It's official Toyota is full speed fuel cells for compliance after 2014

Haha, my bad. I read this while in my car. Obviously it didn't turn out to be a good idea. My post still applies but to Scorpion.

 

And to trollbait, nah its called human error and multitasking. Debate closed.

 

Wow, hot button issue here...Pure Battery Electric Vehicles DOES NOT WORK. I was thinking of converting my regular hybrid to a plug-in and a few members who posted their journals on this forum had the actual real world experience with batteries and it is a pain dealing with dead cells. If you don't address the dead cells you lose charge, then range anxiety will creep up on you until you have to call a tow truck. Now if you own a Plug in hybrid it's all cool but if it's pure BEV? What next?

 

What is the shortcoming of the Tesla Model S....other than price? Price is the most serious issue, but if the price gets down to the $35,000k range, is it still an inferior car?

 

That was good. Most might have missed the connection, but I enjoyed it.

 

The issue for PURE BEV is the B-A-T-T-E-R-Y. It's too heavy, if something pierce the battery it'll start a fire, Li is very volatile compared to NiMH, limited range depending on battery size, and dealing with and managing dead battery cells is a pain given its design. If you want to drive a Pure BEV to it's claimed range you must do it very gingerly on down wind conditions with relatively flat terrain, hard accelerations and running a serious sound system in your car will drain the juice very quickly. Am I out to lunch on this one???

 

Hopefully you are in this forum to discuss the issues.

First issue, which is more dangerous: a Lithium battery designed and proven to be extremely safe...or a tank of gas? There are well over a hundred thousand car gas fires a year and many hundreds of deaths from those fires. How many LiIon Battery deaths do you know about? I'll take the LiIon Battery car anyday since I understand the risk of each.

Second issue. I do not know of any car that will achieve it's claimed range if driven or used intentionally in a manner designed to drain energy. What I do know is that if I have an accurate fuel or battery gauge, I can drive the car without problems. As for a direct answer, there are a multitude of BEV owners who will honestly answer your question, so I will leave that answer to those with extensive first hand experience.

Finally, Which is warranted longer: the LiIon battery in a BEV or the Engine in most vendors ICE cars? Would this be the case if LiIon batteries failed as commonly as you claim? What has seemed to become clear with many millons of BEV miles accumulated is that liquid cooling of LiIon (and all other) batteries shows amazing reliability.

 

And it is a pain dealing with a bad wheel bearing where to the traditional tests to determine the culprit no longer work. Meanwhile you have anxiety from it reducing your fuel economy. Parts wear and break on non-BEV cars too. Locating dead cells in a large battery is probably a breeze compared to rebuilding an automatic transmission or engine.

Don't want the work or hassle of a plug-in conversion, just buy a PPI. It is actually cheaper than a conversion, and if Toyota or their supplier messed up, there is a warranty. Are you worried about the cells in your Prius now? Bad ones will reduce your fuel economy. A fully dead pack means calling for a tow truck. Even FCEVs have batteries with cells that can go bad.

BEVs and PHVs have been out going on 4 years. The only issue involving shorten life or reduced range was with Leafs in the Arizona desert. Others use liquid cooling for better protection of the battery. Current costs or short ranges limit the population of who can make a BEV work in comparison to fossil fueled power cars. It is a far, far cry from not working.

 

You're getting me all wrong. I assumed we have moved on from comparing LiOn vs Gas tank, dam man...we all know what happened to the Ford Pinto's on this forum I assumed? We all drive the PRIUS here don't we on this forum??? The batteries DO NOT FAIL AS COMMONLY AS I DID NOT CLAIM. There is a big issue with DEAD CELLS, not all battery packs work in perfect order as you might think. I discovered this through owners of converted Prius' that individual battery cells do fail, not all cells fail absolutely and not all battery cells accepts and draw juice uniformly. This is a major maintenance issue if you think about it, especially in the Tesla Model S where the battery pack does not have a BMS for the owner to monitor through the stupid 17" ipad like screen to distract you from driving. Your driving range can be affected wildly depending on how many cells are bad and neglected, isn't that a bad thing?

The issue I'm trying to convey here is that using a massive laptop computer battery as a power source is not an efficient approach to get off the dino oil crap. I'm concurring with Toyota's thesis, that's all not claiming to be some genius who knows the answer to our transportation predicament!

Also, if you live in urban area and cannot setup a solar charging system or have to park in underground garages from high rise buildings, how can you charge that BEV? Go to charging station that hasn't been setup yet? Drive to a friend's house and have it charge for 1-3hrs? Does that even sound practical?

Seriously you think i'm trolling with the responses I've made so far???

 

But not as bad as 100 pounds of the same volatile liquid hydrocarbons used to make napalm and Molotov cocktails.

The latest Tesla's range is about the same as my first (gasoline) car.

Don't I need to do the same to get the claimed range out of my gassers?

Most SFRs (single family residences) with a garage or carport or offstreet parking are able to plug into regular outlets even without having solar charging. That fact that some people don't have such outlets within reach doesn't make BEVs impractical for everybody.

 

First, no accusations or insinuations of trolling are involved.

Second, discussing the issues, no matter what one's take, is OK. It's when the messenger gets discussed instead of the message that derails the discussion. So back to the message.

Is the discussion of production auto batteries or conversion batteries? When you said "....Pure Battery Electric Vehicles DOES NOT WORK" I took it as applying to all BEVs. Is that the case? This is an honest question and not nit-picking. If you statement was just for conversion and modified Battery Packs, I can see your point.

As for the Tesla design, is this a real problem or an imagined problem? I'm not being snide at all about this but think of the following examples. The immense bank of transistors in the Prius inverter have the exact same situation. If a lot go bad individually, the Prius is DOA. Yet this extremely rare and the rare failures are usually do to inverter overheating, not the transistors failing at high rates due to being "bad and neglected". Another example is the large number of rocket engines on big rockets. The Falcon 9 has nine individual engines instead of one monster engine. This is the most reliable configuration...even though it seems like the failure possibilities are 9 times greater. The bottom line is a lot of individual cells, properly engineered, can have the same reliability as a limited number of huge cells. The answer is in how the final overall pack works...and this is showing up to be very, very good in the Tesla so far.

 

Pure BEV; let's see:
1. Decreased range in cold & hot weather, Nissan Leaf, Chevy Volt Range Loss In Winter: New Data From Canada

2. Takes additional energy if you warm up the cabin, sometimes more than to propel the vehicle,

3. Vampire loss, Life With Tesla Model S: Even After Update, Vampire Draw Remains | Popular Science

4. Charging loss,

5. Pull up to a public charger, may have to wait in line for the charger,

 

Ah ha. The solution is to move to Florida. Wait, I already see you have.


Question-Why does the bottom green curve not follow the dots?

 

I think the dots represent number of trips and the curve line is just average or median distribution,

 

Gassers experience this too, if not to the same proportion.

Gassers experience this too, if not to the same proportion.

This is specific to particular firmware in a particular model, not an inherent BEV characteristic.
...

 

Yes, it is bad if cells go bad. Just ask any one that owned a Civic hybrid or Insight1 with battery issues. But parts can go bad on any car. How recalls has the Prius been involved with during its production? The most recent one involved its brakes. Reduced range is an annoying hassle. Reduced braking is a safety issue.

Issues don't have to be limited to causes originating with the design or manufacture. I work with someone who was one of at least hundreds, that got stranded because their fuel gauge broke, leading to running out of gas. All because a refinery shipped gas that was out of spec and broke the gauge sensor.

You are taking the experiences of people converting to plug in and conflating them to production models. The experiences of some people doing engine swaps would lead to the belief that different production engine options won't work. The manufacturers have a lot at stake with BEVs and PHVs. Even the compliance only companies don't want to mar their image with preventable failures. They all have access to the battery manufacturers that the tiny conversion companies probably didn't even dream of, and they have the QA that no hobbyist would have access too.

Is there even an inkling of battery problems in any of the current production plug in cars? Considering the publicity the Tesla S fires got, I would think reports on it losing range should be easy to find. Can issues arise from bad cells? Yes, they can. Nothing can be produced 100% perfect a 100% of the time. Does this mean that BEVs are a failure? No, did Honda's troubles with their hybrid packs make the Prius a failure?

Unless a miracle occurs, and we can renewably make hydrogen for less than what it costs to make it from natural gas, hydrogen fuel cells will keep us tied to fossil fuels.

More practical than having to move to California to be able to use a FCEV.

No one is denying that a BEV has limits, but they don't have to work for absolutely everybody in the country to have an impact. The majority of families do have access to an outlet at their home, and own two or more cars. A BEV more than likely can replace one of their gas burners for the daily commute. Not enough range in the current offerings. there are several PHVs also available.

The Leaf, Volt, and Ford Energis are readily available across the country, and within the financial means of many. Then there is the PPI, Accord PHV, Focus EV, iMiEV, and smart fortwo ED that limited by state or dealer network. It'll take more effort for some to procure one, but still affordable with the credits. The prices have dropped, but most weren't outrageous in price when first released.

The FCEVs will only be available in California. They can't be exported outside the state. Hyundai's Tuscon FCEV will be a $500 month lease. Toyota's will cost somewhere in the Tesla S range. They will not sell in the numbers to bring about the price drops seen in plug ins for some time, and they'll be limited to single state for some time too. Which will do a better job of getting off dino oil?

 

It's obvious, the Leaf owners haven't been drinking their "Kool-Aid™" medicine as much as the Tesla and Volt owners have (wink,wink)!