The future is looking even better.

Nearly every car maker on the planet is rolling out EVs, but none have been able to solve a huge issue with the vehicles. This could change soon.

Nearly every car maker on the planet is rolling out EVs, but none have been able to solve a huge issue with the vehicles. This could change soon.

Sadly they are addressing concerns of convenience rather than utility. The issue that keeps me from buying an EV is not the charging time, but the limited number of charge cycles before the battery is too weak to be usable. They cost tens of thousands of dollars to replace and some owners have had insult added to injury by receiving quotes which were more than it would be to just buy a new car.

I'm also dubious, given the heating that is taking place during fast-charging when hundreds of kilowatts are being fed into the batteries, whether this is shortening their life as well. I rented a Tesla to not only try the driving but also evaluate what cost would be expected and it was quite "educational"; when fast-charging there is a powerful fan running in the battery compartment keeping them from overheating. The fast chargers also gouge 4-5x or even more the cost of electricity for the convenience of fast charging. I'd never consider an EV without my own garage to charge it in. If one runs a 240V four-prong stove outlet to one's garage it's less than one day from zero to full charge and charging can be timed for off-peak hours when electricity is cheapest (or from one's own solar panels.)

Sticking with my bicycle for the time being. :^)

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Personally they can bury me inside my old Falcon when I've finished with it. ;-)

Sticking with my bicycle for the time being. :^)

Me too. :)

My concern is about the loss of charge when a BEV is not used for some time. How much charge is lost per hour, day or week? I haven't seen reports on this detail for today's and novel battery technologies. For my petrol car: it's zero.

In addition, replacing all petrol cars with BEV's in dense urban areas requires the complete reconstruction of the distribution grid. This grid here mostly consists of buried cables (all cables up to 25 kilo volts in all our cities, towns and in most rural areas). There are few old 15...25 kV overhead lines still in use in the countryside. Only distribution lines at the 110 kilovolt level still use (cheaper) overhead lines up to the outskirts of cities, except in large metropolises such as Hamburg, Berlin and Munich, where these lines are also buried within the city. We have not yet made any plans for rebuilding distribution grids, neither regarding the required time (years? decades?) nor the costs and who will bear them. At 100% BEV, motorway service stations require peak loads equivalent to a medium-sized city in the tens of megawatts. (I live in a city of 100K inhabitants, our winter peak load is ~42 megawatts). This is not an engineering problem. But it will cost a lot of money. It could lead to driving a car, i.e. driving a BEV, becoming a privilege for higher earners in the future. At least in my country with our high electricity costs it is like that. At fast charging stations, providers charge up to € 0.70/kWh. We already had insane extremes of 1€/kWh. Operating a Diesel car is significantly cheaper then. I suspect BEVs will only replace petrol cars as soon as they become cheaper to operate than these. It was the same with horses a hundred years ago. The millions of workers in low-wage jobs rely on old, cheap gasoline or Diesel cars to commute to their job. This contradiction will become more acute in the near future with bans on new cars with combustion engines.

My concern is about the loss of charge when a BEV is not used for some time. How much charge is lost...

Good question and good comments...

The more recent battery tech gets ever better for reducing the self-discharge losses. Note that grid-scale battery systems are intended for use over a 24-hour cycle. Longer term storage uses other tech...

However... For daily commute use, EVs are a "no-brainer". I've seen that here, even in this semi-remote area, that ALL the delivery vans are all-electric. Also, ALL workers with any pretentions show off a BEV.

And, for irregular use of petrol/diesel vehicles, there are idle losses... The volatiles in the fuel steadily vent off leaving less energetic fuel to the point that eventually after a year or so the EMU gives up. We know this from damaging a long unused generator... It wasn't enough to change the oil and coolant and clean out the fuel water trap... We choked/blew the injectors with the old fuel...

So... Re charging on existing infrastructure:

Rapid charge is wasteful and unduly expensive at scale. Instead, go smart and distributed across time and space. (Even out the load across the 24-hours.) No problem other than for cooperation throughout the Markets, Marketing, and the rest of industry....


And the French have already pioneered and marketed a super golf cart for cheap to be rented out by the minute as a city run-about!


All on our only one planet...
Martin

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

My concern is about the loss of charge when a BEV is not used for some time. How much charge is lost per hour, day or week? I haven't seen reports on this detail for today's and novel battery technologies. For my petrol car: it's zero.

It's not easy to give a generalised answer as the self-discharge rate depends on a few things, not the least of which is the age of the battery technology and the actual age of the battery. Batteries using the latest technologies generally have much lower rates than those using old technologies; also older batteries will generally have a higher rate than new ones (of the same technology).
A very "bad" battery may have a self-discharge rate of over 1% per hour, which compares rather unfavourably with the best and latest technologies where the discharge rate is down to below 1% per month.

As to petrol degrading over time - depending on the particular blend of hydrocarbons and other stuff there is some degradation during storage, this being particularly so with those "light" hydrocarbons and/or ethanol in the mix.

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

Thanks for these insights. I didn't know that. 1% per hour is catastrophic. But 1% per month almost seems like a physical miracle. BEVs have a lot of potential for CO2 savings compared to gasoline engines.
In rural areas this doesn't matter, you drive your car every day. It's different in our big cities (traffic jams, scarce and expensive parking spaces). The car is normally used at weekends to visit friends, relatives and go on trips to the countryside or for the yearly holiday trip. Every day you only travel by bus, tram, train or bike. If the battery charge is gone after a week or two, a BEV makes no sense. Car sharing doesn't really work either (people take better care of their own possessions).

Just a reminder, those figures are for a battery that is disconnected from the automobile. If connected many radios, computers and the like are using power.

No, these were installed not stored.

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

'Range anxiety' and just not the right types of EV's is likely why our up take of them is so low compared to other countries. What we're getting here is fine if you stay on the well sealed tracks, but you won't get far once you get of of them, and most of us in these regions have trailers for various good load carrying reasons.

Electric vehicle uptake is rising. Will 'range anxiety' stop adoption across Australia's far north? (and other regional areas)

And no, we don't need/want oversized electric F-150 sized things either.

Alabama Firefighters Forced to Close Interstate, Pour 36,000 Gallons of Water Into Burning EV to Put It Out

A car accident on Christmas Day caused a fire that required four tankers, over 10 rescue organizations and 36,000 of gallons of water to put out.

The catch? Not a single drop of gasoline was involved.

According to WIAT-TV, authorities in Pine Level, Alabama had such trouble putting out a fire caused by a Tesla accident on Interstate 65.

At least the driver had the presence of mind to call the police for help.
Oops

At least the driver had the presence of mind to call the police for help.
Oops

I didn't know that there are cars on the roads that no longer have hydraulic brakes, which are operated purely mechanically, without electric actuators, without micro controllers. Today's engineers tend to throw technology into the trash bin far too carelessly, that has been developed and proven over decades. I can live with all the modern energy recuperation tech there. But if I decide to toss the anchor there should be a backup, an old-fashioned hydraulic brake, just for my well-being, that is: SAFETY.

[EDIT to add:] a forum thread of Jaguar i-Pace owners discussing brake malfunction in 2021.

Such a braking system is fundamentally wrong. Why do authorities approve such tech? I wouldn't drive 10 meters with such a car. Unbelievable.

Now here's a bit of stupidity from 1 car manufacturer. This has been in our design rules for vehicles for decades now and they have been complying with it for just as long so they only have themselves to blame for this screw up.

Nissan Ariya held up by government red tape.

I'm not saying the center seat tether is a bad idea, but, how many times are they used?
Most families only have one child these days, so to require 3 or more positions for child seats looks a bit OTT. And when you think about it, those families that do have 3 kids, the eldest will possibly be old enough not to require the tether anyway.

I've used them all at once myself (capsules, boosters and harnesses), but when carrying a single baby/toddler/infant it is recommended that they use the centre point as it offers the greater protection for them in side impact collisions.

Why do authorities approve such tech?

You assume there is an authority with power to disapprove.

MiTM phishing attack can let attackers unlock and steal a Tesla

Update: Title and content updated to clarify this is MiTM phishing attack conducted using a Flipper Zero but it could be performed by other devices.

Researchers demonstrated how they could conduct a Man-in-the-Middle (MiTM) phishing attack to compromise Tesla accounts, unlocking cars, and starting them.

The researchers reported their findings to Tesla saying that linking a car to a new phone lacks proper authentication security. However, the car maker determined the report to be out of scope.

While the researchers performed this phishing attack using a Flipper Zero, it could easily be done with other devices, such as a computer, a Raspberry Pi, or Android phones.

A question I have is why are we not hearing hybreds having battery fires like pure evs are?

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A question I have is why are we not hearing hybreds having battery fires like pure evs are?

I guess based on several web searches the answer (most recent article could find was from 2022) could be "they are not being reported by the media."
A new study has some surprising findings on car fires

An analysis from an insurance group ranks the likelihood of fires in EVs, hybrids, and combustion-engine vehicles. Here's what they found.

A recent report by an online car insurance marketplace, AutoinsuranceEZ, shed some light on the issue, although it’s likely not to be the last word on the topic. Researchers at the company analyzed data from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), and to account for the fact that the numbers of combustion-engine cars and EVs on the roads are vastly different, they factored in the car sales of different vehicle types. The resulting analysis found that per 100,000 cars sold in each category, electric vehicles had the lowest number of fires. Hybrid vehicles had the highest risk ratio for fire, and traditional cars were in the middle.