Thread: Petrol V EV technolgy from America

The other issue with EV and our roads is the vibration on the traction motors - any insulation failure results in heat tracking which eventually causes the TM to go by-by. You get a red light on the dash saying 'Driveline requires service contact agent' or similar as you glide to a stop on the side of the road. In NZ it would seem that a replacement TM is more than the vehicle is worth too. Starting to see more of this sort of problem cropping up unfortunately.

Originally Posted by Flyblown

I have a comprehensive spreadsheet that has variables updated monthly to solve for the point in time at which it is economical for us to replace my wife’s 2009 Toyota Highlander 3.5L V6, which we have owned since new. Initially on a company sponsored (very heavily discounted) novated lease, at the end of which we bought the car for next to bugger all.

The spreadsheet analyses the whole of cost of ownership of the old car versus two options, a new Corolla Hybrid and a generic EV (which I select manually each month based on what’s going on in the market as it is changing so quickly.)

The speed at which the gap has closed between keeping the old car (for years a no brainer) to a replacement being more economical is quite frightening, hardly surprising.

But the fact is we are still not quite there yet. It is still more economic for us to keep the big car. Plus the intangible feeling of improved safety by being at least as big and heavy as all the Ute drivers we share the road with around here. The towing part is the bit that annoys the fuck out of me because it’s hard to factor in to the equation. It is an irregular activity with this particular car, but when we do it we’re generally towing something quite big and heavy which would be beyond a small hatchback.

i’ll tell you something for free, when we looked at the long-term service life of this vehicle we did not anticipate $3.10 for 91 in 2022.

You state As big and heavy as the utes etc in your SUV....Did you realise that a Leaf weighs in at 1.7t at the kerb and with a full load has a Tare of 2.15T Over TWO ton for a 5 door hatch back that is not dimensionally much bigger than our Nissan March 1.3l 5 door hatch.........Now thats scary...

Originally Posted by Beetroot

The charging time would be killer on long trips 45mins to get 75 miles (120kms) of range would be a total nightmare.
Most places in NZ you'd be hard pressed to find such nice straight roads with minimal incline, add in some hills like you'd be driving down SH1 from Hamilton south and it'd be even worse.
Range gets killed by the cold also so worst case scenario would be bloody awful.
6000lbs is only 2700kg so it's to a ridiculous load, considering a typical NZ/AU diesel 4x4/ute would be at worst 20l/100kms (about 11.76 US MPG) the case for an electric work vehicle just doesn't add up.

I was suprised to see it cost them $27 to charge from 9% to 74%.
In NZ money 66% charge (of a 131kW battery at $0.30 per kW) would cost $26, which got them about 66miles, works out to be $24 per 100km.
Diesel at its current crazy prices is roughly $2.80/Litre, using the worst case scenario of 20l/100km works out to be $56 per 100km.
Using a more realistic 14l/100kms would be $40 per 100km.
Using a previously high diesel price ($1.50/Litre) at 14L/100km works out at $21 per 100km.

I've left out RUCs becasue EVs will start paying these too sometime in the near future.

If you are worried abotu the cost of fuel and commute less than 100km a day then just buy a used Nissan Leaf for commuiting and keep the Land Crusier for long trips.
The current cost of fuel makes an EV ute/truck seem quite appealing, but if that comes with the massive inconvience of 45minutes of charging every 120km then that just wont cut it.

The other thing is chargers, theres bugger all and there mostly 50KW(slow as fuck) chargers where as the TFL video they charged at mostly 150KW chargers so the time to recharge is 3X faster then what is mostly avaliable in NZ

Search TFL truck theve done heaps of travel and comparisons between most trucks, watched their video on picking up the ford lighting truck in detroit and driving it back to Colorado

Also reguarding maintenace they have suspension, wheel bearing, brakes, all eletronic fuckery( aerials, door handles, fancy switches, all sorts of actuators) some have liguid cooled motors
and heating for the car - batterys, seats, windows, steering wheel, and whatever else they still have alot of parts that are unique to them so parts as very pricey as no aftermarket parts for alot of them.
Follow afew youtubers who post what their tesla has broken and the price that it costs mostly repaired under warranty - saw one video where a tesla broke its front drive unit was 18,000$us and only 2
years old and 35k miles was replaced under warranty but as soon as they go out of warranty stay away absolute shit boxes the ammount of parts that brake/malfunction is mind boggling for such modern low km cars

I have just had my Landcruiser serviced at a vehicle workshop at Airport Oaks this morning, it was only 16k over the last due service interval.
When I walked around to pick it up at lunchtime I got to talking to the owner of the business, they are struggling along mainly due to the Covid shutdowns and border closures. He has had to transition it to servicing EV's, he a heap of them there, mostly Uber Prius's, reckons people will be shocked three ways.
1. Price of the replacement battery's on a car that in the end is worth fuck all.
2. Some gung ho person doing the repairs themselves and electrocuting themselves.
3. A lot of his business is run on "After Pay" - he gets paid but the client has it on tick with After Pay, he reckons a lot of people simply won't be able to pay it back.

When he replaces the battery's he pays someone $150 to dispose of them, he is unsure where and how he does it.

Yeah, something like 2K just for the core battery on a 10 year old prius and that doesn't include rlabour, freight or core charge outs and time that the car is off the road. Some of the EV's run packs that can only be taken apart by outfits with specific and expensive equipment to pull, replace and balance the replacement cell/battery units in the main pack. Probably there are people working on a 'better' way to do it...

On the other hand, there's nothing really too dodgy in the hybrid battery packs if you are aware of what the F you are doing and safe the thing properly prior to throwing your attached bits into the circuit. Problem is I guess a lot of private people probably aren't aware of just how much go is in those things if you short them with yourself!

Don't the Tesla battery packs run at 350 volts DC-ish?? @gonetropo should be along to correct us

Whatever, its gonna tingle just a tad more than the 9 volt battery on the tongue trick

Originally Posted by 300winmag

I have just had my Landcruiser serviced at a vehicle workshop at Airport Oaks this morning, it was only 16k over the last due service interval.
When I walked around to pick it up at lunchtime I got to talking to the owner of the business, they are struggling along mainly due to the Covid shutdowns and border closures. He has had to transition it to servicing EV's, he a heap of them there, mostly Uber Prius's, reckons people will be shocked three ways.
1. Price of the replacement battery's on a car that in the end is worth fuck all.
2. Some gung ho person doing the repairs themselves and electrocuting themselves.
3. A lot of his business is run on "After Pay" - he gets paid but the client has it on tick with After Pay, he reckons a lot of people simply won't be able to pay it back.

When he replaces the battery's he pays someone $150 to dispose of them, he is unsure where and how he does it.

when i managed a wrecking yard we sent all batteries, lead acid and prius ones to china. The lead was reused after the acid was poured down the drain and the prius batteries were dumped in the sea

Originally Posted by Flyblown

I have a comprehensive spreadsheet that has variables updated monthly to solve for the point in time at which it is economical for us to replace my wife’s 2009 Toyota Highlander 3.5L V6, which we have owned since new. Initially on a company sponsored (very heavily discounted) novated lease, at the end of which we bought the car for next to bugger all.

The spreadsheet analyses the whole of cost of ownership of the old car versus two options, a new Corolla Hybrid and a generic EV (which I select manually each month based on what’s going on in the market as it is changing so quickly.)

The speed at which the gap has closed between keeping the old car (for years a no brainer) to a replacement being more economical is quite frightening, hardly surprising.

But the fact is we are still not quite there yet. It is still more economic for us to keep the big car. Plus the intangible feeling of improved safety by being at least as big and heavy as all the Ute drivers we share the road with around here. The towing part is the bit that annoys the fuck out of me because it’s hard to factor in to the equation. It is an irregular activity with this particular car, but when we do it we’re generally towing something quite big and heavy which would be beyond a small hatchback.

i’ll tell you something for free, when we looked at the long-term service life of this vehicle we did not anticipate $3.10 for 91 in 2022.

I haven't quite gone to this level of detail but also often crunch the numbers to see if I should go to an EV.
I commute over 200kms a day so you'd think that going electric would be a no brainer for the fuel savings.

The problem is the only cars that have enough range to do 200kms are all over 50k, considering you can buy a pretty decent little run around for less than 5k the break even point is over 7 years in which time you'll likely need a new battery or some other new technology will come along and make my 7year old car worthless.
Even if I was to charge up while at work (not easily possible) i'd still need to spend a heap of money to get one that will reliably do my 100km commute as in reality you need almost double the rated range.

I can't just get an EV with 100km of range, I need a bit extra range incase of traffic or detouring for some reason or even to allow for bad weather, so really need 150km to be comfortable.
Then you aren't supposed to run the battery from full 100% to 0% every day, really only meant to use the middle 70ish%, so now need 200km of range.
The you need to factor in battery degredation of about 3% per year, so future proofing for the next 5 years means I should get one with 230km range.
230km of range basically puts me back into buying a new 50k EV, so can't even get a cheap used Leaf.

I wondered if you could buy an old leaf with a worn out battery as they are pretty cheap and usually have very low kms but it seems like replacement batteries aren't even available.....

I also ran this though experiement for my mum who needs a new car.
She lives in town and drives very very little but does a few longer trips, say a 100km trip twice a month, and also does a couple of very long trips a year.
In theory an EV would be perfect for here as her daily trips are very short and a longer trip can easily stop to recharge half way.
But even in this scenario an EV doesn't make much sense.

Her current weekly fuel bill would be barely $30 so hardly breaking the bank.
For her twice a month 100km trip she would need to buy a 30 or 40kW used Leaf but even then the range is a little bit lacking (typically around 120-200 for a used one).
For her long trips only having 200kms range would be doable but would still be annoying.
But a used 40kw leaf is still over 30k, a new 40kW leaf is barely cheaper than the 60kW so over 50k.

It hardly seems worth paying 50k for a new long range leaf just so she can save $30 fuel a week, then with the added inconvience of worrying about charging when doing long trips.
For the same 30k can buy her a brand new car, or a good second hand one for considerably less.

I think the only time and EV really make sense is for people living in the city who have a daily commute of 20-70kms and don't frequently drive more than that, or have another vehicle they can use.
Even then it doesn't make sense as you could just buy a PHEV and get your daily commute (or most of it) done on electric, then still have a petrol engine for the longer trips.

So really unless you can buy a used leaf for very little money, then a new EV is basically just a luxury item/status symbol that only make sense for people who were going to spend 60k on a new commuting car anyway. Also means you can save on your fuel bill/RUCs so you can put that money towards a new rolex.

What a depressing thread, head in the sand ideology will destroy the world.

Originally Posted by Maca49

What a depressing thread, head in the sand ideology will destroy the world.

Care to share some enlightenment, I would much rather have an EV but don't have $20k to spend on one. Have never owned any vehicle except for current one that I got before EVs were a thing that cost more than $10k

We have an electric ford transit at work. Everything else is a diesel with the sole exception of trevor who has a xr6 ute and the head honcho with a fiesta RS.

At least in the trades the only technicians who could ever use an electric van are the ones that only go to one site and never anywhere else. i could do 100km in a day very easily around auckland depending on how much the phone rings.

the ev thing at the moment is interesting i considered going that way but the price is just unreasonable i definitely cannot afford it so i will be upgrading to a pushbike very soon. iv already worked out im going to save $50+ per week on running cost of my daily driver to and from work alone but ill use it to go to the shop or whatever in town as well figured if were going to attempt to change anything got to start looking at the big picture and start small.

Originally Posted by Maca49

What a depressing thread, head in the sand ideology will destroy the world.

Less head in the sand, more not buying that EVs are the saviour of the world.
If you want to buy a electic ute that needs 45 minutes of charging for every 90 minutes of towing be my guest.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3IR...eFastLaneTruck
Go to 17:11, Imagine pluging your vehicle in to charge and going to lunch for an hour only to find the charger shat itself...

Thankfully manufacturers are continuing to research other technologies, as EVs in their current state do not cut the mustard.

When we were looking at a 7-seat car for the wife (really more like 5+2 as small as we could go) the only real option was an outlander. Looked at second hand, 3 years old and it was $28K no warranty. New runout 2021 $33K and this was the basic petrol 2wd with the chips that the newer model is selling without due to the semiconductor shortages (less trade in price). PHEV version of the 7-seater was $53K less trade in, so at current price of 91 petrol the difference in price is worth about 82,000Km of travel. Obviously the PHEV uses a bit less fuel (about 5.5L/100Km vs about 7.8L/100Km for the non-hybrid) but the savings in intial outlay is a hell of a lot more valuable to me over the fuel saving of about 2.3L/100Km...

An EV is something I did look at but at a daily travel of about 80Km including most of the time being on 80-100Km roads and up hill for the last 10Km makes it a requirement for the range to be an actual of about 180-200Km as they rely on being able to regen brake in city traffic for the standard claimed range. The neighbour who has an EV as a shopping cart finds that about 70% of the claimed around town range is achievable - and slow charging overnight is about 10-12 hours to fully top up. As they are semi-retired that works well for their use but I suspect that would not be good for me/wifey with several trips to do kid things. A PHEV would be suitable, the neighbours on the other side had the outlander PHEV of the slightly earlier model to our LS so that's where I get the fuel consumption figures from, but the cost is really to high to be a goer for us at the moment.

I think a hybrid ute on the other hand would be bloody awesome as a tow vehicle, especially heavy trailers. The extra breaking and assist on launch would be useful.

Wife's friend has a PHEV, purchased for her by hubby. They were talking about range (as you do) and when wifie asked her how far she got out of a charge, she said, "no, it only charges the battery when you go down hill or brake". Wifie then told her what the P in PHEV stood for.

Owned for 7 months, and an otherwise intelligent person didn't understand how the vehicle worked FFS!!!!