EEVBlog 1432 - Owning an ELECTRIC CAR for 12 Months & 17,000km

[EEVblog]

Dave shares his thoughts on owning a fully electric Hyundai IONIQ car after 12 Months & 17,000km

[spackard]

$0.44USD per kWh on that fast charge, FYI.  That's $15.18USD gasoline equivalent (not including road tax).
But, yeah, it's a car review.  Don't get sidetracked by my post.  Just an observation.

[bdunham7]

$0.44USD per kWh on that fast charge, FYI.  That's $15.18USD gasoline equivalent (not including road tax)

So you multiplied 0.44 * 34.5kWh/gal to to get the equivalent energy cost per gallon, right?

Now can you tell us what the huge flaw is in that analysis?  I'll wait....

[jonovid]

the 2 yr mark is when the battery starts to show signs of age. loss of range. if your a in a daily charge cycle.
Im assuming that an electric vehicle is just another battery operated appliance but larger   cordless drill on wheels

[sandalcandal]

the 2 yr mark is when the battery starts to show signs of age. loss of range. if your a in a daily charge cycle.
Im assuming that an electric vehicle is just another battery operated appliance but larger   cordless drill on wheels

The battery management strategies used in cordless tools are very different to those used in automotive. Standard warranty for an EV battery is 8yrs and has been for a while. There have been numerous discussions elsewhere on this forum...

[james_s]

I don't have a BEV but my partner does have a 2002 Toyota Prius. The original battery finally failed last year after 19 years and 140,000 miles. Prior to that it was performing just fine, it failed rather suddenly with an error indicating high resistance in one cell. It made no sense to replace that one cell in a 19 year old battery though, $2k bought a remanufactured battery built with 3rd gen cells.

I do know a few people with ~5 year old BEV Kias and one with a similar age Leaf, those are all still going strong.

For what it's worth, got about 10 years out of the original batteries that came with my cordless drills before I had them rebuilt, and I have a cordless driver that was made in 2008 and has the original battery. If you're only getting 2 years either you bought cheap tools that came with crap batteries or you aren't taking proper care of them, or both.

[kaz911]

I will echo Dave's experience.

We bought an electric car - and can mostly charge it on the UK octopus 4 hour night plan of £0.05 / kWh - so that would mean about £5.5 (assuming 10% charge loss) for a "full tank" giving me a normal "long distance" range of around 240-300 miles. 

Compare that to filling our Honda Jazz 2009 - £53.20 at current rates - and range is roughly the same.

But even with a daytime electricity rate of £0.16 / kWh it would cost £17.6 to fill it completely from empty.

I do not yet have enough solar to fill spare into the car.

My consumption per mile ranges from around 280-600 Wh per mile - dependent on weather, battery temperature and driving style. Heating/AC and heated seats do pull some extra watts...

A cold battery impacts a lot for short trips as 1. Higher consumption with cold battery - 2. Less regenerative breaking - 3. Battery is being heated.

We needed a large car - so there was not much choice.

But we still have the old Jazz. But based on our "success" with the electric car - we are trying to find a small electric "city" car to replace the Jazz as the stupid "automatic" gearbox on the Jazz is on its way out - and a replacement would cost more even as a refurb than we paid for the Jazz.

[james_s]

When I had my dad's Tesla Y for a few weeks I worked out that it cost me about $10 to "fill it up" from empty. To put enough fuel for the same range in a similar sized gasoline powered car would be at least $50, probably more like $65 at today's gas prices. Just for fun I calculated the gas mileage if I were to charge it from my Honda 2000i inverter generator and I think it came out to about 20mpg, surprisingly good when you consider the absurd number of conversion stages happening and the fact that it's a little single cylinder carbureted engine with fixed timing.