Off topic, EV vehicle opinions…

I really love my electric golf cart and recently completed a lithium conversion. However I am limited to neighborhood usage due to the 12mph speed. If I bypass the speed limiter it would be a frightening experience with no front brakes and lawnmower-based suspension.

My plan to venture further is purchase a cheap, well-used 2013-2017 Leaf with depleted battery. Essentially I would takeoff the doors and drive as an overgrown golf cart. I can drive to the nearby town with a range of only 20-30 miles. My local used car dealer is watching the auto auctions for a suitable Leaf. Curious if the Nissan buyback Leaf's will be dumped at the wholesale auctions.

Otherwise anybody looking to dump a Leaf? The price will have to be attractive after factoring shipping to south Texas.

Competition is the answer. Without government intervention the market will take care of itself.

Delmar said:

I really love my electric golf cart and recently completed a lithium conversion. However I am limited to neighborhood usage due to the 12mph speed. If I bypass the speed limiter it would be a frightening experience with no front brakes and lawnmower-based suspension.

My plan to venture further is purchase a cheap, well-used 2013-2017 Leaf with depleted battery. Essentially I would takeoff the doors an drive as an overgrown golf cart. I can drive to the nearby town with a range of only 20-30 miles. My local used car dealer is watching the auto auctions for a suitable Leaf. Curious if the Nissan buyback Leaf's will be dumped at the wholesale auctions.

Otherwise anybody looking to dump a Leaf? The price will have to be attractive after factoring shipping to south Texas.

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My totaled 2015 Leaf would have been ideal for this. Battery was in great shape still. Front and rear bumpers and some body work were needed.

HRTKD said:

My totaled 2015 Leaf would have been ideal for this. Battery was in great shape still. Front and rear bumpers and some body work were needed.

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That's exactly what I am looking for, dented but drivable. Will remove the doors and front & rear bumper covers. The fenders would be cut for larger tires. There is no way I can make the Leaf look worse than when new.

Always remember, this can happen to any EV at any time, especially if the battery has been hit in even a minor accident. And this can happen at complete random time long AFTER the accident.

aenyc said:

The problem is that the rich are the only ones who can actually afford them, even with subsidy

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The $7500 subsidy is only a tax credit, meaning you have to pay more than $7500 in federal tax to use the entire amount. My son just learned this the hard way with his Chevy Bolt. He wanted me to take the credit and pass the savings to him. Could have been possible since we share the same name and address. However I want to teach by example and give him an education on taxes. The bad taste will stay with him for a lifetime.

aenyc said:

My take is the same - No govt subsidies to any industry. Let each stand on its own market merit.

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Agree 100% here

aenyc said:

I am vocal about EV's because the tech is unsustainable and it is ruining our environment much more so than Oil (Look up battery production).
I love the concept of EV and i even wanted one, until i educated myself on how crappy this current tech really is (and the agenda it is helping advance)

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Receipts please. EV vs ICE is generally a push environmentally. People always bring up the environmental impacts of building an EV but apparently building an ICE vehicle has none whatsoever.

aenyc said:

Even if we magically solve elephant number 1 tomorrow (very unlikely the way battery research is going - i dont see going away from Li Chemistry any time soon. I am very familiar with Na tech and many others - they all have shortcomings and are not applicable to EV).

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They have prototypes coming off of proof of concept manufacturing and assembly setups, not getting a lot of press. Current prototypes seem to have over twice the energy density. They don't get hot charging. Realistically 2-5 years out at the current dev pace.

There are plenty of other battery tech's that are getting in the pipeline, including improvements to the current lithium stuff. Please define "anytime soon".

aenyc said:

Elephants 2 and 3 are exponentially more difficult to solve.

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I disagree. The only elephants I see with EV's in order are:
- Vehicle Cost
- Range
- Charging time

aenyc said:

And then there is this

Righteous Risks Part 3: The Electric Vehicle Halo

From the Risk Monger David Zaruk Just imagine if, in the coming months, the following studies would be published in peer-reviewed journals: That battery technologies used in electric vehicles (EVs)…

wattsupwiththat.com

If you are an EV owner with a righteous moral outrage toward this article, please consider whether your comment is emotion or fact-based before clicking on the send button. I would prefer a rational discussion.

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Meh, always zealots, but balance requires looking at the arguments realistically. I mean when you start arguing about tire dust, it just fails the common sense/stupidity test. Somehow because it runs on batteries a vehicle will generate 100 times the dust of an ICE? The magical ICE vehicle that runs without tires? How about a transfer truck? I mean it's just a plain stupid argument against EV's. There are plenty of issues with EV's, and they need to be addressed, but all these idiots on the internet ranting about tire dust is just stunning to me.

ksmithaz1 said:

I disagree. The only elephants I see with EV's in order are:
- Vehicle Cost
- Range
- Charging time

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You are clearly uneducated on the issue.
I suggest you do a lot more research, and please avoid the usual "hopium trap" of new battery is just around the corner. (Flying cars will be here at any time since 1960's). The actual fact is there is nothing commercially viable for any foreseeable future and all of the "techtalk" is just there to get the hype and stupid investor money.

Also range and charging time matter very little when the grid is saturated (already) and will require major breakthroughs in both generation and carry capacity. (Billions and Billions in both generation capacity and line upgrades, multipled by time and competent people needed for this work)
Until then, even if new batteries magically appeared today, you would very quickly be rationed to charge your EV once a week, if that.

I strongly suggest you research these topics and try to stay away from politically biased main stream media and "fact checkers" who are completely owned by the people pushing the EV agenda.

The real goal is to rid you of private transportation

aenyc said:

The problem is that the rich are the only ones who can actually afford them, even with subsidy

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Mostly I think new vehicles are ridiculously overpriced, and the people who pay those prices are at fault for this. If they all said "nope" pricing would resolve in a couple months. People who make car payments should have their heads examined, and people who lease cars should possibly be placed under conservatorship.

This is an "all vehicles" thing though, not an EV thing. There are EVs that are quite comparable to ICE vehicles cost wise.

I might go test drive one of the Subaru EVs that Hertz is dumping. Couple year old car with 18k miles on it for $23k isn't bad. AWD too.

fpgt72 said:

As well as the production of all the things for these batteries is not the most friendly.

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Battery fires are real. That being said:

There was a cop here was in a Crown-vic spent a whole lot of time in the burn unit rebuilding his face. I met the man, it was a big deal, not an ideal car for a rear-end accident. Fuel tanks used to be behind the seat in pickup trucks. Always nice to drive with a Molotov Cocktail behind your head. Airplanes used to crash not infrequently. "Unsafe at any speed".

The point? Somehow the young people seem to think that everything must be perfect as soon as you bring it to market or you shouldn't have it at all. As these issues crop up engineers will correct or mitigate the effects of the problems, and to that point, my Kona has had a recall replacing the batteries for this very problem. Somehow battery = dangerous, Tank with 10+ gallons of a liquid volitile = safe?

The last 20 'car-b-que's here in phoenix were all ICE vehicles. YMMV, we do need to address training and other issues around battery fires vs liquid volatiles.

ksmithaz1 said:

Battery fires are real. That being said:

There was a cop here was in a Crown-vic spent a whole lot of time in the burn unit rebuilding his face. I met the man, it was a big deal, not an ideal car for a rear-end accident. Fuel tanks used to be behind the seat in pickup trucks. Always nice to drive with a Molotov Cocktail behind your head. Airplanes used to crash not infrequently. "Unsafe at any speed".

The point? Somehow the young people seem to think that everything must be perfect as soon as you bring it to market or you shouldn't have it at all. As these issues crop up engineers will correct or mitigate the effects of the problems, and to that point, my Kona has had a recall replacing the batteries for this very problem. Somehow battery = dangerous, Tank with 10+ gallons of a liquid volitile = safe?

The last 20 'car-b-que's here in phoenix were all ICE vehicles. YMMV, we do need to address training and other issues around battery fires vs liquid volatiles.

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This is a strawman argument.
When you compare apples to apples, EVs are both dangerous and unsustainable for the reasons i mentioned above.
Insurance companies are beginning to realize it (they total EV's for minor damage precisely due to battery impact) with cost being passed onto all drivers (get as many away from private auto as possible by any means)

But, i will say it again, all of the outstanding issues with battery tech, grid generation and grid capacity are real problems that make current EV tech completely unfeasible for mass market, and i did not even mention battery EOL scenarious (research this for yourself).

This article is an awesome summarization (With tons of hyperlinks to the horse's mouth) that show the reality of energy transformation that is being pushed on us

OM617YOTA said:

Mostly I think new vehicles are ridiculously overpriced, and the people who pay those prices are at fault for this. If they all said "nope" pricing would resolve in a couple months. People who make car payments should have their heads examined, and people who lease cars should possibly be placed under conservatorship.

This is an "all vehicles" thing though, not an EV thing. There are EVs that are quite comparable to ICE vehicles cost wise.

I might go test drive one of the Subaru EVs that Hertz is dumping. Couple year old car with 18k miles on it for $23k isn't bad. AWD too.

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Dont forget to calculate potential to end up with required battery replacement. Buying an EV that was used for rental is a very bad idea. But go ahead, do it. The more people get burned (no pun intended) the quicker this EV lunacy will end (until we solve the 3 main issues i keep mentioning)

aenyc said:

You are clearly uneducated on the issue.
I suggest you do a lot more research, and please avoid the usual "hopium trap" of new battery is just around the corner. (Flying cars will be here at any time since 1960's). The actual fact is there is nothing commercially viable for any foreseeable future and all of the "techtalk" is just there to get the hype and stupid investor money.

Also range and charging time matter very little when the grid is saturated (already) and will require major breakthroughs in both generation and carry capacity. (Billions and Billions in both generation capacity and line upgrades, multipled by time and competent people needed for this work)
Until then, even if new batteries magically appeared today, you would very quickly be rationed to charge your EV once a week, if that.

I strongly suggest you research these topics and try to stay away from politically biased main stream media and "fact checkers" who are completely owned by the people pushing the EV agenda.

The real goal is to rid you of private transportation

Cost of Driving Jumps 50% in Three Years as Net Zero War on Motorist Heats Up – The Daily Sceptic

The cost of running a car has soared by £700 to £2,100 a year in the last three years – a 50% rise – as a result of the Net Zero war on motorists and rising inflation.

dailysceptic.org

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Clearly I have no idea what I'm talking about, because I'm promoting 'flying cars'. This is a classic 'straw man' argument, which puts everything else you say in the 'dubious'/rant category. These guys are building and testing prototype batteries. The cost of LifePO cells are dropping, and we've had several order-of-magnitude improvements in battery tech in my lifetime. Sodium batteries are here.

I've discussed the power issues on other (EV) forums. There is an issue here. Bottom line is using natural gas to generate electricity to charge an EV is sub-optimal. Ranting about the potential scale of the issue does not bring the discussion forward. Tesla is already supplementing it's charging stations with battery backup, and the sodium batteries you dismiss with the flying cars (Which I might mention are actually being researched again) are a relatively safe way to store electricity in a bulk/stationary environment. Power is cheap and plentiful here, a couple of new nuclear plants would solve much of the problem nationwide, but the infrastructure will certainly need to improve. It will not happen tomorrow, but the problem is not the total generated power, but the demand window. We could talk about scaling up to meet the requirements to make this work if we were not ranting about why it won't.

I charge my EV almost exclusively with solar. I'm guessing this will become more commonplace in places where it makes sense. Longer term, I would expect to see solar and battery supplemented charging stations along major travel routes charging the supplemental batteries from a variety of sources and when demand is low. This won't work everywhere, but you could definitely take the concept all the way across the nation on I-10. This could happen now with current tech, but is still rather expensive to implement. Costs will go down as the various tech improvements continue, plenty of private money is pouring in. Most EV charging will be done at night during off-peak depand.

The website I pointed to was for the company actually making the aluminum batteries in Queensland. They are working with Bosch to get the manufacturing process down, I think they currently have a 10 layer pouch figured out, but they still need to scale it up. They were sampling the button cells as a POC kit, it's for real, and there are very few tech hurdles left, it's really about figuring out how to build it at scale. If you had bothered to actually read anything, you can see the prototype equipment they are designing to bring it to market. They also have test results with the prototype cells demonstrating charge times / temperature, showing 10x improvements in time and a dramatically smaller temperature delta. Not exactly pie in the sky tech albeit immature.

OM617YOTA said:

People who make car payments should have their heads examined, and people who lease cars should possibly be placed under conservatorship.

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I leased a Chevy Bolt premier for 35x$230/month (first month was free and including local tax) so a total of $8,050 over 3 years/36,000 miles
I got $4,500 upfront after leasing from California Clean Air act. So my costs (apart from (solar)fuel/tires/insurance) was $3,550
That means I paid $0.0968/mile over 3 years for just the car.
You are saying that was not a wise choice ?

aenyc said:

This is a strawman argument.

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I'm uneducated, uninformed, and clueless, although I've often found Shakespere was extrememly enlightened: "Mee thinks thee doth protest too much". Or an alternate take: "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle'em with bullsh..".

We are talking about vehicles. You state electric cars are more dangerous than non-electric because they can catch fire and explode. I give examples of non-electric vehicles that catch fire and explode. I intimate this may not be accurate. That is not a 'strawman' argument, it is a rebuttal. It's generally good form to define things properly. Now if you want to give me some hard numbers that show EV's are more likely than non-ev's to catch fire and explode we can see what the gap is and have a discussion on whether or not there is a gap, and if so, whether or not it can/will narrow/close.


A 'strawman' argument, is when you bring up something totally un-related as a comparison, like when someone states and shows examples of maturing battery tech, and one makes a statement like "Don't believe the media selling you battery tech, it's like the flying cars we were promised in the 60's". Intimating that it will be 60 years or more and it still won't exist. You see? Flying cars have nothing to do battery technology, though I will grant you it's a "vehicle".

Now if you want to discuss the difficulty of putting out an EV/battery fire vs an ICE/liquid volatile one, . . .

fromport said:

I leased a Chevy Bolt premier for 35x$230/month (first month was free and including local tax) so a total of $8,050 over 3 years/36,000 miles
I got $4,500 upfront after leasing from California Clean Air act. So my costs (apart from (solar)fuel/tires/insurance) was $3,550
That means I paid $0.0968/mile over 3 years for just the car.
You are saying that was not a wise choice ?

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Re: lease vs purchase

Depends on the car. If you can afford a BMW, it's generally a good idea to lease, because you don't want to own the thing when it's over 5 years old and the maintenance is more than a monthly lease, you just turn it in. In most cases though a fleece is a sub-optimal way to finance a vehicle. If you are in business, sometimes a lease is better, because you turn it into an Opex vs a Capex, and again, you replace your fleet over time. Airlines generally lease their planes. Early in the game leasing an EV may make more sense because of the unknowns around battery reliability over a long haul.

Anything you plan to drive until the wheels fall off, leasing is not the way to go.

aenyc said:

Always remember, this can happen to any EV at any time, especially if the battery has been hit in even a minor accident. And this can happen at complete random time long AFTER the accident.

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Could happen to a ford at any time too
(Just poking fun at my ford brethren)

Hedges said:

For those who can survive at a balmy 88F (with fan and a cold beer from the fridge), there is a modest cash credit to sign up.

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88F? Phhht. 100F with a cooler of cold beverages maybe some misters. It's a dry heat.

Hedges said:

EV doesn't need enough maintenance to be profitable, he says.

But apparently a moderately large investment is needed to be able to not do maintenance on EVs:

"Late last year, Buick said it would be asking dealers to commit a minimum investment of $300,000 to $400,000 to prepare their stores to sell and service EVs."

GM buys out nearly half of its Buick dealers across the country, who opt to not sell EVs

GM said nearly half of its Buick dealers opted to take a buyout rather than invest in an all-electric future.

www.freep.com

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Yea, it's all infrastructure. You don't turn too many wrenches, but testing the battery packs and electronics/electrics requires a bunch of custom software and gear!

aenyc said:

Hertz Increases The Number Of Electric Cars It Wants To Get Rid Off To 30,000 From 20,000

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Prime example of how to screw-up big time. Buy an extreme number of EV's, have clueless people rent them with no instruction or methodology in place to support the renters or the vehicles.

I rented a NiroEV last year in Sacramento. The facility was in 'grab-n-go' mode. Someone arrived just before me grabbed my car. I'm sitting at the exit gate asking about my ride. Guy pulls up in the car I should have, I start chatting, "Yea I reserved an EV like this one, there is a free Volta next to the hotel I'm staying at, I wanted the Kia electric. How long have you been driving EV's"? (Deer in headlights). "Yea, they offered me a Tesla instead, but I own a NiroEV and have all the Apps and accounts for EA, EvGo, and Chargepoint, Blink sucks, but I've never charged at a Tesla station. I was trying to get an answer on that but they seem clueless here"... "Umm, I think I grabbed the wrong car, I think this is yours". (Yes, I think you did).

So Mr gate-man, how does the charging work for the return? Pretty hard to return an EV with 100%, is there a station or something I'm supposed to stop at? Hang on sir . . . (wait, wait, calls, questions) Umm, just return it with at least 70%, that will be fine.

Then, have the value of your inventory drop 25% because of a price reduction by Tesla, and have no way to repair the Tesla's as they get dinged up. Abject stupidity, total cluster-eff.