The rise of EVs.... some data.

[EbS-P]

Agreed. But I got a kick out of the opening sentence of that article:

"RED Aircraft’s liquid cooled V12 twin six-cylinder RED A03 engine is the primary reason why the Celera 500L boasts running costs of $328 per hour with a 4,500nm range"

I suspect the author meant to indicate nautical mile, but the abbreviation he used is actually nanometers, with 4500 nm being roughly 0.0002 inches. That would certainly give some ammo to the BEV range anxiety crowd. I think he meant 4,500 nmi or NM.

That motor is quite impressive. They are using it in the Ag tractor to replace a turboprop

Well, they are also able to get above some weather, it gives them more options to fly through developing weather, and you avoid more critters, not to mention yahoos who fly once in a blue moon.
Leer jets can fly above many thunderstorms, whereas commercial airliners generally cannot fly above big storms.

there is no reason to fly above now that we have weather radar on every plane. Two pilots died when in good weather they stalled their CRJ at the max operating altitude because the climb was too fast and they lost too much air speed then could not restart either engine because windmill restarts need to happen at 10k’. (They made some other choice like not choosing the nearest airport).

Some storms can get really tall. https://wgntv.com/weather/weather-blog/what-is-the-maximum-height-recorded-for-thunderstorms/ Remember the crash in the Atlantic of a was it an Air France Air bus? Theirs to fly over/ through and iced up and stalled.

No way you would catch me flying a personal quad rotor. You just increased your chances of a crash by a factor of 4. Can they fly on 3/4 rotors?

I heard they are thinking of some hybrid solutions. Extra thrust for takeoff and climb out from fuel. Cruise on batteries. Seems simple I’m sure it’s not.

 

[GrumpyDad]

That motor is quite impressive. They are using it in the Ag tractor to replace a turboprop

there is no reason to fly above now that we have weather radar on every plane. Two pilots died when in good weather they stalled their CRJ at the max operating altitude because the climb was too fast and they lost too much air speed then could not restart either engine because windmill restarts need to happen at 10k’. (They made some other choice like not choosing the nearest airport).

Some storms can get really tall. https://wgntv.com/weather/weather-blog/what-is-the-maximum-height-recorded-for-thunderstorms/ Remember the crash in the Atlantic of a was it an Air France Air bus? Theirs to fly over/ through and iced up and stalled.

No way you would catch me flying a personal quad rotor. You just increased your chances of a crash by a factor of 4. Can they fly on 3/4 rotors?

I heard they are thinking of some hybrid solutions. Extra thrust for takeoff and climb out from fuel. Cruise on batteries. Seems simple I’m sure it’s not.

WELL, yes and know. And you can fly through storms with a commercial jet. But the goal is to find the best means to do so. Obviously you dont want to fly through the worst of it.
Too many pilots in the industry have a 'gotta get there' attitude. Being late because you had to deviate course a bit, isn't a big deal. Having to divert to another airport, or drastically off your waypoints, is frowned upon (although their management will say the safety of our passengers and crew are #1)...That's ONLY because if there is an incident no one will fly that company for awhile, or..ever...until you rebrand as ALLEGIANT

 

[begreen]

 

[stoveliker]

so, you want us to talk about trains now?
Good thing they are (mostly, but not always in the US) electric...

 

[ABMax24]

I've seen a hell of a lot of crashed 4-rotor drones, sometimes due to nothing but an errant breeze. I've also observed the fact that a significantly large fraction of our driving population have no business getting behind the wheel of a car that stays on the ground. When combined, these two factors don't paint a picture for success.

Hopefully autonomous control of such vehicles is built into the plan.

It's actually 8 rotor, and is redundant, if the top or bottom rotor fails the other can takeover with enough lift capacity to get you to the ground.

 

[EbS-P]

Some sales numbers.

Here’s how US electric vehicle sales by maker and EV model through Q3 2022 compare

2022 has been the biggest year for electric vehicles in the United States on record as automakers go head to...

electrek.co

 

[woodgeek]

Some sales numbers.

Here’s how US electric vehicle sales by maker and EV model through Q3 2022 compare

2022 has been the biggest year for electric vehicles in the United States on record as automakers go head to...

electrek.co

The numbers makes perfect sense to me.

Bolt numbers are up a lot YOY as the battery recall gets worked out... quarterly sales figures (20k) are higher than annual sales figures of the 2017-2019 Bolts (which were about 10-15k/year). Priced to move. $12k less than 18 mos ago. Chevy is giving them away to build brand recognition before Ultium vehicles go on sale at scale.

Tesla continues its up 50% CAGR trend of the last several years. All model 3 and Y.

Everything else 'better than a Bolt' is up significantly. Polestar, Mustang, EV6, Ioniq 5

Everything else 'worse than a Bolt' is down significantly or withdrawn from the market. LEAF, i3, Kona. Low range EVs need not apply.

The American market wants cabin/cargo space. Range 250+ miles. And fast DCFC. 150+ kW

 

[woodgeek]

If you are unimpressed by the 6% EV sales rate in the US, how about:

19% Of New Car Sales In Germany Fully Electric, 32% Have A Plug - CleanTechnica

Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News! It seems the German automotive market has bottomed out. After growing 3% in August, September brought a solid 14% increase in sales, while plugins grew even faster. Sales of full electric vehicles (BEVs)...

cleantechnica.com

BEVs are 19% of new car sales in Germany in Q3. Add in PHEVs and you get to 32%.

Germans really like their cars. Now they apparently really like EVs. And they are not a small market like Norway.

And (I'm sure its a coincidence) sales of ICE vehicles are down by double digits in Germany and many other places.

 

[Ashful]

Germans really like their cars. Now they apparently really like EVs. And they are not a small market like Norway.

And (I'm sure its a coincidence) sales of ICE vehicles are down by double digits in Germany and many other places.

One of my best friends is a finance manager at Audi in Bavaria, and I had a chance to talk with him last weekend. Their fuel prices have gone thru the roof in the last six months, due to swearing off their sweet supplies of Russian oil and gas, so it's not any surprise we're seeing spike in EV sales there and elsewhere in Europe.

... and yes, they do really like their cars. When I worked there in the 1990's, most of their highway system was still unregulated for speed, so there was real value in buying a car that was fast, and safe at very high speeds. Now the amount of freeway unregulated for speed has been reduced to something like only 30% of their total mileage, but the auto culture has been built over generations. It will be interesting to see how they adapt to (or more likely resist) autonomous vehicles, as they generally don't even like automatic transmissions.

 

[EbS-P]

If you are unimpressed by the 6% EV sales rate in the US, how about:

19% Of New Car Sales In Germany Fully Electric, 32% Have A Plug - CleanTechnica

Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News! It seems the German automotive market has bottomed out. After growing 3% in August, September brought a solid 14% increase in sales, while plugins grew even faster. Sales of full electric vehicles (BEVs)...

cleantechnica.com

BEVs are 19% of new car sales in Germany in Q3. Add in PHEVs and you get to 32%.

Germans really like their cars. Now they apparently really like EVs. And they are not a small market like Norway.

And (I'm sure its a coincidence) sales of ICE vehicles are down by double digits in Germany and many other places.

How much if this is still being influenced by the lack of ice production due to chip shortage. I’m seeing more new trucks and jeeps but not at lot on the Honda lot.

 

[stoveliker]

How does the chip shortage affect EV production (relative to ICE)?

 

[EbS-P]

How does the chip shortage affect EV production (relative to ICE)?

Not selling ICE cars due to certain models being unavailable.

 

[Ashful]

How much if this is still being influenced by the lack of ice production due to chip shortage. I’m seeing more new trucks and jeeps but not at lot on the Honda lot.

If even still valid today, wouldn't chip shortages affect BEV's, possibly even more dramatically?

 

[EbS-P]

If even still valid today, wouldn't chip shortages affect BEV's, possibly even more dramatically?

Not Tesla. I think manufacturing capacity is the hold up right now for a lot of them. It certainly could be. Manufacturers must chose where to install the chips they have.

 

[peakbagger]

Hard to make a direct comparison between EU countries and the US. The EU countries have been living with expensive energy since the 1960s as there was minimal domestic production. Public policy has been to subsidize public transport heavily. It is entirely possible to live without a car and still travel extensively. The eastern US may have had that infrastructure pre WW2 with extensive local rail and in some cases trolleys but it was effectively abandoned and replaced with personal cars. The vast majority of US suburban housing stock was built with private autos in mind.

Talk to any European traveler to the US and they are usually shocked by the overall size of the US. Central Europe is one time zone, the US is four. In the time it can take to cross a western US state a European will have driven through multiple countries.

Europe also had a big policy shift that the US did not go through. European countries had been encouraging small passenger car diesel usage due to higher efficiency for several decades by subsidizing diesel costs with surcharges on gasoline. Unfortunately emissions out of diesels are higher than an equivalent gas engine and the emmission controls raised the cost of the diesel vehicles and offset a lot of the efficiency gain. This just happened in the last ten years so the Euro car companies were going to have to fundamentally shift their car markets anyhow, so many firms like VW made the decision that rather than go to gas engines to shift to electric.

 

[Ashful]

Hard to make a direct comparison between EU countries and the US. The EU countries have been living with expensive energy since the 1960s as there was minimal domestic production. Public policy has been to subsidize public transport heavily. It is entirely possible to live without a car and still travel extensively. The eastern US may have had that infrastructure pre WW2 with extensive local rail and in some cases trolleys but it was effectively abandoned and replaced with personal cars. The vast majority of US suburban housing stock was built with private autos in mind.

Talk to any European traveler to the US and they are usually shocked by the overall size of the US. Central Europe is one time zone, the US is four. In the time it can take to cross a western US state a European will have driven through multiple countries.

Europe also had a big policy shift that the US did not go through. European countries had been encouraging small passenger car diesel usage due to higher efficiency for several decades by subsidizing diesel costs with surcharges on gasoline. Unfortunately emissions out of diesels are higher than an equivalent gas engine and the emmission controls raised the cost of the diesel vehicles and offset a lot of the efficiency gain. This just happened in the last ten years so the Euro car companies were going to have to fundamentally shift their car markets anyhow, so many firms like VW made the decision that rather than go to gas engines to shift to electric.

Excellent post, @peakbagger. I always liked the quote, "In the US, 200 years is a long time. And in Europe, 200 km is a long distance." International travel there is like driving between small New England states.

One stat I caught on the news recently was that traffic congestion is up very noticeably in most US cities the last several months, while public transportation (notably regional rail, but also bus) is way down. The assertion is that people are deliberately shying away from public transportation even more than previously. There was some debate as to whether that's out of concern for health / exposure, or due to changing / flex work schedules and locations, as the peak traffic has shifted from the AM/PM rush hours to more of a mid-day spread.

 

[peakbagger]

I was listening to a radio show on the local NPR station yesterday about the MBTA (the T) in the Boston region. It's a mix of rail, buses, trolleys and subways and has been chronically underfunded and milked for pork for decades. The current ridership is less than 50 percent that of precovid and once the various government stimulus programs runs out they have fundamental problem that the numbers do not work unless fares are increased dramatically (very politically un popular) or its gets subsidized more from state taxpayer funds (also politically unpopular). They are looking a tens if not billions of upgrades to make the system safe and somewhat reliable but its political third wire in Mass.

GE had made a much-publicized move to the seaport in Boston about 10 years back, they were planning to build big. They currently have 100,000 square feet of space with only 200 people normally inhabiting it post Covid, they announced they are downsizing to a much smaller office. Across the board large firms are trying to dump office space and the group office spaces are shrinking as the demand is not there. As long as there is tight labor market, employees are voting with their feet and finding new jobs with the option of remote work. I knew folks over the years whose commute to Boston was 2 hours one way, my guess is not a lot of folks doing that anymore if they have the option of doing the work from home.

 

[woodgeek]

Yup. The EU is different. In the US, the I-95 megalopolis (which runs from VA to Boston) is nearly a match to the EU in terms of population and GDP per area. And also has decent long-distance and local train service. The (older) cities making it up, being built before cars, are a reasonable match for EU cities in terms of built environment. And they have plenty of residents without cars. If we include Boston, they even speak different languages!

I take the train to the second biggest city in this 'Europe in America' daily. Ridership jumped a couple months ago (around the same time commuter car traffic spiked back). I'd say its more like 60-70% of pre-covid. My employer has a 1 WFH day/week max policy for salary staff. I expect ridership to recover fully or close to it.

 

[begreen]

There was some debate as to whether that's out of concern for health / exposure, or due to changing / flex work schedules and locations, as the peak traffic has shifted from the AM/PM rush hours to more of a mid-day spread.

It's both. Covid greatly changed commuting habits.

 

[woodgeek]

How much if this is still being influenced by the lack of ice production due to chip shortage. I’m seeing more new trucks and jeeps but not at lot on the Honda lot.

Given that the global production of ICE vehicles peaked in 2017 during an up economy, its hard to blame the whole decline on covid.

 

[semipro]

A new report provides some data on EV battery longevity.

New Study: How Long Do Electric Car Batteries Last?

We get a lot of questions from our community about electric car batteries. That is partly because the cost of battery replacement is so high (more on that later), but it is also due to limited information.

www.recurrentauto.com

My takeaways:
Other than several outliers like the early Leaf and the Bolt, most EV batteries are holding up well.
E.g., my Leaf seems well represented by the 40kWh data shown below - since we bought the car with 20k mi. on it we've seen little appreciable decrease in range over 3 years.

I'm optimistic that by the time our battery requires replacement, I'll be able to spend about $10k for a replacement battery that increases our range by 3-5x. Since very little else seems to wear on this car other than tires, brakes, and wiper blades, it may be a great investment.

 

[EbS-P]

At 6 years old and 30k miles my range model X has decreased from epa rated 289 to 251. Loosing 3 miles in the last 12 months. Running at 86% of new. I don’t know how the batter was treated for the first 5 years. I’m guessing the previous owner didn’t care at all about battery longevity.

 

[woodgeek]

Other than several outliers like the early Leaf and the Bolt, most EV batteries are holding up well.

Ofc, that first generation of Bolt batteries would've held up pretty well (as the new ones seem to be). Its just that <1% of them had a serious manufacturing defect ( ), and it was impossible to figure which were the bad 1%, so they all got replaced.

 

[semipro]

and it was impossible to figure which were the bad 1%, so they all got replaced.

I wasn't aware of that.
It seems that the design flaw that affected early Leafs pretty much impacted all that were operated in warm environments.
I can't help but wonder how much money Nissan initially saved with the shortcut that resulted in thermal damage to the batteries
-- reminds me of the Ford Pinto issue but with much less explosive results.

 

[woodgeek]

I wasn't aware of that.
It seems that the design flaw that affected early Leafs pretty much impacted all that were operated in warm environments.
I can't help but wonder how much money Nissan initially saved with the shortcut that resulted in thermal damage to the batteries
-- reminds me of the Ford Pinto issue but with much less explosive results.

In the Bolt case, apparently some of the metal foils got creases or folds in them during (automated) assembly. And a single crease or fold by itself was not a problem, but if a single cell got a crease and a fold that lined up just so... it could short after some time in service. But there was no way to determine which cells had such 'double defects' without tearing them apart.

The LEAF was really pioneering, and the chemistry was designed be intrinsically non-flammable (since that was THE major concern in 2009). They also did a ton of thermal and water intrusion tests, safety interlocks for HV power runs (since copied by all makers). But they cheaped out on the thermal management. I think this is bc it was not seen as a road trip vehicle, and the DCFC function was an afterthought. You really only 'need' active thermal management for high speed DCFC imo. Unless you want long battery life in Arizona.

Apparently there was a manufacturing defect in the new F-150 Lightning packs recently, caught when a truck went up in flames while waiting at the plant to be shipped out. They stopped the line, did diagnostics for a month, and then recalled 19 vehicles that had been shipped out to customers. 19. I guess they had proper record keeping to determine exactly which batteries were affected by the defect. Versus GM recalling 50,000 packs.