Interesting report (one of many) that may take a bit of the shine of these electric tanks.
Lawrence.


Tesla Model S Drive-Unit Replacements: How Big A Problem?

 

People often ask me about the electric cars and how much money they will save.

I always respond with this analogy.

How long will the battery last in you Cell phone or Laptop??

The answer is usually around 2 years before you notice the battery requires charging much more frequently. After 3 years you typically need a new battery.

Then I ask how much is the battery. Most will answer that the battery costs more than the cell phone or laptop is worth.

So if after 3 years or so you electric car starts losing range because the battery is starting to fail and you need to replace it, what is your 3 year old car worth.

A typical car looses around 50-60% of its' value after 3 years, but if you have an electric car add the cost of battery replacement and your Tesla is worth

Tesla after 3 years minus depreciation = about $ 50k
replacement battery - about $ 15K

so your Tesla is now worth about $35K

So your free to drive car is actually costing you a lot.

 

The other thing that annoys me about these so-called, "environmentally friendly" vehicles is that the mining of lithium is extremely dirty, and even worse is that there is no environmentally friendly method to dispose of spent lithium batteries. The latter is becoming a real problem and will only get worse. Lastly, electric cars are being charged primarily by coal-fired power plants in the U.S.

 

Most power plants do maintenance at night when power usage is low.
Now bring in the electric cars which mostly will be recharging at night. OK, so what and when can these power plants do their maintenance...during the day causing brownouts?
Can't do it at night anymore because these "environmentally friendly" vehicles need their power.

 

The environmental swipes don't really hold much water. To read the posts you'd almost think that oil was limitless and that the extraction, refinement, transportation and consumption of it was itself a paragon of environmental virtue, and that our cars are made with 100% recycled (and recyclable) parts.

Times are changing, my friends, and they should.

Oil will run out sooner rather than later, we have to look at other sources of energy and until we all get our hands on the hoverboards we were promised in Back to the Future, electric vehicles with batteries and/or fuel cells are likely to be where we're all headed. Tesla and others are leading the way and sure, there will be issues as the technologies are being worked out. After all, Mr Benz' first efforts don't bear too much resemblance to what we drive today...

Tesla to my mind deserves a *ton* of credit. An American designed, engineered and built car which has absolutely changed the game as the first electric vehicle that can genuinely be used as your only car. Tesla has delivered a car in the Model S that seats seven, is a technological powerhouse, and off the line the P85D will leave *all* of our F Types in the dust. In any event, these are expensive cars that aren't bought by the average consumer. These are broadly savvy buyers who know what they are getting and are willing to jump on board with what are still emerging technologies and go along for the ride.

The bottom line? I think Tesla deserves credit, not derision.

To address some specifics:

The warranty on a Tesla battery is longer than the warranty on our engines. And it's not like our Jags are necessarily the most reliable vehicles on the road......

Tesla is shortly introducing a battery swap program where you change yours for a fully charged one in a few minutes. The battery your car is delivered with isn't necessarily going to be the one you have in your car after delivery.

Even if it is, it's predicted that the battery will more likely than not have 70% to 80% capacity at the end of the warranty period. The swap service makes that probably moot anyway.

The powerplant maintenance thing is a non-sequitur. There's a lot of excess capacity and the power in the grid isn't coming from one plant..... More to the point, not all of the power is generated from burning coal.

 

All fair points, and no one said ALL of our power in the U.S. was generated by coal, but most still is. The point was, electric cars are not necessarily the panacea for the environment that many represent them to be.

I think you over-reacted to what was actually said.

 

Mr Pot? Meet Mr Kettle.... Perhaps you skim read my post?

(and yes, Foosh, I'm just kidding further our last conversation)

Although coal only accounts for around 39% of the power generated in the US.

http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=427&t=3

 

Nah, actually read it carefully 3 times just to make sure my first impression was on target.

And, I know you were!

And, if you're gonna keep editing, I have to keep up! As the chart you published shows, coal is by far the largest percentage. BTW, natural gas is the largest 2nd place source (together accounting for close to 70% of U.S. electricity production), but that, of course, is part of the same process that created oil deposits the ground, and could also be expected to be depleted by the time the oil is gone.

 

I think you mix understand the swap program. It's meant as a grab and go, then grab on the way back program. You are given that fully charged battery for I believe $80 to use, but you come back on your return journey to put it back, it's a loaner. You can choose to keep it, but there are all sorts of fees based on your old batteries condition and other factors, let me put it this way, it's not cheap. Still paying for a battery replacement.

 

swa and foosh, despite the obvious differences in opinion here, thanks for posting because i thought both of your original views were informative.

Tesla does deserve a lot of credit for trailblazing, and most people do underestimate the systemic costs of owning an electric car, so I guess I agree with both of you.

 

I actually don't disagree with SWAJAMES all that much. Tesla does deserve tremendous credit. I was simply countering that electric car technology often promotes itself as an environmental "savior," when it too is responsible for negative impacts to the environment.

These include not only the release of carbon emissions (through electricity consumption and production) as do internal combustion engines, but also in increasing the deposit of another type of toxic waste into the ground and water supply. If all cars were electric cars, we'd still have big environmental problems to deal with. I suspect that teams of smart people in various places are working to calculate that impact.

 

The other side of that same coin though gents is that sometimes folks point out the environmental questions over the production of electricity but don't take into account the environmental impact of extracting, refining and transporting oil and oil products. If you care enough to bring up those things, you have to also acknowledge that it's not just tailpipes that create environmental impacts with ICE vehicles.

With that said, my own admiration of Tesla is largely from a technology perspective and the innovation they are driving.

 

Which of course also applies equally to the electrical power industry. The fuel for those plants doesn't grow on their premises I did acknowledge the environmental impacts of ICE. The point is the electric car industry also needs to acknowledge it's impacts, and it will become clear soon enough that it is not a panacea free of environmental impacts, if it really takes off. What difference does it make if carbon emissions are coming from tailpipes or the smokestacks of power generation plants?

 

Well not every powerplant burns fossil fuel, of course, and there's also an increasing capability to generate electricity from solar, wind turbine, the emerging residential/industrial fuel cells and others. That's the concurrent track we need to keep an eye on - there's a ton of innovation here too.

Buddy of mine has a couple of electric cars and a solar system at home, and he's largely eliminating his home bills, producing nearly enough in the day to offset what he's using when the sun goes down.

And maybe one day we'll all be using dilithium crystals

 

In theory mass produced power can create a lot lower emissions than vehicle-produced power, even when distribution costs are netted out.
Because industrial power plants are able to recover emissions and produce energy more efficiently at the source.

But that's theory....in practice as you point out, the process is still imperfect (although still cleaner than vehicle power).

One issue that we haven't yet touched on is the marginal cost of producing electricity for the auto industry. Let's say there is rapid mass adoption of electric cars. That will require more power generated, and unfortunately the likely source of that extra power will be coal-fired plants since they are cheapest to spin up for incremental power.

 

We're getting a bit circular here, and as has been noted, nearly 70% of electricity production is the result of fossil fuel if you include natural gas, which is largely a by-product of oil production. You've seen the tiny percentages for solar, wind, and almost everything else. With the exception of nuclear, it's round-off error.

We're gonna need those dilithium crystals (or something amazing) soon, and hopefully that something won't be found to be 100% fatal to the Homo sapiens species.

And yes, solar is practical in some parts of the world like CA, but not in the majority of places as a sole source of energy. When I lived in the Bay Area, my solar-powered water heater provided hot or warm water most of the time.