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Post by ettingtonliam on Aug 4, 2021 10:12:10 GMT
I don't know if this has been asked before, but what is the life expectancy of an electric car's battery, and what is its replacement cost (including fitting, just in case EVs are built around the battery and it isn't easily removable)?
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Post by Deleted on Aug 4, 2021 10:26:53 GMT
I don't know if this has been asked before, but what is the life expectancy of an electric car's battery, and what is its replacement cost (including fitting, just in case EVs are built around the battery and it isn't easily removable)? IIRC batteries have an expected life expectancy of 8 years, Tesla batteries can be replaced, not sure about other EV's? A recent article on battery life/performance gave a replacement cost of £10k, not sure what labour is involved. However you need to be aware that an 8 year old battery will not have the power nor range of a brand new battety, not even close. It's not age that kills the battery, how fast a battery deteriates really depends a lot on how it's charged during its lifetime, ie, fast charging will greatly reduce it's performance, this is the same for all batteries no matter what they are powering.
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Post by keith6233 on Aug 4, 2021 10:30:00 GMT
They haven't even managed to standardize nuts and bolts world wide electric sockets etc etc , so i don't believe they will standardize these any time soon! If you run out of petrol on the road, you might have a spare can in the back, or you can go to a petrol station and buy a can. if you run out of battery power, you have had it. Many people do run out of petrol, so that is going to be a big problem for electric vehicles, and it will certainly happen, for all sorts of reasons!!!!!!!Jem 300,000 people a year put the wrong fuel in there cars. www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2220871/Motorists-filling-cars-wrong-fuel-costs-Britain-150m.html
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JonL
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Post by JonL on Aug 4, 2021 10:30:32 GMT
Even at the level of car batteries we are using (racing radio controlled cars!) Lipo batteries are quite cleverly balance charged, an automatic system of variable resistance between the cells ensuring that the cells are all topped up evenly, with temperature monitoring to prevent them getting too hot. If we can get it right at our amateur level I'm sure the big boys are getting it fairly tight too.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 4, 2021 11:04:38 GMT
Yes Jon...I think the big boys are looking at the heat involved when charging..from what I read they have discovered a method where they heat the battery to give a quicker charge more safely. Even so, batteries have a relatively short life span and the faster you charge them the shorter this gets.
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uuu
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Post by uuu on Aug 4, 2021 11:05:49 GMT
My Fiat has an 8 year, 100,000 mile warranty on the battery, for 70% of original capacity. I'm expecting the manufacturer to be conservative here. I've seen BMW i3s for sale with 150,000 miles on the clock and still going. Toyota Priuses also seem to last a long time.
I suspect that the battery would never be replaced - the car would be scrapped. The petrol car I traded in had only done 76000 miles, but it's value was so low that a new engine would not be worthwhile.
Wilf
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jem
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Post by jem on Aug 4, 2021 14:15:08 GMT
Although Lipo batteries are balance charged, they are in groups of ( on my bicycle 10 for instance ), so if one of those 10 is duff then the battery is duff. I presume that the same applies to ev cars, but perhaps in much bigger groups.
300,000 people a year put the wrong fuel in there cars. I wonder if you can put the wrong kind of electricity in an EV after all there are the wrong kind of leaves on British rails, causing the trains to not be able to run!
Jem
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JonL
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Post by JonL on Aug 4, 2021 19:20:32 GMT
When I've had a cell go down in a lipo pack I've just left it in place but disconnected it, rewiring it to make it a smaller capacity pack. That's only happened once so far; They have been pretty robust for me.
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Post by Roger on Aug 4, 2021 19:38:07 GMT
I don't know if this has been asked before, but what is the life expectancy of an electric car's battery, and what is its replacement cost (including fitting, just in case EVs are built around the battery and it isn't easily removable)? That's a difficult question to answer, because of what you define as life expectancy and the fact that this is improving all the time. Different chemistries have better lives than others. The new Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries have a much better cycle life than conventional Lithium Ion batteries. Car manufacturers are learning about this as they go, through gathering data from the fleet. This includes looking at how the cars are used. There's no simple answer to this, so it's worth looking at this to see what it's all about. In a nutshell, Tesla warranty covers the battery for 8 years or 100,000 miles on the Model 3 and 120,000 miles on the Model S & X. They state a minimum of 70% capacity of the battery as the cutoff level for that to kick in. The article states "with the data that’s currently available on the Model S, there seems to be about a 10-15% degradation in the Model S’s battery capacity over 150,000-200,000 miles." So it's very misleading to suggest that a battery will only last 8 years or 100,000 miles. The bottom line is, that if you don't charge above 80%, and you only charge it when it's depleted to say 40% on a home charger, you'll get the most out of the charging cycles. If you charge it to 100% and keep topping it up on Superchargers, you'll get less life. It's no different to thrashing your IC engine all the time, it's not going to last as long. In reality, you're never going to replace the battery, it simply won't be necessary or cost effective. By the time the car is really old, say with 400,000 miles on the clock, you may have lost a fair bit of range. That's really not going to be a big deal for most people. I can see cars with 40% battery left and 600,000 miles being a cracking buy for people on a budget. This web site tells us that the average IC engine car lasts 12 years and 200,000 miles, which is pretty poor really. Clearly most people don't do collossal mileages, and cars don't last that long. I'll be staggered if EVs don't last at least twice as long as that, albeit with the range declining toward the end of their lives. Most cars are scrapped through engine and transmission issues, something that the EV detractors fail to acknowledge as being the achilles heel of these vehicles. They focus on battery life without realising that engine life is a much more terminal condition of what they're currently driving.
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Post by Roger on Aug 4, 2021 19:45:16 GMT
Even at the level of car batteries we are using (racing radio controlled cars!) Lipo batteries are quite cleverly balance charged, an automatic system of variable resistance between the cells ensuring that the cells are all topped up evenly, with temperature monitoring to prevent them getting too hot. If we can get it right at our amateur level I'm sure the big boys are getting it fairly tight too. Temperature control is important, both too low and too high being an issue. Fortunately Tesla have the new 4680 Cell which will be in the Model Y, Cybertruck and the Semi. The tabless electrode will massively reduce the internal resistance of the cell, which will be reflected in the heat generated. This will allow faster charging without stressing the cells locally where the Tab currently is. This is a game changer for battery life. Both the Giga Berlin and Giga Texas plants will be producing these cells within a year. I'm sure they balance the cells too, but I don't know how that's done.
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Post by andyhigham on Aug 4, 2021 20:03:07 GMT
I believe my Mitsubishi uses the air con system to regulate the battery temperature
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Post by coniston on Aug 4, 2021 21:54:55 GMT
I can only talk about the Tesla Roadster, not the later Tesla models but with the Roadster (designed in the UK by Lotus) the company I last worked for was contracted to design and supply the thermal management system. This included both cabin environment and battery conditioning. The air conditioning system was a dual circuit design with solenoid valves to control the flow of refrigerant to either the cabin or battery cooling. The cabin was typical automotive direct expansion evaporator but the batteries were cooled with a secondary glycol/water coolant system. The Roadster used the older 18650 or maybe 21700 cells, they were arranged in a housing that included a micro channel aluminium extrusion formed to surround the cells in a sort of ZIG-ZAG pattern. Using secondary cooling also allowed a small PTC coolant heater to be integrated to provide initial heating to the batteries in particularly cold environments when charging.
I am sure that thermal management of batteries and the whole charging system is something that all the OEM's have well under control. One benefit of EV's is that it is easy to pre condition the passenger cabin or other critical sub systems whilst plugged in or even using their drive batteries. I can vouch from first hand experience that getting into a pre-conditioned car is so much more appealing than jumping into one that has sat in the sun for a few hours or left outside overnight in the middle of the winter.
Chris
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JonL
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Post by JonL on Aug 5, 2021 10:41:37 GMT
I suspect for all vehicles, IC or Battery, we are going to get better at managing heat. I believe quite a few cars now have a type of "Thermos Flask" which helps to retain heat in the coolant overnight for improved hot starting. If you can store waste heat and store media cooled to below ambient temperature, and use it as required, we will get further efficiencies. Your battery heat could be being used to heat the cabin, like a heat pump in a home.
Obviously this is all just conjecture!
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Post by Jo on Aug 5, 2021 10:44:59 GMT
A friend has a 12 year old Toyota Priuses 76K on the clock, she loves it but the replace battery warning light has just gone on and the cost of the replacement battery is high. She has investigated the cost with the garage and and she could buy a good newer car for the money.
She can afford to replace it with a new one but is buying a 3 year old Mazda 3 for <£3K more than the replacement batteries would have cost for her 12 year old Priuses.
Jo
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JonL
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Post by JonL on Aug 5, 2021 10:56:16 GMT
A friend has a 12 year old Toyota Priuses 76K on the clock, she loves it but the replace battery warning light has just gone on and the cost of the replacement battery is high. She has investigated the cost with the garage and and she could buy a good newer car for the money. She can afford to replace it with a new one but is buying a 3 year old Mazda 3 for <£3K more than the replacement batteries would have cost for her 12 year old Priuses. Jo I wonder how long it would live on for with the battery light on? I bet its probably still serving her needs for the moment. That being said it's worth more working than if she trades it in dead.
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Post by Roger on Aug 5, 2021 15:28:14 GMT
A friend has a 12 year old Toyota Priuses 76K on the clock, she loves it but the replace battery warning light has just gone on and the cost of the replacement battery is high. She has investigated the cost with the garage and and she could buy a good newer car for the money. She can afford to replace it with a new one but is buying a 3 year old Mazda 3 for <£3K more than the replacement batteries would have cost for her 12 year old Priuses. Jo Are you sure this warning light means that? There's a 12V battery on most EVs and that may well be what the warning light is suggesting to replace. I doubt very much if any EV designer would have such a warning for the main battery!
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Post by Roger on Aug 5, 2021 15:34:27 GMT
I can only talk about the Tesla Roadster, not the later Tesla models but with the Roadster (designed in the UK by Lotus) the company I last worked for was contracted to design and supply the thermal management system. This included both cabin environment and battery conditioning. The air conditioning system was a dual circuit design with solenoid valves to control the flow of refrigerant to either the cabin or battery cooling. The cabin was typical automotive direct expansion evaporator but the batteries were cooled with a secondary glycol/water coolant system. The Roadster used the older 18650 or maybe 21700 cells, they were arranged in a housing that included a micro channel aluminium extrusion formed to surround the cells in a sort of ZIG-ZAG pattern. Using secondary cooling also allowed a small PTC coolant heater to be integrated to provide initial heating to the batteries in particularly cold environments when charging. I am sure that thermal management of batteries and the whole charging system is something that all the OEM's have well under control. One benefit of EV's is that it is easy to pre condition the passenger cabin or other critical sub systems whilst plugged in or even using their drive batteries. I can vouch from first hand experience that getting into a pre-conditioned car is so much more appealing than jumping into one that has sat in the sun for a few hours or left outside overnight in the middle of the winter. Chris Hi Chris, That's interesting I know that Elon Musk considers converting a Petrol design to EV was a mistake, it caused so many unnecessary issues. They probably didn't have much option though, with limited resources. Nissan made a complete hash out of thermal management, hence so many issues with charge rates dropping to a trickle on a road trip. They didn't even redress this with their second generation Leaf. Here's an interesting article about how they blew it. They could have been a real competitor, but buyers have got burned, and they're not trusted by many.
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uuu
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Post by uuu on Aug 5, 2021 16:33:00 GMT
Are you sure this warning light means that? There's a 12V battery on most EVs and that may well be what the warning light is suggesting to replace. I doubt very much if any EV designer would have such a warning for the main battery! It's definitely worth checking. Mine has the traction battery, a 12V one for ancillaries, one in the central display (why, I don't know) and in each of the remote keys. You'd think the garage would know which one was failing, though. Wilf
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Post by Roger on Aug 5, 2021 17:33:25 GMT
A friend has a 12 year old Toyota Priuses 76K on the clock, she loves it but the replace battery warning light has just gone on and the cost of the replacement battery is high. She has investigated the cost with the garage and and she could buy a good newer car for the money. She can afford to replace it with a new one but is buying a 3 year old Mazda 3 for <£3K more than the replacement batteries would have cost for her 12 year old Priuses. Jo Are you sure this warning light means that? There's a 12V battery on most EVs and that may well be what the warning light is suggesting to replace. I doubt very much if any EV designer would have such a warning for the main battery! Looking into this a bit deeper, I've found this page that describes the various warning lights on the Prius. Toyota call this symbol the "Charging system warning light", and just tells you to contact the dealer! The only one that's about the battery is a battery symbol, the description is as follows... "This symbol indicates that there is an issue with the vehicle’s charging system. Interestingly enough, the culprit might not be your battery. While it might indicate that you have a loose or damaged battery cable, it can also signal that your alternator belt is broken. If it is your battery, occasionally you’ll notice that your clock is fading or your headlights are dimming." I can't find any reference anywhere to a symbol that says to replace the battery. I think it's worth checking the 12V battery voltage when the issue occurs and see if it's low. From the description, it sounds like there's a conventional 12V system, complete with a small alternator. As far as I'm aware, the main traction battery is charged by the drive motor running as a generator. I don't think they'd call this an alternator. This guide tells you how to replace it if that's the issue. There's a cheaper and better battery that you can replace the original one with, according to this. It seems highly unlikely that this problem is about the state of the main battery. I'd definitely be looking at the 12V battery and its charging system first.
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Post by Jo on Aug 6, 2021 16:25:01 GMT
Are you sure this warning light means that? There's a 12V battery on most EVs and that may well be what the warning light is suggesting to replace. I doubt very much if any EV designer would have such a warning for the main battery! Looking into this a bit deeper, I've found this page that describes the various warning lights on the Prius. Toyota call this symbol the "Charging system warning light", and just tells you to contact the dealer! .... It seems highly unlikely that this problem is about the state of the main battery. I'd definitely be looking at the 12V battery and its charging system first. It was the dealer who investigated it and told her that the traction battery needs replacing. Jo
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