Has JCB saved engines?

[anonymous-user]

ddom said:

An F150 was an easy emotive choice. Try an 90’s Toyota, mid 30’s? I actually thought you’d left, but as you’re asking what is faster than an EV, there’s quite a lot. So just refer to the last post and answer the questions, or flounce, form either way really.

mid 30 mpg is 1.12 kWh/ml.

That means your mid 90'd toyota is using nearly 5 times more energy than an equivalent sized EV to drive each and every mile. Drive 100 miles, and that's 500 times more energy! It's also putting out tailpipe emissions that are considered catastrophic, and in fact, illegal, and it would be banned from many city centres today.

In terms of quicker, if you actually look at the performance figures

BMW M3 vs Tesla Model 3 performance. WIN for Tesla
BMW 118d vs BMW i3s. Win for i3
Range Rover sport SVR vs Tesla Model X. WIn for Tesla
Porsche Panamera V8 vs Porsche Taycan: Win for, er Porsche the 'lecy one
Rimac Nevera vs, well, anyting; WIN for Rimac
Polestar 2 vs Volve S60: WIN for polestar

EVs are quicker because they are more powerful, dont have energy and time sapping transissions, and because they get near perfect traction every time because they don't have to initally match an already spinning crank to a stationary road wheel

To suggest "EVs are slower than ICEs" is litterally the stupiest thing i have read on PH for a long while.

[anonymous-user]

DonkeyApple said:

Max, let's break this down to simple stuff because I am right and you have chosen to misinterpret a negative element of an EV because it doesn't suit your agenda.

Everything that you state is due to the motor and despite of the inefficient, heavy, cumbersome batteries.

It's the electric motor that delivers all the upside but the batteries are crap.

Name a branch of tech that isn't waiting for superior energy storage? There isn't one. Our reliance on chemical storage solutions is precisely the issue.

If EVs are superior why do they only exist in markets where legislation forces manufacturers to build them and customers to buy them? The answer is because the batteries are so bad that they undo all the enormous advantages of the electric motor over the ICE.

The electric motor is so superior that ICE should have disappeared through free market economics years ago. The reason this still isn't even close to happening is solely due to the battery problem.

No you are right, compared to the motor, current batteries are indeed crap

But that doesnt matter for the majority because the batteries are "good enough" and most people simply don't care what powers their car.

They want to be able to get to work, to drop the kids off at school, to have a quiet, comfortable and easy to drive car. An EV suits the masses perfectly. Even with EVs being massively hobbled by current battery energy density, an EV is still a much "Better" car for most 1st world passenger car buyers. We drive on busy crowded roads, with lots of cameras, speed limits and taffic calming. We might think we act on impulse, but we don't. We drove daily the same route day in, day out. For most, an EV suits, being more convenient more of the time. We like our cars to have more space for us and our stuff and less space for the oily bits (a concept notably started by the original mini of course)

But, the critical point is that battery tech is nowhere near the physical fundamental limits of energy density.

In fact a current battery in an EV is roughtly 10 times lower in energy density that physics tells us it can be. So, when batteries improve, and they are all the time, in small but significant chunks, our EVs improve with them. That just nails the lid of the ICE coffin shut even tighter, and unlike for an ICE, there is really nothing to stop you replacing the battery of your EV with a better one as the tech improves (and that is in fact already being done for early EV cars like the Leaf and i3)

The ICE is done. it's given all it can give, its hit its FUNDAMENTAL physical limit. Only the application of complementary tech like 'lecy turbo's and hybridisation and exhaust heat recovery and the like can get it's pathetic efficiency up to even 50% or better. And when you do the sums, instead of fitting all that stuff, once you have a battery and motor, it's better to simply drive the wheels with it.

and

Gain zero local tailpipe emissions,

Gain regen for very low consumption in real world stop start driving

Gain very low aero drag and larger passenger space for the simpler packaging,

Gain a lower BOM and higher profit per car, gain a faster build process.

Gain better crash performance without underbonnet hard points of an ICE.

Gain the ability to have 4wd for maximum traction in all conditions without heavy shafts and transfer cases eating into cabin space

Gain the ability to hang the powertrain on softer mounts for lower cabin noise because there are no engine vibrations that have to be damped out and reacted


And many more actual, demonstrable benefits.


And the simple answer to why we dont' suddenly all drive EVs is pretty obvious. it's because you can't by one. the OEs have vast stocks of ICEs, and the current ICE models have to break even before they get replaced. WHy would an OE push it's new EV to only prevent it from selling the ICE models it already has. Everything is geared towards ICE, and has been for 100 years or more. The most startling thing imo is not how slow the change has been, buit how rapid it has been.

3 years ago, few PH front page news items would be about an EV, now go have a look, i think probably 80% or more are EV news. The revolution is happening and it is happening right now!

It's also worth noting that the single industry that has been the recipient of the largest grants and taxation advantages is the fossil fuel industry. Simply because fossil fuels are so cheap and abundent, there was no need to find an alternative. But then we learned that our carbon emissions from burning this glut of cheap oil do in fact come with a significant penatly. Argueably a penalty that is possibly going to effect every single living thing on our planet.

As we increasible understand that our 100 year binge on oil is simpy un-sustainable, governments and industry have reacted. I have been flat out on EVs for probably 10 years now, and for the last 5, pretty much all development on ICE for run of the mill passcar has been canned and replaced with EV. You are now seeing the fruits of those labours. Every single OE is releasing new EV product continuously now, and the rate is going to increase, and the performance and capability is going to continue to increase and the cost fall.

Tipping point has been and gone, the change is unstoppable now. It's really that simple. It's like music streaming replacing CD,s or CD's replacing cassettes. For most people, the EV is simply "better" as it already stands.

BTW on the subject of my "agenda" i hope that is pretty clear:

If you drive a cooking ICE passenger car, and do normal mileage, then replace it with an EV.

It's really that simple. Many people on here moan about EVs taking over, and you go look at what they drive and it turns out they drive an insigna diesel or something equally dreary and hopeless.

If you drive an old 911, a ferrari, hell, even an old MX-5, and you drive it for fun, ocasionally,then KEEP IT! and keep driving it. you are not the problem, you are not part of the solution.

But if you drive a bogo passenger car everyday, to work, to the school, to the shops, or to the park or whatever, and you drive in traffic, in town, in endless queues of other cars, then yes, you (and i) are part of the problem, and we can be part of the solution.

[anonymous-user]

ddom said:

Max_Torque said:

mid 30 mpg is 1.12 kWh/ml.

That means your mid 90'd toyota is using nearly 5 times more energy than an equivalent sized EV to drive each and every mile. Drive 100 miles, and that's 500 times more energy! It's also putting out tailpipe emissions that are considered catastrophic, and in fact, illegal, and it would be banned from many city centres today.

In terms of quicker, if you actually look at the performance figures

BMW M3 vs Tesla Model 3 performance. WIN for Tesla
BMW 118d vs BMW i3s. Win for i3
Range Rover sport SVR vs Tesla Model X. WIn for Tesla
Porsche Panamera V8 vs Porsche Taycan: Win for, er Porsche the 'lecy one
Rimac Nevera vs, well, anyting; WIN for Rimac
Polestar 2 vs Volve S60: WIN for polestar

EVs are quicker because they are more powerful, dont have energy and time sapping transissions, and because they get near perfect traction every time because they don't have to initally match an already spinning crank to a stationary road wheel

To suggest "EVs are slower than ICEs" is litterally the stupiest thing i have read on PH for a long while.

But ", which were significantly lower than the fudged EV costs, because facts don't sit well with you. I'll take your bet. You're i3, isn't quick, has limited range, and none of the EV's you mention would do well in a pure performance measure. Massively over egging the subject as usual.

again, provide facts to back up your statements.

You are the master of stating something but completely failing to prove or explain it in any demonstrably proveable way.


take

"my old Toyota after 100K miles has paid back all its manufacturing costs"

How has it done this? Has it somehow absorbed carbon dioxide and other pollutants? No it hasn't. All the carbon and pollution from it's manufacture is still in the environment.

FACT: At 30mpg, you are emitting 350 grams of CO2 for each and every mile you drive.


Drive 100 miles and you have just put out 35 kg of carbon dioxide, a volume of 17,579 litres! It's invisible as a gas, so you don't see it, so you can ignore it, but it's there and in huge volumes coming out the back.

FACT: The typical embedded carbon in an EV battery over the design life of that car is 27 g/km.

If you compare a Leaf to an ICE competitor that does 50 mpg (which is a pretty decent real world, all year round consumption, ie many cars would do significantly worse) the leaf is a lower overal pollutor after just 20,000 miles. Compared to your Toyota at 30mpg, that's about 14 months.

So, if you are going to drive your current car for more than 14 months, you are better off in an EV.

And of course, this is all with current figures. There is really nothing stopping you from installing your own local small scale solar array, and even in the uk with our pathetic amount of sun, a look at the solar figures suggest you can get something like 8,000 miles of near zero carbon motoring


Those are the facts

see here for some nice pretty graphs and some more actual facts:

https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-how-electric...



And whilst today, at the current low production volumes and heavily remotely outsourced production logistics, an EV is indeed slightly more polluting to manufacture most OE's are also putting the eventual (ie compariable volumes and optimised logistics) manufacturing impact for an EV at about 68 to 75% of that of a comparable ICE. ie lower emissions during manufacture

i have posted many times on why this is, you can go and read some of my other posts to see me explain why intrinsically parallel and highly scaleable nature of an EV makes it a fundamentally lower impact product, especially when you include the much simpler development, test, validation and certification program required (which is overlooked in most none-OE studies to date.)



And lets get the personal attacks dealt with.

No, my BMW i3 isn't quick. It does 0-60 in about 6.8 seconds. That puts in on par with the faster of the Mini's, a comparable car in terms of size, class and useage). In the real world, between 20 and 80, however, it's way quicker than even the hottest mini, because it has massive torque and zero lag. By the time you've changed down into 2nd in a mini, the i3 has already gone.

But none of that matters, it's a small city car, designed for minimal consumption, and remember it does about 140 mpg on a daily basis.
It'll do about 160 miles on a charge. And because it is 100% charged each and every night, it has plenty of range for my useage. Having a large range is only any use if you drive long distances repeatidly non-stop. i don't. I'm more interested in the light weight and great handling that is the trade off in having such a "small" battery.

But of course, you find it easier to simnply attack me personally that come up with any meaningful defence of your beliefs.



You also seem determined to double down on the "EV's aren't fast" suggestion.

Really?

An EV holds the Pikes peak record

An EV has been round the Nurburg ring in 6:05

An EV is the worlds fastest accelerating production car

A Tesla Model 3 performance is quicker around a track than a BMW M3 ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSRWKxytW40 )


The list goes on, and on, and on. There are plenty of valid critisisms of EV's but "Not being very fast" is really not one of them.

[anonymous-user]

DonkeyApple said:

However, the point being made is that the EV is hobbled so badly by a single issue. The need to lug half a ton of pretty rubbish batteries everywhere you go is truly dismal in terms of efficiency.

My "Point" is that EVs are not actually hobbled than much for the majority.

Yes, currently they are a bit more expensive than an equivalent ICE, but this is really pretty minor difference today, and in a year or so will be a total non issue as competition between brands forces costs down as volumes ramp up.

For most drivers, who drive just a few tens of miles a day, an EV is a perfect car. Which is why, once they have tried and owned one, most drivers say "i'm not going back to ICE"

You also said heavy batteries is bad for efficiency, when actually the opposite it true. A heavy battery means a big battery, and a big battery has a lower internal resistance and hence has lower losses for any given power demand. It also enables a higher rating for regen, so can capture more KE

A typical EV turns around 90 % of the energy supplied to it into useful motive work. That is in no way "dismal" at all.



Here are some interesting comparisons to show the sea change which an EV brings:


EPA figures:

Range Rover SVR (4.3 seconds 0-60, 2,300 kg) 16 mpg

Tesla Model X P100D (3 seconds 0-60, 2,441 kg) 85 mpg-e

BMW i3s (6.8 seconds 0-60, 1,200 kg) 112 mpg-e


The Tesla is heavier and faster than the Rangie, yet uses something like 5.3 times less energy

The i3 is half the weight and size of the Tesla, but only manages to use 30% less energy




So what do we learn

1) ICE are catastrophically in-efficient on a scale that is actually difficult to believe when one includes EVs as a comparison

2) a heavy EV isn't actually that much of a penalty. yes lighter is better, but not by nearly the same effect as for an ICE (thanks to a bi-directional powertrain and effectively zero frictional and parastic powertrain losses)


To claim that current batteries make an EV in any way "poor performing" would make a current ICE by the same comparison, so catastrophicly bad as to warrant its immediate banning....... (which luckily for the EV haters, we haven't yet seen.) As batteries improve, the the dominance of EV is going to step up yet another notch.

Edited by anonymous-user on Tuesday 8th June 21:55

[anonymous-user]

Volvolover said:

rscott said:

Polestar even published the break even point for a Polestar 2 Vs Volvo XC60 - with the European energy mix, around 50,000 miles is the point at which the EV has lower lifetime emissions than the ICE.
That drops to 31,000 miles if solely using wind energy.

https://www.polestar.com/uk/sustainability/transpa...

What about if you change it every 3 years on your 5k per mile PCP……..which is how these cars are bought

er, when you trade in or return a lease car, they don't scrap it you know!

The average mileage at which a car is scrapped is around 115,000 miles in the europe. As EV's are less susceptable to wear, easier to repair, and just have fewer moving parts and can be designed for a longer life, chances are, an EV bought today can be used for an even greater distance.

[anonymous-user]

fido said:

Max_Torque said:

... it's pathetic efficiency up to even 50% or better.

That's not a fair comparison. If you take the end-to-end efficiency of an electric car then it's lower than this - you're only looking at the electric motor itself which of course is efficient - it should be! In the same way the turbo- part of an ICE engine is extremely efficient. Mining lithium is a filthy process.

So i have to take the end to end efficiency for the EV, but not for the ICE?

An EV is around 85 to 90% efficient at a "energy put into car level" ie the point you plug it in ( a modern eMachine can be as much as 98 or 99% efficient btw!)

An ICE is around 25% (as low as 18% in real world conditions) efficienct at the same point, ie where you stick the pump nozzle in the side and fill the tank



If you want to look at end-to-end it gets even worse for the ICE, because oil is generally found in rather hard to get places, needs to be extracted, transported, refined and transported again, and then pumped into your car.

It's generally agreed (the calc is very complex) that just the energy used to refine a gallon of gasoline would drive an EV about 20 miles (a 40kWh US gal of gasoline takes about 5 kWh to refine according to the most thorough study by the USA Argone National Lab).

And of course, as a ICE wear's it not only puts out vastly more emissions, but also gets less efficient. Compression ratio falls, rings leak, cams wear, valves gum up, injectors wear, fuel pressure falls. There are lots of factors that mean the homologation figures for an ICE an un-obtainable by actual owner cars in the real world. Evening using the incorrect spec of oil can lead to an increase in emissions and consumption!

[anonymous-user]

fido said:

That completely depends on the power supply. If it's from a power station then the energy conversion alone could be 35-60% (gas-fired). Don't get me wrong I do love all the new technologies that are coming on board but I think pure-electric is as myopic as those who touted it at the start of the twentieth century. And they were very popular until ICE vehicles improved.

https://archive.curbed.com/2017/9/22/16346892/elec...

Edited by fido on Wednesday 9th June 00:08

As i wrote i am talking about at the "Car" level.. Be that the plug from your charger you stick in the side, or the nozzle from the petrol pump you stick in the side.

At this point, the EV sits at around 85% (energy to useful work, ie moving the car around) and an ICE sits at around 22% (typical in the uk)



It gets so much worse for the ICE when we start to include the extraction, refinement and supply chain.

It also is extremely important to understand that an EV is completely agnostic to the source of it's electricity. You could charge it from solar, wind, hell, you could put a generator on a stationary fitness bike and charge the thing yourself if you wanted (best make sure you've had yor weetabix, mind, a 1 kWh is a fair huff puff for a puny human ;-)

How impactful your electricity supply used to charge your EV depends very much where you are in the world. In the UK, our grid last year was on average at 181 g/kWH of CO2. An EV driven in typical uk conditions and speeds does about 3.5 ml/kWh, so just plugged into the grid, a typical EV has a virtual tailpipe emission of 51 g/ml or 32 g/km

An diesel ICE doing 50 mpg has a tailpipe emission of 150 g/km. For every single mile driven it's putting out an additional 118g of Carbon Dioxide. Drive 100 miles and that's 12 kg of extra carbon! On a yearly 7,000 mile typical useage, that's 826Kg, or 417,171 litres more carbon emissions!


And an often missed fact is that absolute efficiency is one thing, but the profile of that efficiency over the distribution network matters as well.

Imagine i have a horse that eats apples and It needs 10 apples a day.

Unfortunately it's a messy eater and drops and looses 8 of those apples (20% efficient, same as your car...) To make sure it eats 10 apples i have to carry a bucket with 50 apples to it each and every day. But carrying that bucket has an efficiency too. It takes effort and i might drop it or loose a few apples out of it. Let say i loose 10%, so now i need to start with 55 apples my bucket!

If my horse was a more careful eater, i would not only have to carry less apples, but at the same 10% loss, i'd loose less apples each day too. (50% efficient eater, 10 Apples per day requires 20 apples in bucket, so 10% loss means i need to start with 22 apples, a loss of 2 apples in the system)

An ICE Is terrible, because it is catastrophically wastefull of the energy supplied to it, and because it is the last thing in a massive supply chain, often starting miles under ground, under hundreds of meters of water in the middle of a sea or ocean!

[anonymous-user]

Lets be clear. It is phsyically possible to augment an ICE with electrified support systems, such as KERS, THERS, etc as used in F1 and to boost that systems (not engine, system) absolute efficiency to reasonably decent levels, somewhere in the mid 60 to 70% level.

this great but practically, when you do the cost/benefit analysis for a road passenger car, yoy find there is in fact a single configuration node at which the overall efficiency is highest, and cost is lowest, and that is at 0% ICE. congratulationks, you've just built an BEV!

For example, an exhaust heat recovery system helps to recover, er, heat, from the exhaust of an ICE, but it's far better not to create that un-necessary heat in the first place. It's only there because a real engine has a practical limit to its expansion ratio, meaning the piston cannot ever recover all the heat from the combustion process.

Those systems, whilst totally fundamentally possible add huge cost, complexity, and because they all have their own (less than unity) efficiency, they still are not as good as simply not going via the step of a heat engine in the first place!

Pretty much the worst BEV powertrain it is possible to make, using lead acid batteries, and a basic AC motor driven by an old fashioned low frequency thyristor drive, basically an old fashioned milk float, is about 80% efficient. That's about 20% better than the best F1 hybrid engine ever made and costing several million quid.......

[anonymous-user]

fido said:

Exactly, why are we still using lead batteries in cars .

Er, we use LA Batteries in ICE cars because they are an extremely good solution to the requirements in that case!

An ICE need starting and that needs a very small amount of energy, but a lot of current.

A car classically runs at a low voltage, so a low total number of electrolytic cells are needed, meaning each cells needs to be reasonably large

It must also be able to be started between typically -25 degC and +120 degC (underbonnet temp after hot soak)

The battery needs to be cheap, robust, and classically, able to be charged by a very basic charging system (a dumb dynamo back in the day)

The fact that a LAB is virtually infitinitely re-cyclable (the lead recycling network was one of the first such total lifecycle networks btw) seals the deal.



AS we move away from ICE,then the days of the LAB are numbered. Total they still exist in BEVs because whilst the powertrain is new, the rest of the car isn't. Everything from lights to heated seats are still at 12v for good reasons. It's hard to use the primary HV traction battery for systems use, as the safety case gets extremely complex with HV contactors driven from the L|V system, and with the requirment to have things like ABS and lights still working even if the HV battery goes off line (due to fault or discharge)

We will see a move to more modern chemistries, but ultimately, there is little appetite for a totally HV electrical system in a passenger car (800v heated seat or steering wheel anyone?? lol)

[anonymous-user]

cidered77 said:

Want to see more balanced views in conventional media, but all seems so hopelessly click-baity, and sensationalist out there....

The problem as should be evident is that this is a VERY complex situation. The factors which affect the simple question "is an EV better or worse than an ICE for our environment" are insanely complex. I work in the industry, i have authored and chaired multi-million £ studies into this very question, and the best i can answer in a sound bite is "It depends".

Modern media is details free. it's about shock and awe, they simply don't have the attention span to actually sit down and work out the real situation.

If you are a member of the general public, then i'm sorry, but you are simply not qualified to make a valid judgement on this subject.

Let me ask a simple question:


What is the carbon overhead from catalyst ageing during the development of a single ICE model?


Ok, who even knows what catalist ageing even is? Most people on the street will look pretty blank on that one. Now you can google it, of course you can, but that simply tells you at a basic level what it is. To be able to form a valid, robust engineering level calculation in a way to answer the question is incredibly hard. Most studies to date have not even included the carbon overheads from the development process for an ICE in their calculations


And there are a thousand or more other complex factors like this that sit in the long and complex energy supply chain that eventually means you can drive to the shops and buy your packet of crisps!

This is why i generally advocate an alternative approach to "making ones mind up" on this subject;

ignore any complex and quoted figures, and simply ask

"Fundamentally, what factors would make an EV more polluting to make or use than for an equivalent ICE"


And when you do this, something interesting occurs, you soon realise that there aren't any that stand up to much scrutiny.


People love to say "making batteries is polluting and energy intensive" but do they stop to think how an engine is made? Have you ever tried to make one? They are extremely complex, highly toleleranced, very individual and are full of materials that require massive energy inputs to make. Have ago at making a crankshaft at home, go on, see how you get on. But you can make a battery out of a lemon and a bit of tinfoil.

Now of course, there are short term factors that can make a battery more impactful. Where you make it, how far you need to ship it, and critically, how many your factory can make, which has a massive effect on the amortisation of carbon and energy overheads. And the source of the energy for your factory matters. A battery factor powered by it's own solar array is very low impact, whereas a steel making blast furnace getting its energy from a coal fired powerstation is not.

Today, at very low manufacturing volumes, using batteries made in china and shipped to the UK it think it's very likely that yes, a current EV is a little bit more impactful to make. But i see no FUNDAMENTAL reason for that to continue to be the case once volumes rise. People like Ford build engine plants locally for good reason, and they can make that a battery factory instead. They already ship many thousands of tonnes of steel to their engine factory, so shipping thousands of tonnes of battery materials is no different.


I've written many times about the parallelism and scaleability inherent ina BEV and this is such an important point, and yet still generally missed by most.

The crankshaft in your ford 1.6 engine is NOT the same as in your ford 1.25 engine.. Both are cranks, both are very similar, but you absolutely cannot fit one crank into the other engine.. So you entire chain must handle two different cranks. The machines that forge, machine, transport, pack, and stock check and store those cranks needs to be duplicated. The machines and production lines that buid those cranks into engines must be duplicated, operators trained on both systems, with different tools, torques and handling. Each carnk therefore has it's own overhead.

But a battery cell is broadly a battery cell. Used in their hundreds (or even thousands if you are Tesla) in every battery pack, but each being identical, and critically inherently scaleable. A 100 kWh battery in your top model simply uses twices as many of the same cells as the 50 kWH pack in your base model.. All the manufacture and supply chain is now dealing with a singluar cell. All the tooling, machinery, operator training, and stock keeping is suddenly simplified and now amortised over a much higher number of cars. And it's the same for motor magnets or laminates, and many other BEV components. One part, fits all.

And of course, there is no reason you can't as say VW, share a cell supply chain with BMW. No customer cares, just as they don't care that their alternator comes from Bosch or Valeo. Here a standardised global supply chain becomes possible, with optimisations possible at many levels.


No media outlet is going to be able to get anywhere near the necessary level of detail to be able to carry this story and i've only just scratched the surface in those ^^ few short paragraphs.

[anonymous-user]

fido said:

Max_Torque said:

The fact that a LAB is virtually infitinitely re-cyclable (the lead recycling network was one of the first such total lifecycle networks btw) seals the deal.

Hook line and sinker. And how recyclable are the Lithium units in all those Teslas? Good thing they are only 3% of all the cars out there. Or doesn't it matter as we can send them all to Turkey and ilk to 'process'.

A current EV battery is fundamentally around 95% recyclable using a number of different techniques, with current full volume capable/scaleable plants capable of a real world recovery rate of betwen 70 and 80%

During it's use a BEV battery does not in anyway use up any of its constituent elements, those elements are just sitting their waiting to be reused. Compare that with an ICE that (effectively) irreversably destroys 100% of the fuel with which it must be continuously fed.


Good video on the subject here:

Can electric vehicle batteries be recycled

Today, yes, because volumes are low, there are few recycling centres in the UK, but there is no reason why there can't be, just as we have a UK network for recycling your current LAB:




The single biggest problem today with recycling HV lithium batteries is that there just aren't any to recycle!

Second life projects are currently buying pretty much all the s/h batteries to use as, duh, batteries. A typical EV battery is considered EOL at around 80% degredation. Ie it still has the ability to store 80% of its original capacity. That makes it a very valuable commodity. Why would you rip it up and recycle it when you can use it as it is?

But once again, we see bias and ingnorance in the face of actual facts. You post spouting nonsense took a lot less effort to post that this post, where i actually attempt to explain the (complex) facts. The good news is that nothing you say will make any difference. EVs are here and are already taking over. You might not like them but, frankly, tough, you'll just have to get over it eh ;-)

[anonymous-user]

cidered77 said:

One thought i've had a few times - ignoring competitive forces and industry opposition for now, wouldn't one longer term solution be a universal standard for battery interface? A kind of "USB for battery tech"

We really pretty much already have this.

Pretty much every battery ever made for an EV uses cells from one of three cell manufacturers, uses a BMS system from one of a couple of manufacturers, even the HV plug is almost certainly from a single supplier to a single standard




From pyrotechnic fuses to HV contactors and current monitoring sensors, the automitive industry is actually incredibly standardised, primarily because of the huge worldwide Teir 1's like AMP-TE or Valeo who supply the OEs with their components.

Today the actual battery pack will be in a slightly different form factor, but most of its major components are already standard across all models and brands.

Probably the only level not standardised is the internal data network level, with each OE having their own propriety communications architecture (although using a standard protocol, ie CAN for example). Extenal coms are already standard (CCS for example)

[anonymous-user]

fido said:

Max_Torque said:

The single biggest problem today with recycling HV lithium batteries is that there just aren't any to recycle!

Sorry I don't buy that - in the same way that my local council don't recycle all those carefully stacked boxes I leave out for them every week! It's too expensive and difficult or Tesla & co would be recycling their own batteries 100% (as you say why wouldn't you?) (<-answer). The labour cost alone would be pretty huge to disassemble the huge arrays of cells in a car battery - that's not to say they can't make them more recyclable in the future but then again that adds to the cost of design/manufacture.

Edited by fido on Wednesday 9th June 14:16

what i'm not sure i understand?

Have a go at getting say a second hand tesla or leaf battery. go on, go have a look on ebay and see what a single module goes for, let alone a whole battery!


ebay tesla battery


Today, there are very few EVs being scrapped (because there are both few EVs and because they are cheap to fix / repair so people don't just scrap them) and those that are are being broken for parts.

What you think your council does with it's carboard boxes is irrelevant. A s/h cardboard box is worthless, you can leave one outside your house an no one will even bother to try to steal it. Leave a Tesla battery outside and someone will remove it pronto, because it's worth £10k!!

You also fall into the trap of assuming something from a position of ignorance. Nobody is manually dissassembling batteries!

If you watched the video i linked you'll see the process and you'll see it is highly automated.The battery is discharged (and the energy extracted actually used to run the recycling plant) then the modules are removed, a quick and easy process with just a few bolts, some minor manual sorting done for the highest value items (like copper bus bars) and the modules and rest of the battery are mechanically shredded! That mixture of shredded materials is then separated (using a number of different techniques) and sorted to get high quality raw materials of each different type.

Edited by anonymous-user on Wednesday 9th June 15:31

[anonymous-user]

Volvolover said:

I'm not disagreeing with you really, but just pointing out current growth in demand is driven by legislation which is easy to see.

Put it this way, if they were taxed at the same rate as an ICE and petrol was 5p a mile would it be the same type of chart as above?

There is a very important factor at play, that has only recently started to change,namely, that so far you cannot just walk into any showroom and buy an EV equivalent to the ICE car.


Only now, with the advent of models such as the ID3 or skoda Enyka-kaka, is there an easy line of purchase for the average man in the street.

Until now, EVs have been niche, expensive models. Even with Tesla, bring down costs with the Model3, you can't just walk into a showroom and buy one. Most private car buyers in the uk buy a new car when their old one goes in for work. "Serial" Golf or Yaris buyers for example, walk into a VW or Toyota dealer and get sold a new one. To buy an EV to date has required the used to actively go out to "buy and EV".

This is changing, and fast. When you can a walk into any showroom for any major brand and see, drive and experience an EV that is effective identical to the ICE car you arleady own from that brand, that is the day that for most people the sales of EV will go through the roof.

For most people, who don't drive long distances, and put comfort, ease of use, ahead of everything else (well except "liking the colour" which imo is the main differentiator for non-car people buying cars.....) suddenly, they will walk into a show room, get shown say a 2.0 tdi Golf and an ID3, and frankly, they'll choose the ID3. A test drive will seal the deal, with the instantaneous performance being so dominant they they will be convinced they have just bought the worlds fastest car (compared to their 1.3 yaris petrol, it actually will be....). They will love the silence, the one-pedal driving, the ease, convenience and the salesman will sell it to them on "Low running costs" and "being very environmentally friendly"


At this point, and we are very very nearly there, it's game over for ICE sales........

[anonymous-user]

Volvolover said:

I've already said i'm not disagreeing with you, its in the post for sure

I wasn't disagreeing with you not disagreeing with me!! :-)

I was just pointing out that yes, tax and legistalation are one thing, but the biggest single factor in choosing an EV or an ICE is having the opportunity to be offered the EV in the first place! Something that unit recently, certainly was not the case. And the more mainstream EVs become, the more they move away from first adopters, the more important this becomes. A bit like Coke vs Pepsi matters not one little bit if the shop you go to only has Coke.....