BEVs

[oaklec]

We do appear to be on the edge of a motor industry crisis; caused by the market for BEVs drying up (the market being those who can afford one privately or benefit from the temporary tax incentives or drive very hige mileages), Gov policy penalising manufacturers if they dont reach the increasing % targets and manufacturers realising they can make more profit from selling a small number of very expensive cars than they can from lots of cheaper ones.

The huge depreciation (compounded by the huge initial price) that we are seeing in the value of many BEVs must surely put off any sensible private buyer, as it outweighs any possible savings in the cost of fuel for an average driver.

I suppose that will make secondhand BEVs very cheap. Maybe that will encourage people to just buy an older BEV (say 6 year old) and change it every year or so when the inevitable losses of car ownership are sustainable.

I had a BEV charger installed (FOC) when I had a solar panels and battery installed a few mnonths ago. I am increasingly uncertain as to whether to go for a BEV. For me, the £s just dont add up compared with the two old ICE cars we have. I shall probably stick with them for now and maybe plump for a Plug-In HEV if one of them needs to go all of a sudden (they would be written off by insurers even for minor damage).

I struggle to work up any BEV enthusiasm, I have seen how my phone battery deteriorates after 18 months, it scares me to think how the driving range on a BEV might deteriorate as the car gets older.

[Carlton green]

I struggle to work up any BEV enthusiasm, I have seen how my phone battery deteriorates after 18 months, it scares me to think how the driving range on a BEV might deteriorate as the car gets older.

I think it quite right to be sceptical, but evidence presented up the thread shows that battery degradation (in cars) is a very different matter - not perfect but very much better than in the case of mobile phones.

Personally I’m watching and waiting; as said earlier today even minor damage to an old car will cause an insurance company to right it off. If that were to happen to me then I’d be glad to know what the options were for a replacement and I’d likely go the BEV route. Mostly I don’t need a massive range, and with the large numbers of chargers that there now are the issue of limited range diminishes.

[[XAP]Bob]

I struggle to work up any BEV enthusiasm, I have seen how my phone battery deteriorates after 18 months, it scares me to think how the driving range on a BEV might deteriorate as the car gets older.

So you assume that a high value battery will be subject to the same abuse as an old phone battery and won’t have any sort of protection built in?

Battery life does degrade, but by a tiny margin. There are battery packs out there that have done hundreds of thousands of miles - way more than a typical car will ever do.
There are some examples that have reduced range earlier, but either they’re in warranty or the car is mildly devalued because the max range (which is only ever approached a handful of times a year) is slightly reduced.

BEV batteries are worth protecting, and that’s what manufacturers do. There is plenty of monitoring, balancing, charge rate control, thermal management which goes into keeping batteries alive for longer than petrol engines could hope to manage without regular serving and replacement parts.

[oaklec]

I struggle to work up any BEV enthusiasm, I have seen how my phone battery deteriorates after 18 months, it scares me to think how the driving range on a BEV might deteriorate as the car gets older.

So you assume that a high value battery will be subject to the same abuse as an old phone battery and won’t have any sort of protection built in?

Battery life does degrade, but by a tiny margin. There are battery packs out there that have done hundreds of thousands of miles - way more than a typical car will ever do.
There are some examples that have reduced range earlier, but either they’re in warranty or the car is mildly devalued because the max range (which is only ever approached a handful of times a year) is slightly reduced.

BEV batteries are worth protecting, and that’s what manufacturers do. There is plenty of monitoring, balancing, charge rate control, thermal management which goes into keeping batteries alive for longer than petrol engines could hope to manage without regular serving and replacement parts.

I guess as someone firmly in the used rather than new car market I see more potential pitfalls than benefits of buying a BEV.

I want to understand more about the life expectancy of the battery, also what the degradation means in real terms. What range will a 10 year old BEV give compared to the range when new? As is with buying any car, you try to minimise the risks of having to replace major expensive items in your ownership.

A quick look on Autotrader filtered on cars with mileage above 200000 splits in the following way:-

PETROL - 84
DIESEL - 429
ELECTRIC - 4
HYBRID - 110

Of the 4 Electric cars with high mileage, two seem to have mileage typos and two are Teslas.

The price of the Teslas are in the region of £15000 yet they are probably near end of life. £15k for something that might need the battery replaced in the near term which likely means the car gets scrapped rather than the battery replaced due to the cost involved.

The stat I'm impessed with is the hybrids, those toyota hybrids seem to be impressive feats of engineering.

None of that data makes me enthusiastic about BEVS.

[roubaixtuesday]

I struggle to work up any BEV enthusiasm, I have seen how my phone battery deteriorates after 18 months, it scares me to think how the driving range on a BEV might deteriorate as the car gets older.

So you assume that a high value battery will be subject to the same abuse as an old phone battery and won’t have any sort of protection built in?

Battery life does degrade, but by a tiny margin. There are battery packs out there that have done hundreds of thousands of miles - way more than a typical car will ever do.
There are some examples that have reduced range earlier, but either they’re in warranty or the car is mildly devalued because the max range (which is only ever approached a handful of times a year) is slightly reduced.

BEV batteries are worth protecting, and that’s what manufacturers do. There is plenty of monitoring, balancing, charge rate control, thermal management which goes into keeping batteries alive for longer than petrol engines could hope to manage without regular serving and replacement parts.

I guess as someone firmly in the used rather than new car market I see more potential pitfalls than benefits of buying a BEV.

I want to understand more about the life expectancy of the battery, also what the degradation means in real terms. What range will a 10 year old BEV give compared to the range when new? As is with buying any car, you try to minimise the risks of having to replace major expensive items in your ownership.

A quick look on Autotrader filtered on cars with mileage above 200000 splits in the following way:-

PETROL - 84
DIESEL - 429
ELECTRIC - 4
HYBRID - 110

Of the 4 Electric cars with high mileage, two seem to have mileage typos and two are Teslas.

The price of the Teslas are in the region of £15000 yet they are probably near end of life. £15k for something that might need the battery replaced in the near term which likely means the car gets scrapped rather than the battery replaced due to the cost involved.

The stat I'm impessed with is the hybrids, those toyota hybrids seem to be impressive feats of engineering.

None of that data makes me enthusiastic about BEVS.

I don't think those stats are at all relevant to the question. Very few BEVs have been around long enough to amass that sort of mileage.

[oaklec]

So you assume that a high value battery will be subject to the same abuse as an old phone battery and won’t have any sort of protection built in?

Battery life does degrade, but by a tiny margin. There are battery packs out there that have done hundreds of thousands of miles - way more than a typical car will ever do.
There are some examples that have reduced range earlier, but either they’re in warranty or the car is mildly devalued because the max range (which is only ever approached a handful of times a year) is slightly reduced.

BEV batteries are worth protecting, and that’s what manufacturers do. There is plenty of monitoring, balancing, charge rate control, thermal management which goes into keeping batteries alive for longer than petrol engines could hope to manage without regular serving and replacement parts.

I guess as someone firmly in the used rather than new car market I see more potential pitfalls than benefits of buying a BEV.

I want to understand more about the life expectancy of the battery, also what the degradation means in real terms. What range will a 10 year old BEV give compared to the range when new? As is with buying any car, you try to minimise the risks of having to replace major expensive items in your ownership.

A quick look on Autotrader filtered on cars with mileage above 200000 splits in the following way:-

PETROL - 84
DIESEL - 429
ELECTRIC - 4
HYBRID - 110

Of the 4 Electric cars with high mileage, two seem to have mileage typos and two are Teslas.

The price of the Teslas are in the region of £15000 yet they are probably near end of life. £15k for something that might need the battery replaced in the near term which likely means the car gets scrapped rather than the battery replaced due to the cost involved.

The stat I'm impessed with is the hybrids, those toyota hybrids seem to be impressive feats of engineering.

None of that data makes me enthusiastic about BEVS.

I don't think those stats are at all relevant to the question. Very few BEVs have been around long enough to amass that sort of mileage.

1000011718.jpg

That's kind of my point, it's too immature for me to consider as a used car buyer.

EDIT - Looking at the rise in BEV sales, maybe the data will be available over the next 5-10 years, which could lead me to becoming significantly more BEV enthusiastic. but for the moment, it's a no from me

[UpWrong]

This report reckons BEV batteries will last 20 years with maybe a 1.8% loss of capacity per year,
https://www.fleetnews.co.uk/news/telema ... ation-rate

I read something elsewhere that degradation slows down over time, not accelerates. The battery degrades the most in the first year or two.

[roubaixtuesday]

That's kind of my point, it's too immature for me to consider as a used car buyer.

Ah, well, fair enough, I'm sure many others fall into that bracket too.

The post read that you felt high mileage BEVs were less attractive than high mileage ICE vehicles because of battery reliability. That may or may not be the case; personally I'm sceptical, I suspect the likelihood of a high mileage ICE being a lemon are higher. Daresay we'll find out in due course.

[oaklec]

I need more data, I need there to be more high mileage BEVs so I can make a sensible decision on whether a BEV would be a suitable used car solution for me.

At the moment if I were buying a used car it would be petrol or hybrid.

Now, I would most appreciate if all those BEV owners would add miles to their cars at the earliest opportunity

[Cugel]

That's kind of my point, it's too immature for me to consider as a used car buyer.

Ah, well, fair enough, I'm sure many others fall into that bracket too.

The post read that you felt high mileage BEVs were less attractive than high mileage ICE vehicles because of battery reliability. That may or may not be the case; personally I'm sceptical, I suspect the likelihood of a high mileage ICE being a lemon are higher. Daresay we'll find out in due course.

Having not long ago gone full e-car via the buying of a Nissan Leaf, me and the ladywife went off doing detailed research beyond the higher-level research done before buying the thing.

Some highlights discovered:

* E-cars are simpler with less complex and (some) less-stressed parts. Battery not considered, they seem to last longer than most ICE cars of an equivalent size, type and usage. Half a million kilometre Leafs, for example, are more common that half a million kilometre ICE of similar size build and power.

* Battery longevity is primarily affected by the charging regime and the temperature the battery is subjected to. Even with careful treatment, batteries last significantly less in hot climates such as that of the southern States of the USA; and in really cold places such as Northern Norway.

* Charging practices make a large difference to the battery life, mostly through the temperature variations involved but also via the degree to which they're left in very high or very low charge condition, when the battery chemistry is at its most volatile or vulnerable. Charging needs to have a means to reduce or cease current when the battery temperature is approaching "damaging".

* Fast charging will heat a battery so that if it's not temperature limited, fast charging will speed up battery degradation. Even if the battery is temperature controlled and actively cooled, rapid charging can stress the battery cells in a way that will speed up their natural degradation.

Reading the various info sources, study-summaries, owner reports and so forth, we've adopted this charging regime:

Don't worry about weather-related temperatures, as this is Britain so unlikely to see damaging high or low temperatures for lithium-based battery chemistries.

Charge at the slowest practical rate in light of the next day or three's journeys.

Keep the battery between 30 and 65% unless there's a good reason to do otherwise.

+ anticipating a large solar panel output the next day - drop to 10% to leave more room for tomorrow's solar output;
+ anticipating a very long journey the next day - charge overnight beforehand to near 100%.

Very few manufacturers have a facility to renew or refurbish batteries, although most (not all) will replace if a battery does turn out to be defective (with very few instances of that) and so invokes the warranty.

There's a rise now of 3rd party battery replacers and menders, often using cells harvested from crashed e-cars. Some Chinese makers are producing brand new replacement batteries and associated battery management software for older e-car models such as the Nissan Leaf (oldest around 2011 manufactured).

Installation can be done by a skilled owner or any one of the rising number of specialists able to do so (usually for limited models). It's costly and may be more expensive than scrapping and buying another e-car .... but not always, depending on the condition of the e-car having a battery transplant.

PS Many older e-car owners get the absolute most out of an e-car by changing its role as the battery mileage charge goes down. Some Leaf owners have used their car first as a taxi (high mileage) but gradually demoted the car's role as its max charge capacity decreases. Even an e-car with a 20 or 30 mile range can be used for many more years as a local short-commuter or go-to-the-shopser.

[UpWrong]

I was a big advocate of LFP battery chemistry, but in ignorance I ordered the long range version of the MG4 which has CATL NMC 523 batteries. My charging regime is:

when state of charge gets down to 30%, charge to 80%,
when a long journey is planned the next day then charge to 100%

A 30-80% charge gives 120 miles (in winter) or more.

The battery seems to get charged 5 times a month, so 60 times a year.

If I have the car for 20 years and recharge it 1200 times I will have driven it around 150,000 miles. At which point I don't care about depreciation.

And so far, driving it 1500 miles has cost me £24.03 in electricity.

[Cugel]

If I have the car for 20 years and recharge it 1200 times I will have driven it around 150,000 miles. At which point I don't care about depreciation.

And so far, driving it 1500 miles has cost me £24.03 in electricity.

Our Leaf will do a max of 10,000 miles per year, but probably more like 8000. 100,000 miles in 10 years, then - but I'll probably be dead or very unwise to drive by then. Perhaps a grandson will get it handed down and do the next 100,000 miles before it goes phut?

In fact, a daughter once inherited our diesel Peugeot 205 with 93,000 miles on its clock. She got to 150,000 miles before it got pranged so badly it wasn't worth the fix. But how much fuel did the thing gobble? 55 - 60 mpg was the usual.

Like you in your MG, we've so far done 1500 miles in the Leaf, from early September. If all of its e-juice had come from the grid, it would have cost us £24.37. (Overnight charge at 6.6p per Kwh).However, even in the short-day months, a sunny day will generate significant solar (358 Kwh in September, 268 in October, 42 in November). In the longer days, we rarely use any e-juice at all (for anything) from the grid. A rough estimate says that the yearly car e-juice use will be around 70% from solar and 30% from the grid. Maybe better if I can manage the charging cannily.

The earlier months (September and early October) saw 4.0 miles per Kwh. It would be higher if we didn't live in such a hilly place, where any journey tends to be 1000 metres ascent & descent per 50 kilometres of journey. Come December, we're doing 3.3 miles per Kwh, using lights, wipers, heating, demister and just about every other e-consuming gubbins in the thing.

It's a car with two personalities. In ECO mode its quite sedate although not a hill-struggler. Switch that off and vast amount of vroom can be had, although there's been no silly racing hot hatches or them daft wee sportycars with an olde gimmer driving, as I am now sedate (and always was, really).

[Cowsham]

It's just a different way of thinking about personal transport. If you need a car to do 300 miles a day you might need to consider your lifestyle could be wrong. I say leave the diesel and petrol for the couriers and big machinery till they get up to speed.

As for charging the worst thing you can do to a battery car is discharge it below 20% don't do that. Don't worry about charging it to 100% unless it's to be stored for a long time. We use ours almost every day in winter as our weather is bloody dangerous to cycle in most days in winter, so we charge to 100% -- a year and a half later no less miles per charge than when we got it -- Nissan Leaf tektra

[oaklec]

That's kind of my point, it's too immature for me to consider as a used car buyer.

Ah, well, fair enough, I'm sure many others fall into that bracket too.

The post read that you felt high mileage BEVs were less attractive than high mileage ICE vehicles because of battery reliability. That may or may not be the case; personally I'm sceptical, I suspect the likelihood of a high mileage ICE being a lemon are higher. Daresay we'll find out in due course.

Having not long ago gone full e-car via the buying of a Nissan Leaf, me and the ladywife went off doing detailed research beyond the higher-level research done before buying the thing.

Some highlights discovered:

* E-cars are simpler with less complex and (some) less-stressed parts. Battery not considered, they seem to last longer than most ICE cars of an equivalent size, type and usage. Half a million kilometre Leafs, for example, are more common that half a million kilometre ICE of similar size build and power.

* Battery longevity is primarily affected by the charging regime and the temperature the battery is subjected to. Even with careful treatment, batteries last significantly less in hot climates such as that of the southern States of the USA; and in really cold places such as Northern Norway.

* Charging practices make a large difference to the battery life, mostly through the temperature variations involved but also via the degree to which they're left in very high or very low charge condition, when the battery chemistry is at its most volatile or vulnerable. Charging needs to have a means to reduce or cease current when the battery temperature is approaching "damaging".

* Fast charging will heat a battery so that if it's not temperature limited, fast charging will speed up battery degradation. Even if the battery is temperature controlled and actively cooled, rapid charging can stress the battery cells in a way that will speed up their natural degradation.

Reading the various info sources, study-summaries, owner reports and so forth, we've adopted this charging regime:

Don't worry about weather-related temperatures, as this is Britain so unlikely to see damaging high or low temperatures for lithium-based battery chemistries.

Charge at the slowest practical rate in light of the next day or three's journeys.

Keep the battery between 30 and 65% unless there's a good reason to do otherwise.

+ anticipating a large solar panel output the next day - drop to 10% to leave more room for tomorrow's solar output;
+ anticipating a very long journey the next day - charge overnight beforehand to near 100%.

Very few manufacturers have a facility to renew or refurbish batteries, although most (not all) will replace if a battery does turn out to be defective (with very few instances of that) and so invokes the warranty.

There's a rise now of 3rd party battery replacers and menders, often using cells harvested from crashed e-cars. Some Chinese makers are producing brand new replacement batteries and associated battery management software for older e-car models such as the Nissan Leaf (oldest around 2011 manufactured).

Installation can be done by a skilled owner or any one of the rising number of specialists able to do so (usually for limited models). It's costly and may be more expensive than scrapping and buying another e-car .... but not always, depending on the condition of the e-car having a battery transplant.

PS Many older e-car owners get the absolute most out of an e-car by changing its role as the battery mileage charge goes down. Some Leaf owners have used their car first as a taxi (high mileage) but gradually demoted the car's role as its max charge capacity decreases. Even an e-car with a 20 or 30 mile range can be used for many more years as a local short-commuter or go-to-the-shopser.

That's a very interesting insight to BEV ownership

[Biospace]

This report reckons BEV batteries will last 20 years with maybe a 1.8% loss of capacity per year,
https://www.fleetnews.co.uk/news/telema ... ation-rate

I read something elsewhere that degradation slows down over time, not accelerates. The battery degrades the most in the first year or two.

What about once beyond 80% capacity?