this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2023
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If EVs are a "key part" of Canada's climate strategy, we are all seriously fucked.
Care to explain? They're a massive environmental leap forward from ICE vehicles. Many places in Canada need transport just like personal vehicles, and transportation is a huge portion of Canada's GHG emissions. So how else would we reduce that portion of our environmental footprint?
@Stochastic @danielquinn
EVs are an environmental disaster because:
one, even a minor accident makes the vehicle unrepairable, because the battery packs can't be tested to verify if they've been damaged
and
two, battery packs are worth up to 50% of an EVs' price, so replacing them is cost-prohibitive, so EVs are written off after 8-10 yrs (because the batteries are old tech at that point and can cost upwards of $15k to replace).
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/scratched-ev-battery-your-insurer-may-have-junk-whole-car-2023-03-20/
https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/hybrids-evs/what-happens-to-the-old-batteries-in-electric-cars-a1091429417/
A buddy of mine is working with provincial electricity authorities to create a 'second use lifeline' for car batteries. Even if a battery pack only has 70% of its capacity left, it can be stacked in a steel box with a dozen others, and used to balance demand on the grid - absorbing excess capacity minute-to-minute, and putting it back on the grid when demand is highest. They would continue to use the pack until it was down to about 45-50% of its capacity, then send it off for recycling. The only reason it hasn't been rolled out anywhere is that the competition for used car batteries is fierce.
Why is it people always skip the second part of the article?
The one thing advocates against EV's conveniently ignore, is that batteries are unlikely to go straight to landfill.
The other thing is that batteries are rapidly evolving and even companies like CATL apparently have a battery which has greatly improved energy density.. As time progresses, Electric cars will require fewer batteries In fact, technologies like Lithium Air batteries (under development), offer 5x greater density, and other technologies like Solid State Sulfide are also in development.
There's so much work happening here. And it's already proven on average that they're already more environmentally friendly (and will soon be substantially more so).
8-10yrs? Why on earth would a functioning 500km range EV that's 10yrs old be labelled as scrap-worthy?
Have you ever been in a car accident and dealt with an insurance company? Not worth the time effort or $ according to them, and I'm taking conventional vehicles.
That doesn't seem relevant to my ask of clarity on the second point that doesn't involve accidents.
@Stochastic @cyberpunk007
Because the cost of replacing the batteries is more than the car is worth.
https://www.thedrive.com/guides-and-gear/these-replacement-battery-costs-for-these-six-normal-evs-is-staggeringly-high
But there's very low likelihood that a battery will need replacing within the first 20 years.
@Stochastic
Tesla warranties their batteries for eight years or 100,000 to 150,000 miles, depending on the model -- and calculates that their vehicles get scrapped after approximately 200,000 miles of usage in the U.S. and roughly 150,000 miles in Europe.
It costs approx $20k to replace out of warranty batteries for a Tesla.
Your 20 yr mark is optimistic at best, especially in places like Canada where our weather ranges are currently -40C to +40C.
EV batteries, just like the battery in your phone or laptop degrade over time from use and charging. The internal chemistry changes and usually yields one of two results depending on a number of factors:
The battery lifespan on a single charge becomes degraded. Sure maybe your EV had a 500km range when it was new, but over time, that decreases due to battery degradation. Thankfully, due to how many cells an EV battery has, the wear is more evenly distributed than in a phone or laptop, but EV's still lose 1-5% of total range capacity per year on average. So after 10 years, your 500km range may be decreased by between 50-250 km. (https://www.recurrentauto.com/research/how-long-do-ev-batteries-last) shows that around 8.5% of 2013 tesla model 3's owned by members of the site's community have needed a battery pack replacement due to range issues
Catastrophic failure chances increase as batteries age. This is due to several factors, but as age increases, battery temperatures trend higher for the same load, which can increase risk of failure. When an EV battery pack fails, it's very not good. Lithium ion battery fires are self oxidizing, they feed their own fire. You can't just spray it down 2ith water, it'll reignite. You have to let the fire burn itself out, or (as has been used for some fires) dig a trench, fill the trench with water, and then drag the car into the trench.
All this is to say considering the above factors, at a certain point, every current EV will need a battery pack replacement. With our current technology, the battery pack can cost between $10k-25k. When a 2013 Model S costs 26k used, I don't know that many people would want to spend $20k to replace the battery pack on it.
That's nowhere near how little degredation is actually seen in the data you yourself provided.
And you're cherry-picking the worst car in the study to highlight (Tesla Model S).
You know, I did misinterpret the study data pretty hard. Hazards of rushing a comment I suppose.
Though, the same article I shared does highlight that the major EV manufacturers do warranty for 30-40% degregation within a 8-10 year period depending on the manufacturer, which even taking the best combination of those 2 values (30%/10 years) does mean that the manufacturers have decided that they could, in their worst case scenario lose up to 3% capacity per year before they'll honour a warranty. So... take that how you will I suppose.
As for the cherry picking, I'll admit that was disingenuous, but not intentional. Again, rushing research causes sloppy mistakes.
The one thing that we haven't seen yet is supply and demand for batteries and if that will pan out 10 years from now. That and tech advances.