Electric Cars II - Not Silly!

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

EVs are massively overpriced for general adoption, except in China.
If the Chinese are allowed to sell in the West at cheap prices, western auto companies will collapse (both EV and ICE).
If the Chinese aren't allowed to sell cheap, then the Climate Change push for EVs will continue to collapse.
This in turn will exacerbate the lack of infrastructure/dealers/mechanics, etc, for EVs problems.
Western governments can't subsidise every citizen, even if they wanted to, because every bit of deficit spending creates more inflation now.

Rock, Hard Place.

..and for extra fun, if the Chinese economy is as bad as some say beneath the gloss, then Xi may decide to start a stealth trade war over the lack of access to markets for cheap Chinese EVs.

[1DC]

If you want a new Jaguar I Pace it will cost anywhere between 70 and 90K, if you would like a 3 year old model with about 25000 on the clock it will cost between 20 and 25K!

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

..and three months later, when the mechanic tells you

totally fucked mate.jpg (44.17 KiB) Viewed 1462 times

.and hands you a quote for another 20K for battery replacement


...and then phones you up a month later to tell you "Still on back order, mate".

[talmacapt]

I have been bleating about the very cold temperatures here in Finland on another thread.

It has been below -20 throughout the whole of Finland most of this year, the lowest temperature last night, in Enontekio (near the top left hand side) a new record for this century of -44.3 obtained last night, it is -40 now but has been around -40 for a few days.

I started to think what the range per kwh would be for an electric car at these temperatures, do any of the ev owners have any information in their handbooks?

The price of electricity has been fairly low but today it is 1.55€/kwh now and rising to 2.35€ (including alv/vat of 24%) around 2000 tonight.

I then thought about the cost of driving from Talmacapt Towers North to Talmacapt Towers South, a distance of around 1100 km, in an ev at those prices.

Any ev owners care to comment.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Consumer Reports did tests at -8C and discovered a 25% loss of range. The cars were fully charged and pre-heated before disconnection.
https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/hy ... 873569949/
What Car did tests around 0C, but with the vehicle heated off the battery. They lost between 22% and 40% of stated ranged.
https://www.whatcar.com/news/electric-c ... nge/n24274

Some dude in Winnipeg did a real world drive in average -28C, pre-warmed.
Normal range of 371km dropped to 184km, so 50% loss.

That means he couldn't even have reached Brandon, MB from Winnipeg.
In short, you can't leave your city for another city on the Prairies in winter.

If you have to pre-heat off the battery then drive in -40, then you might get 100km tops from a full charge.
And we know what happens if your car goes cold by the roadside somewhere short of your destination....so do you.

As for using some kind of EV truck to do any real work, loaded or towing, forget it.

[1DC]

Don't the Norwegians buy more Teslas per head of population than anyone else? and it gets pretty cold there in winter..

[talmacapt]

That's quite interesting Fox.

That suggests you would be pushed to get from Saariselkä (30 km south of here where there is probably the last charging point) to Sodankylä the next town, another 130km down the main road (E4) toward Helsinki.

As for going north toward Norway (Inari to Kirkenes is 200km with nothing in between), no chance.

Inari to Kittilä (165km) would be similar.

The Norwegians do, as 1DC says, have lots of evs but most of it is near the coast and enjoys the benefit of the gulf stream.

It tends not to get very cold, for several weeks at a time, as does Finland.

I'll stick with my diesel Freelander with a webasto, although I do have a heated garage.

[talmacapt]

Interesting at today's (electricity is the most expensive it has ever been today) the local news is reporting it would cost about 200€ to full charge a Hyundai Kona ev.

If it then only goes 100km that works out quite expensive motoring.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Even in the north of Norway, Tromso has a minimum daily minimum of -5.6C (February), due as Talma points out to the Gulf Stream.
The record low is -18 - that's a normal working day here. In fact it is -7/-15(windchill) at the moment, and we are a month away from the coldest period, and we are still surrounded by water at the moment, not ice.
Our record low was less than a year ago, -38/-47. So much for global warming.
Norway's fjords, together with rail and ice-free sea transport, mean there isn't anything like the amount of city-city traffic for goods by road that one finds in continental countries.

[John Hill]

I feel a workshop project coming on..

1. Fit tow bar to my new EV, which I have not even thought about buying yet.

2. Search junque yards for suitable donor car, must be front wheel drive, auto trans (of course).

3. Get busy cutting and welding and build a two wheeled self propelled 'trailer'.

4. Couple up ensemble, connect up remote controls and drive off in my long range hybrid!


P.S. A transport museum owner in NZ is reputed to have driven an old trolley bus about 300 miles towing an ex-military portable alternator.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Great idea!
..and you'd be in the trailer and presumably there would be a dummy in the EV, just like a normal EV

[John Hill]

Great idea!
..and you'd be in the trailer and presumably there would be a dummy in the EV, just like a normal EV

No, there will be a treadmill on the trailer with half a dozen lawyers powering the trailer to push and extend the range of the EV.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Couldn't you just bury the lawyers alive, then run it off the methane extracted?

[John Hill]

Couldn't you just bury the lawyers alive, then run it off the methane extracted?

Yeabut, you can't actually watch them when they are squirming around underground and besides that a treadmill is hard work and there can be nothing more stressful to a lawyer than hard work, which we can watch!

[PHXPhlyer]

webasto
I learn so much new stuff hang around here.

PP

[Hydromet]

Surely the most environmentally friendly use for the lawyers is to bury them with their bums above ground, and use them as bicycle racks.

[PHXPhlyer]

Hertz is selling 20,000 electric vehicles to buy gasoline cars instead

https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/11/business ... index.html

Hertz, which has made a big push into electric vehicles in recent years, has decided it’s time to cut back. The company will sell off a third of its electric fleet, totaling roughly 20,000 vehicles, and use the money they bring to purchase more gasoline powered vehicles.

Electric vehicles have been hurting Hertz’s financials, executives have said, because, despite costing less to maintain, they have higher damage-repair costs and, also, higher depreciation.

“[C]ollision and damage repairs on an EV can often run about twice that associated with a comparable combustion engine vehicle,” Hertz CEO Stephen Scherr said in a recent analyst call.

And EV price declines in the new car market have pushed down the resale value of Hertz’s used EV rental cars.

“The MSRP declines in EVs over the course of 2023, driven primarily by Tesla, have driven the fair market value of our EVs lower as compared to last year, such that a salvage creates a larger loss and, therefore, greater burden,” Scherr said.

Simply put, people are generally willing to pay a certain amount less for a used car than for a new one. As the price of new car goes down, that also pushes down what people are willing to pay to buy a used one.

Hertz expects to take a loss of about $245 million due to depreciation on the EVs, an average of about $12,250, per vehicle the company said in an SEC filing.

While Hertz isn’t directly pointing a finger, it appears that Tesla has been largely to blame.

Tesla makes up about 80% of Hertz’s EV fleet, and, altogether, EVs make up about 11% of Hertz’s total rental fleet. Tesla has been aggressively cutting its vehicle prices leading other automakers to do the same for their electric vehicles. When automakers reduce the prices of new vehicles, that pushes down the value of those models in the used car market, causing rapid depreciation.

For rental car companies like Hertz, which sell lots of vehicles in the used car market, depreciation has a big impact on their business, and is a major factor when deciding which cars to have in their fleets.

Being a relatively new company, Tesla doesn’t have as many replacement parts at hand and trained repair technicians that other car companies have, Hertz executives have said, making it costly and time-consuming to get repairs.

Remember, in the likes of GM and other [automakers], there’s decades of establishment of a broad national parts supply network’” Hertz CEO Stephen Scherr said in a recent analyst call. “There’s an aftermarket of parts that is there, that is less mature, obviously, in the context of Tesla.”

Besides costing more to repair when they’re damaged in a crash, Scherr also said, EVs are also getting in more crashes. Again, Teslas, which make up 80% of Hertz’s EV rental fleet, are mostly the problem in both these areas, he has said.

“Our work with Tesla is to look at the performance of the car, so as to lower the risk of incidence of damage,” he said, “and we’re in very direct engagement with them on parts procurement and labor and the like.”

Hertz sells its used vehicles at auctions as well as directly to customers on its Hertz Car Sales website.

PP

[OFSO]

Two double-decker buses caught fire in London UK this past week. Both were described by the media as 'electric' but I've never travelled on a pure electric bus so I suspect they were hybrid. The model has been withdrawn from service. Difficult to tell but from the smoke it looked like a Lithium battery fire.

[1DC]

Those KIA EV6's are popular in the Grimsby area, I spotted six in the T'esco car park this afternoon..

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

5 Charging stations at the airport now.
And in 6 years I still have not seen a single EV plugged in anywhere.
And the number of dealers now registered for the Provincial EV Rebate Program is...zero.

Best local deal on a used EV is a 7 year old Kia Soul EV for $17K, 150km range (when it's warm, which it currently isn't).
BUT, the battery warranty has only one year to run and a new one is $23k fitted.
You can get a brand new top of the range Honda Civic ICE for less than that.
Which is what's known in North America as a No Brainer.