hard to add the factor 3.6 if you really want MJ
Most people aren’t engineers and the idea of watt-hours per hour makes eyes glaze over; miles per gallon vs… watt-hours-per-mile ? Nah that is confusing too. Miles per MJ and how many MJ does the car have is nice and clean.
The various AI agents seem to catch this fwiw. I prompted "check the following for errors" and got an appropriate response for this;
ChatGPT: The sentence has a minor issue with the term "kilowatts". Kilowatts measure power, not energy, so it should be "kilowatt-hours" (kWh) if you're referring to the energy capacity remaining in the battery. "
For all the negativity of AI i keep finding examples where it's very clear "you could do a much better job with less effort if you leaned on AI a little". Journalism especially.
That is true and therefore only a good measure in my friends and family circles.
Many of these characterstics will be shared among us (climate, roads, landscape, charging infrastructure etc).
Part of it is getting their thought processes away from "peak requirements" and into the direction of "average everyday" which for me is a more important measure.
I wouldn't recommend cars be advertised this way but person to person its quite useful.
I do it with EVs (and not gas cars) because many people worry about range and charging times.
They also wonder whether it's practical to own one without having access to home charging.
Explaining it this way conveys the "impact" to daily life better than talking strictly about numbers.
Me saying "usually I charge once a week while getting groceries" is lived experience and quite relatable (I hope).
I also try to be honest and not make any claims about use cases which are not mine (I'm not trying to sell something). I very seldomly do long drives > 2h so if someone does that regularly, my personal experience won't apply.
Of course if people want to nerd out over kwH and kW I'm ready to do that as well but many don't care about that.
Edit: Everybody knows how gas cars work. No need to explain that. But my friends and family are curious about EVs.
Sounds reasonable - thanks for the thoughtful reply. I agree the "delta of inconvenience" is the important measure. The on-demand model we use for gas cars is inconvenient even for gas (hate stopping for gas!) but magnified by longer EV charge times.
Can charge at home? super convenient & time savings.
Charge at work? may be subsidized by employer, but you may have to go move the car during the day, etc.
"while shopping for groceries" is an interesting "3rd space" - you're going there consistently, so if charging works on that time frame (charger space available, doesn't require you to delay after shopping or interrupt the shopping, etc.), it's a great fit.
Are these testing companies really independent? One is a company from Southwest Germany and the other one Swiss.
In Germany, the sales of EV vehicles have not picked up, people are buying petrol engines again, due to the perceived lack of reliability of EV vehicles and its resale value.
P3's portfolio reads more like the place where companies like BMW, Mercedes and VW would request a one-stop-shop package to make EVs look attractive. Nothing hints at them being experts in EVs.
EVs are just ridiculously expensive, the charging network coverage isn't great, the percentage of single home owners is comparatively low compared to renters of apartments (where there are no charging options), and the government keeps fucking around with the tax credits and rebates.
I'm not sure why the perceived reliability outweighs any of these issues.
The good news is it might not take that long. As an automotive EE that was previously working the Fiat and GM, I can promise you this generation was not ready.
Care to elaborate, or is "automotive EE" supposed to be enough to just take your word on it? Because TFA has, like, data and shit to back up their assertions.
TFA is Wired.com, I guess you don’t know any better yet…
Studies done by industry partners that are all backed by China… is pretty much as bad as “Volvo (100% Geely Automotive, China) petitioning for EV semis.
Do NOT take my word for it. Call your dealerships that sell EVs and ask if they can repair a single bad cell in your out of warranty battery pack. Almost no one will take that work on. It’s actually dangerous and you won’t pay the labor cost.
Best case you can buy a used pack from a roll over or other wreck and good luck to you.
There’s a huge aftermarket for batteries and parts. Many companies will buy and refurbish battery packs as they are useful in many applications. A “dead” battery pack likely has many good cells and worth repairing.
Depends how old it is. Our second-hand electric van was owned by the dealer as a demo model and only driven 900km. That’s as good as new as far as I was concerned, and cost 2/3 of the price of a brand new model.
A good battery test (that can detect ‘juicing’) will only cost a few hundred dollars - it’s just part of your pre-inspection reports, like you’d do for any second-hand vehicle.
This confirms you are just spouting numbers, half the Tesla lineup MSRPs under $40k and I’ve seen battery replacement bills regularly in the $6k range. Continue being mad and misinformed.
I don't get how it could cost more to replace the battery than to buy an entirely new car that also has a new battery. I bought my Nissan Leaf for $13.5k after a lease.
>But there is growing indication that EV batteries are much sturdier than those in smartphones. Just for starters, you don’t tend to recharge your EV every day like your handset.
I want to reach through the screen and strangle someone.
This type of article is written by someone pushing for EVs (hey China) or who has bought one.
Reality check… a bad battery on your own after an expired warranty will likely total your vehicle. Read that a few times.
I have in my shop a Fiat 500e. To pull the battery, you need to pull and disassemble the entire rear end suspension, just to access the battery. Once you do that, you are rewarded with 600lb pain in the ass. Disconnect the electrical and cooling lines, you can pull it down and open it. You are greeted with 400V or so of more pain. Need composite tools, 1000V gloves, and if you were to say fall on it, you may die. Remind me how many systems in an ICE vehicle will kill a mechanic? You can get to each cell to replace them; but no one will sell you one. So best you can do is to buy a used one; run your chances. And in order to charge these Samsung cells, good luck there too, since there is no single cell charger you can buy. You might be able to trickle charge to 3.5V… reverse this to re-assemble, plan to pay more than the vehicle is worth.
Here is the hard fact… ready?
These vehicles are disposable.
I love EV for its real purpose, a second vehicle for town/city. It was a mistake to market them as ready to roll only vehicles.
Pick a better example than a friggin' Fiat. And, BTW, you've done nothing to refute TFA's claim that you quoted. No, prefacing with "Automotive engineer" is not a refutation. Yeah, pulling the battery is a PITA. So is pulling an fossil fuel engine. That doesn't make either one "disposable".
A million different pieces of engineering, primarily, that the battery is designed to be much easier to replace than disassembling the entire car like the Fiat is.
I barely see any marketing for EVs at all, and most news articles I read about them are the kind of FUD that this article is attempting to address.
As such I've never seen EVs marketed as either "the only car you need to own" or "if you're just commuting short distances they're perfect".
With the purchase of a car, or any purchase of anything, people gotta do their research for their unique use-case. And if the Fiat owner just pays the money to you for the repair, and they don't have to risk their life, and aren't bothered by the repair quote, then they might still be a happy Fiat customer.
It sounds as if you're just a annoyed about the Fiat in your shop, and you've got some short term "pain in the arse" resentment that's yet to fade (which I totally understand because I get the same way about specific annoyances at my work - current issue "is the stupidest thing I've ever come across, why would anyone design anything like that?").
This post is 100% BS. I just checked the instructions for an engine swap on a fiat 500 are about 60% longer than the 500e battery swap. Also the engine weighs around 450 lbs, so its not like you aren't using a hoist or a lift for both any ways.
Are you suggesting that since the third-party EV repair industry is still in its infancy that EVs are therefore objectively bad? If so, how is that perspective different from any other mass-market industrialized consumer product? I remember folks telling me that the iPhone would fail because nobody could make apps for it. Markets change, as evidenced by the fact that you’re now repairing/rebuilding Fiat and GM batteries; that wasn’t a marketable skill two decades ago.
>There are no parts from the OEs, there are no tools, the packs are not meant to be serviced, and it is SERIOUSLY DANGEROUS work.
The same was true for the ICE vehicle third-party repair industry 100 years ago.
It seems like your objection to BEVs (i.e. they can’t be repaired) is directly refuted by the fact that you yourself repair BEVs. Maybe I’ve misunderstood your argument though.
Sigh. It didn’t take 100 years to grow the ICE repair industry and I imagine you know that; I suspect you’re just being stubbornly argumentative for the sake of vanity.
There’s already a fledgling industry of third-party repair shops for BEVs—which you can attest to first hand. BEVs are not “disposable” like you claim—as evidenced, again, by your own experience of repairing BEVs.
You’ve suggested, in other threads, that BEVs are not designed for repair; every professional and shade-tree mechanic I’ve ever known (myself included) has used that same complaint (“engineers are idiots; they don’t think about repairs”) against ICE vehicles for decades yet the ICE repair industry is still massive and, importantly, constantly evolving—new tools, new aftermarket parts that are better/more reliable than OE, the sharing of knowledge so others can learn how to be safe, etc. This is how industries grow. The notion that all the support infrastructure must be in place before a product can be considered useful or reliable is absurd; we live in a world that iterates and evolves quickly.
Is the Fiat “totaled” or will you be able to repair it? What about the Bolt?
You’ve complained that working on the Fiat is difficult and poorly documented; have you seen what it takes to replace the oil-pan gasket on modern trucks? You have to remove the entire cab! I know well the frustration of working on products that have poor service documentation or seem to be engineered only for production with no consideration for service but that doesn’t mean a product has no viability or is unreliable; in fact, the opposite often seems to be the case—difficult to repair products seem to have better longevity and are therefore more likely to be viable.
I’m willing to admit I might be wrong about BEVs while it feels like you’ve already decided they’re utterly useless; why take such a hard-line stance?
