Airborne_Again wrote:
Brakes wear less on EVs because most braking is regenerative.
Even worse, they’ll rust due to lack of use, needing constant replacement.
Graham wrote:
Modern ICE cars are generally highly reliable and in reality require very little routine maintenanceBut it’s still a mechanical animal, subject to wear, there is a timing belt in need of replacement or what have you and my last car – a Skoda Superb with the notorious engine – simply died on me because after the software update, it couldn’t cope with the short distances I were driving. First we had to clean the exhaust and after two years, it was in need of replacement, that’s when I got rid of it.
Electric motors simply don’t have these issues. Yes, there can be a plethora of other commonalities that can also break down, down to the windshiled wiper or planned obsolescence, but you still get rid of a lot of issues.
@Neil_F good to know, thanks, so you end up doing that kind of one-foot driving where lifting off = braking.
But this is still just physics, so there is no free lunch. The car now slows much more severely when you lift off, so there’s no real coasting and basically unless you’re actively applying power then you’re slowing down quite a bit. The energy that did go into carrying you a bit further down the road now goes into the battery instead.
Speaking as a guy who designs electric motors and electric propulsion for a living, I can tell you that they have enough issues of their own. The power electronics that have zero moving parts are often a problem and there’s plenty of thermal and structural problems to be solved in electrical machinery.
Re Skoda, avoiding VW products has proved to be a very good idea if you want reliability. Also FWIW leasing is a great way to waste money on a car that you believe will have low depreciation. The time leasing a car may make sense is if you think the finance company has been overly optimistic in their projection of the resale value. With the exception of splitting finance company kickbacks with the dealer and then paying off the loan in a couple of months, I’ve found paying cash for cars generally gets the best deal and the lowest cost of money.
@graham
Yes one foot driving BUT you can modulate the accellerator to provide “coasting” and alter the braking level. So a simplistic way to think of it, in Max Regen mode, is that the bottom 10-20% of the accelerator travel is about the first 20-40% of the brake travel in a “conventional” car. If you are ham fisted then it could be a bit jerky, that’s why IMHO cars come with the “normal” setting which is exactly like a a petrol/diesel car.
But this is still just physics, so there is no free lunch. The car now slows much more severely when you lift off, so there’s no real coasting and basically unless you’re actively applying power then you’re slowing down quite a bit. The energy that did go into carrying you a bit further down the road now goes into the battery instead.
Some cars have a ‘coasting mode’. You lift off your foot and the car glides like a US 8 cylinder.. Regen starts when touching the brakes, or when it sees a speed sign with a lower value than your actual speed or spots a roundabout from the nav database. Of course this is a completely unacceptable intrusion to liberty 🙃 But I like these things, just like an autopilot in my aircraft.
To prevent rust from forming on brake components it just takes a relatively hard stops once in a while, which may be neccesary anyway, like in the case of Peter’s driving 🫢
Good to hear you’re going for a test drive Graham. Look forward to your report and don’t tell us you freaked out because of the acceleration and the spooky silence on smooth asphalt!
Silvaire wrote:
Also FWIW leasing is a great way to waste money on a car […]Yes, I certainly agree to all points – but as I wasn’t sure I’d be happy with a pure BEV, I took this path to try it out and, tell you what – I’m sold.
Concerning the Skoda, it was inherited – you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. No, I’m actually adamant of never buying a VW again, my earlier Passat had the ‘quirk’ that the drain for the windshield was under the battery mount. Unfortunately this clogged and the whole thing was an aquarium, I kid you not. Apparently this was such an issue that years earlier they took up the point of “removing the battery to check for the drain” into the annual – but the service station never did. How do I know? The radio lock didn’t engage as it does when the power is cut. Of course they denied everything and in the end the wiring harness corroded and had to be changed.
So, no, I’d never purchase a VW again, thank you very much.
VWs were for years among the least reliable cars sold in the US, if the not the least reliable. I think their statistics have improved a little recently but compared to domestic or Japanese cars they are still poor, and poor sellers for that reason. Mercedes is BTW the high volume US seller in European car brands, selling brand status. You can only sell what you have.
I found this study to be quite a realistic view of EVs and the irrational activist social context in which they exist. I think it could have dug deeper into where the energy to power them would actually come from in the real world, where renewables are not the source of most electricity, even more so at night when people charge EVs. It is covered to some degree in the “Kilowatt-Hours and Elsewhere Emissions” section.
That is an amazingly detailed article.
Stuff like this
You could add to that the fact that the cobalt often comes from mines in the Congo by children, paid little to nothing and with no safery measures in place. Yet Cobalt is used in many things we use today, and not just EV batteries.
Source:- UNICEF
