With the current problems showing up in a flawed concept known as Lithium Batteries in/near Sub 10 degree temps maybe they should at least have a big Warning Sticker on the car to alert people who are not aware of inherent physical properties of the batteries being used to power the Electric car before they buy one.
Many of us here at the mighty BLF are aware of this and do not use lithium batteries/flashlights in our glove boxes in cold climates but many of the regular Joe Public are not.
And you cannot rely on a Dealer salesman to discuss anything that can be perceived as a negative when buying any car. Not in their DNA.
Now before you go âBut what about Norway?â
Glad you asked. Most people in Norway own regular houses with home hook ups so it makes sense that they will not have the problems we have here with people living in apartment buildings with no such provisions.
As described here;
The real problem is when your car is at the airport and you went on that nice warm 2 week cruise and when you return to Chicago, Montana, N. Dakota, etc., you are in a world of trouble and all the other electric owners are scrambling for the closest charge station only to be greeted by 50 others already there in the same boat.
And when it is their turn they are using the heat on full blast which slow down the process.
Hybrid solves this mess. That technology I like a lot.
The othersâŚNot ready for prime time yet.
Temp here this morning 7 degrees, my second car, a large van, kicked right over despite not being driven for over 10 days.
Many EVs can precondition the hv battery via the app or based on schedule. Combustion vehicles donât deal with extreme cold very well either. Its certainly an annoyance, but not a show stopper
For the record, I am not against technology. Love it actually.
Look at how we LOVE our lithium batts for our flashlights.
But they have limitations and need care. We get that.
Most electric car owners are pretty versed in research of some sort before they jump in. Itâs just that the makers should do a better job of providing actual real life expectations and limitations.
Just as slimy off brand battery sellers say 9000 Mah 18650 , we all know that is an embellishment so to speak, to be kind.
Sooner or later, there will be a better battery technology that will adapt to near Zero conditions.
Bottom line to me at least is this;
These electric cars should be a Second vehicle, treat it like a rear wheel drive convertible. You would not want the convertible as your daily driver in Buffalo NY.
However if you reside in Sunny California or Arizona and have a garage to keep it out of the sun when parked with a home battery charging setup, then by all means have at it!
I really like the idea of hybrids. The fact is 90% of my driving is short trips. If the EV portion handles that and the ICE portion handles longer trips, issues with having a charged battery when I need it, etc. then it seems like the best of both worlds to me.
Hybrid is truly fabulous technology. The car charges its own batteries to be used when the need arises. There is no reason to try to reduce emissions even further especially when you have politicians flying around in planes and taking cruises on big ships with big diesel engines. Donât tell me to be a vegan while you are eating a cheeseburger. Put your money where your mouth is. Politicians should lead by example.
Im not in favor of EVs but I donât think they shouldnât be sold in cold places. You just prepare for the weather, same as we do now. Itâs not like regular cars love the cold. Regular cars get worse fuel efficiency in the cold and thereâs more wear in the cold. Same as EVs. Just prepare for it.
I use an oil pan heater, in colder provinces engine block heaters come standard with every new car.
Starter batteries donât work in the cold. Donât charge in the cold.
Gas used to freeze in the tank back in the day if you were near empty. We have to use a significantly different type of gas for the winter.
People idle their cars for 20min in the morning to warm up, even though thatâs really bad for the engineâŚetc
How simple would it be to do that with an EV? Give them some kind of preheating function. Easy fix. This is just people that werenât prepared for winter and didnât understand how to be. Theyâll figure it out.
On the plus side, in an EV the heat comes on full blast as soon as you start the car. No waiting 10min before you get heat. Thatâs a big selling point if you live somewhere cold
Kia Niro EV looks like a nice car.
Happy that is working for you.
Do you have home charging and how far a day on average do you travel?
Please donât do the Global warming battle thing here. OP is not about that at all. @sb56637 will not be happy if this thread goes off the rails.
Donât want to see this thread get banned.
Thanks,
Donât have a home charger. Got an EVSE that we sometimes use when we are off to visit people.
About 10mil (100 km), get free charging at work though so thatâs nice.
My main point was that ICE manufacturers have lied to consumers for decades and figured out ways to essentially brainwash consumers.
Sadly, I think the status quo will continue into the EV production. The enshittification of vehicles
I have the feeling itâs always the people who donât have or want an EV that talk about all the issues and problems, and the owners⌠They just drive. Nobody in my friend/family circle who has an EV ever experienced any issues, be it blazing hot or way below zero.
One is even regularly driving 500+km with a tiny Corsa E, and I think it took him ag most 15min more than with the ICE Passat.
Saw a post here the other day about sodium ion batteries and they are being commercialized right now. New battery technologies are arriving and improving all the time.
You sound like the people from 15 years ago at the dawn of the LED lighting era, still clutching on to your incandescent bulbs. Hertz problem was caused by buying low quality Tesla junk which people canât seem to stop from getting into collisions.
TBH⌠I think electric cars will share the story of asbestos, plastic bags and glitter.
People tend to implement innovations yet before they check it comprehensively across all the aspects. History brings us so many âgolden inventionsâ which after one or two decades were announced to be a dreadful mistake. Donât want go into details, but Iâm telling you the electric cars will become one of these âdead end inventionsâ.
Whatâs so bad about EVs according to you? For asbesthos itâs pretty obvious, plastic bags suffer from not being recyclable, and so do most other âstupid inventionsâ. The battery of an EV can be recycled and over 90% of the raw materials can be reused for new cells. Currently few companies do it since itâs cheaper to just dig new dirt out of the ground, but that will change as we had very few dead EV battery packs so far - not enough to recycle at commercially viable scale. Also, I hope the EU will pass some new laws and force companies to take packs back and fully recycle once a car is done for.
Current experience with modern-ish batteries looks like one medium-sized sedan pack can do 300k to 500k km before it needs swapping (if the rest of the car even lasts that long). The most recent, trustworthy study I have seen about the ecological production overhead of EVs (TU Delft, sadly can not find the paper anymore) suggested that a modern EV breaks even somewhere between 50k and 70k km (with average European electricity mix, not in an ideal 100% solar powered world), which would suggest 230k to 450k km of âmore friendlyâ used compared to an average ICE of the same vehicle (size) class.
EDIT: and now weâre about to get NaIon packs, which are supposed to last longer, suffer less from extreme temperatures and are not only cheaper, but also more environmentally friendly to manufacture than LiIon - eliminating pretty much all the issues, at the cost of possible range. Which is perfectly fine for a vast majority of cars, that are used to drive 20km to work and back home every day. I doubt long-range-commuters that do hundreds of km a day are happy about NaIon, but those are a tiny minority, that can absolutely keep their petrol/gas cars. The goal is to reduce emission, not eliminate it. 50 million ICE cars doing 20km a day are a problem, 50 ICE cars doing 1000km a day are not.
Guys, you need to read the news about EV horror stories. Its all documented. Real stories from real people that own these things. Like I said its all documented, no reason to call anyone names, no reason to doubt it being true or not. Its true that Hertz is dumping EVâs. Its true that GM and Ford are losing money on every single EV made.
Read about EV horror stories from real people that experienced it, not from people that donât own EVâs on BLF.
Now, if you donât want to read the horror stories because your mind is made up or you already own an EV and donât want to come to terms you did not make a prudent purchase, I can totally understand that.
Horror stories? Like what? Burning EVs (despite the fact that per million driven km, ICEs burn a lot more frequently)? Whether or not they can be extinguished easily is maybe a topic for ferries and big parking garages, but not for me on an average road. If it catches fire, my car is totaled. No matter if it runs on LiIon cells or gasoline. Iâd rather have it burn 60 (IIRC? Itâs been a while since I read the numbers) times less likely, than it being easier to extinguish but still totalled.
And we still got NaIon, a battery tech that can not have thermal runaway as far as I am informed, hence no battery fire at all. Worst case, wires/motors/insulation can burn in those. Less thermal load than any tank full of gasoline.
Hertz is getting rid of their EVs not because of flawed tech, but because brand new Teslas are expensive as hell and lose value quickly if driven hard (and nobody takes care of a rental), hence dropping in value and costing Hertz money. Not really an issue for a personally owned car, but definitely an issue for a rideshare company like them. Same reason they donât offer Porsche, probably. Luxury cars donât do that job well, and Tesla having ridiculous repair costs does not help at all. Hertz is scaling back its EV ambitions because its Teslas keep getting damaged - The Verge
That sounds like a them-problem if other EV manufcaturers do not have it. Interestingly, many (mainly) ICE manufacturers that venture into EVs struggle, while primarily/exclusively EV manufacturers do not. When you had no innovation to push or big plant/supply chain changes to make in 50 years, and suddenly need to build new plants, source new parts, develop your vehicles newly from ground up, you lose money. At least thatâs my guess why the âbig playersâ struggle and the freshmen do not.
EDIT: EVs are not the holy grail of technology, they are not flawless and they can not replace ICEs entirely (yet? dunno). Iâm always open to discussing interesting topics, but âread up on horror storiesâ is not an argument that makes for a very interesting or fun discussionâŚ
