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twerking on the railroad posted:I would love some details on the new volt, please. So far it has been great. We have little over 1000 miles on it and used around 1 gallon of gas. The all electric range is usually around 60 miles, which most days we put a dent into but don't drain completely. The ride is excellent, extremely quite and smooth, and the acceleration is pretty good since it has 297ft/lbs of torque. The biggest complaint is the headroom in the back is low but our kids are still small so that isn't an issue. I did install a 240v evse in the garage myself and that really helps with topping it off between errands.
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Oct 29, 2016 16:31
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Ryand-Smith posted:The Taurus is the same body as the fusion i thought, and the C max is a festia body I thought! Mustang I forgot I will gladly admit, but they have the turbo 4 now so it's not that bad. The Taurus is much larger than the Fusion, but it's being retired again after 2017. The C-Max is built on Ford's C platform, the Fiesta is built on the smaller B platform (there's a B Max, actually).
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Oct 29, 2016 18:03
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Collateral Damage posted:Yeah that's my main gripe with hybrids in general, their electric range is awful and if you don't force them into EV-only mode they'll switch on the combustion engine as soon as you outpace a snail. The regular V60 is a nice car to drive, so assuming they didn't make any drastic changes to the rest of the car it just comes down to if they made the hybrid drivetrain any good. I think this is a widespread myth about hybrids - there's a battery and the car can run on it so I should be able to charge it and run for shot distances on just electricity right? It's really not like that, hybrids especially the early ones aren't really "electric vehicles", they are regular gas vehicles with a battery and motor that makes the gas engine operate *much* more efficiently. They are not designed to pend a lot of time running on electricity only because a vehicle like that would require a much larger battery and have entirely different economics and range issues. A vehicle that actually does what people think hybrids should is is the Volt. You can charge it and run around on electricity only and only use the gas engine for long distances, but it also shows you the limitations of the technology - the Volt is much less efficient than the Prius when running on gas because it has to lug a much larger weight of battery around to have a useful EV only range, and of course it was (when new) much more expensive because of the battery. The ability to charge up and drive around for short distances is useful if your driving fits within that very narrow range of use but it's much less optimal for most people, hence many fewer Volts on the road. That being said Toyota does of course actually build a plug in prius and the upcoming Prius prime is looking to bridge the gap between Prius and Volt. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5Vx279YhAI
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Oct 29, 2016 18:06
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You know I have been focusing on the traction battery - has anyone here ran into issues with other key components on their EV or hybrid vehicles? I'm talking about the motor/generators, M/G bearings, power cabling, or power semiconductor components.
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Oct 29, 2016 19:35
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Here’s an old (1997–2003 model) Prius MG replacement. e: Actually, here’s a whole list of broken hybrid stuff.
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Oct 30, 2016 02:19
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Interesting chart from a crowd sourced google doc, where Model S owners plug in a bunch of numbers and out comes an idea on battery degradation. (don't know why "jakoys" is highlighted, perhaps the last user to add data) The range of the figures probably indicates that there is quite a bit of error in how people measure this, you also have to factor in that the max range figure in the car has varied between software updates. You can change between an ideal range number and a number that is based on your average consumption, this analysis uses the former. I believe many have experienced different range numbers when the car was new, which explains why some dots are above 100%. Even though you can question the quality, I think it's good enough data for me not to worry about battery degradation if I bought a Tesla. Any car wears out with use, it doesn't seem that it wears out at an unreasonable rate.
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Oct 30, 2016 12:23
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I find it interesting that no one is over 60 Mm and below 90%. If anything, you’d expect high‐mileage drivers to fast charge a lot and have accelerated capacity loss.
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Oct 30, 2016 12:30
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Platystemon posted:I find it interesting that no one is over 60 Mm and below 90%. It seems like supercharging impacts battery health a lot less than feared. Famed Tesla-vlogger Bjørn Nyland put crazy mileage on his P85 and supercharged all the time. He found 4% degradation after 100k miles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afxacp5wIZo Many people have found 10% or higher degradation when looking at the typical range number alone, this doesn't account for changes to the algorithm in software updates. Nyland calculated it with the "energy used" stat on the dash. I think the general rule of lithiums, don't go too high or too low often, is more important than don't supercharge.
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Oct 30, 2016 13:10
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Three-Phase posted:You know I have been focusing on the traction battery - has anyone here ran into issues with other key components on their EV or hybrid vehicles? I'm talking about the motor/generators, M/G bearings, power cabling, or power semiconductor components. The top two entries on Consumer Reports' list are the Prius and the Lexus CT 200h (less efficient slightly fancier Prius), and TrueDelta has the Prius as more reliable than the Corolla or Camry. I suspect that it's reliable enough that there's not going to be a lot of scuttlebutt about anything like that. I remember a fairly epic PriusChat thread about somebody doing a transaxle swap maybe in 2009 or so, back before I realized I didn't drive enough for a Prius.
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Oct 30, 2016 21:51
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Cross post from post your ride I've now owned the first gen Insight, 2nd and 3rd gen Prius, and the C Max.  The wife and I bought matching CMax Energi blobs. So far they are actually really nice to drive. It's like a small version of our flex, with better low end torque. Really roomy inside, and much more engaging than the Prius's I've owned in the past.
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Oct 30, 2016 22:12
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One thing I noticed in the Hybrid RAV4 manual is that if you need to tow the vehicle it MUST be on a flatbed. Supposedly you can start a fire or cause damage to the hybrid system if you tow it with any of the four wheels on the ground! 
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Oct 31, 2016 02:11
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Makes sense if it is awd.
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Oct 31, 2016 02:25
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Three-Phase posted:One thing I noticed in the Hybrid RAV4 manual is that if you need to tow the vehicle it MUST be on a flatbed. Supposedly you can start a fire or cause damage to the hybrid system if you tow it with any of the four wheels on the ground! Each wheel has at least one electric motor mechanically connected to it, with no way to disconnect, and without the car’s systems energised to manage the flow of electricity, bad things would happen. Priuses can be towed with their real wheels on the ground because those freewheel.
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Oct 31, 2016 03:44
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Phuzun posted:Makes sense if it is awd. From what I can find it's FWD, but if it has regenerative braking in the rear that could cause a problem. It's not hard to get a tow with all 4 wheels off the ground, many cars today are AWD. edit: Oh you said HYBRID, I was thinking the EV.
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Oct 31, 2016 06:07
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Ola posted:Please post your thoughts. My friend is considering a 60 or 90 Twin Engine (probably the former, the latter will likely turn out pricier than expected). I am a bit on the fence about it, it does have enough electric range for city use if you parked it at a charging spot. If it's poo poo to drive, that changes the equation quite a bit, because electrics are flippin sweet to drive. Highway range on EV mode turned out to be slightly less than 30km. Even in pure EV mode the ICE kicks in when you accelerate hard, but otherwise it cruises comfortably on electric alone. There's a "power gauge" which shows at what level of throttle application the ICE will kick in, similar to the fuel economy gauge in regular modern Volvos. The ICE threshold goes lower as the battery drains. As far as I can tell, the difference between Hybrid and Pure is just where it puts the threshold in relation to battery charge level. Transition between EV and ICE is smooth and barely noticeable except at hard acceleration where there's suddenly a sharp increase in power. It's really quiet inside, so at a few times I only noticed that the ICE had started because the rev meter went up. I did get an odd behavior when driving through the city. I picked the car up, put it in Pure EV mode and had driven maybe one km when it suddenly said "Pure mode not available, switching to Hybrid". The battery was fully charged and I was going at inner city speeds so  One drawback is that the trunk floor on the TE is about 5-8cm higher, so there's some vertical space sacrificed to make room for the batteries. Collateral Damage fucked around with this message at 11:07 on Oct 31, 2016 |
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Oct 31, 2016 11:01
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Collateral Damage posted:I did get an odd behavior when driving through the city. I picked the car up, put it in Pure EV mode and had driven maybe one km when it suddenly said "Pure mode not available, switching to Hybrid". The battery was fully charged and I was going at inner city speeds so Temperature extremes?
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Oct 31, 2016 11:03
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It was about 5C so it's possible, but I had just taken it off the charger so the battery should have been warm. Speaking of, when I returned it with a flat battery and plugged it into the high speed charger it said about 4 hours to full which I guess is reasonable.
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Oct 31, 2016 11:06
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Warming to lithium-ion, Toyota charges up its battery optionsquote:Engineers at Toyota Motor Corp say they have tamed volatile lithium-ion battery technology, and can now safely pack more power at no significant extra cost, giving the Japanese automaker the option to enter the growing all-electric car market.
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Oct 31, 2016 13:15
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Do they say how much more power? E: rather, is that doubling of power for 2/3 the size relative to their previous tech, or Tesla's, or something else?
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Oct 31, 2016 14:16
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Subjunctive posted:Do they say how much more power? Probably a reworked deal with LG Chen or a Panasonic subsidiary. I highly doubt they are spending the money to produce and develop their iwn batteries in house.
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Oct 31, 2016 16:35
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Remember Fisker? They've just released a concept image of a new all-electric car they've got planned: https://www.wired.com/2016/10/henrik-fiskers-back-tesla-rival/ They claim they can achieve a range of 400 miles using some fancy graphene battery produced by a company called Nanotech Energy. They're also planning on showing off the actual car in mid-2017. How likely do you think it is that they'll succeed? Over the past couple years, researchers have found a number of potential solutions for mass-producing graphene, but putting it into proactice on an industrial scale (along with making actual batteries out of the graphene) is another matter altogether. Or, and they also claim they'll offer full autonomous driving - just as soon as they can find someone to produce the system.
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Nov 1, 2016 02:48
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I don't think "mass-producing" is a word that goes in a sentence with "Fisker." I think they make like 600 cars per year. The technology probably already exists to make that many graphene batteries per year at the sorts of prices that Fisker will be charging.
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Nov 1, 2016 02:57
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Sagebrush posted:I don't think "mass-producing" is a word that goes in a sentence with "Fisker." I think they make like 600 cars per year. The technology probably already exists to make that many graphene batteries per year at the sorts of prices that Fisker will be charging. The article mentioned that they want to eventually move on to making a more affordable car, like Tesla. Though if the technology existed to produce graphene batteries for 600 cars a year, scaling it up from there shouldn't be too much more of a challenge than figuring out how to commercially produce graphene batteries to begin with.
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Nov 1, 2016 03:49
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Cockmaster posted:How likely do you think it is that they'll succeed? Very unlikely. To their credit, they did have an actual car at some point and I guess they deserve some good karma after their troubles. But there's been so many CGI cars and empty promises from big and small carmakers the past years, nothing but an actual rolling hunk of hardware or at least a viable production concept from a major, is worth taking seriously.
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Nov 1, 2016 09:06
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Ola posted:Very unlikely. To their credit, they did have an actual car at some point and I guess they deserve some good karma after their troubles.  Content: My Volt's charge cord is full of ants. 
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Nov 1, 2016 12:48
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Cockmaster posted:Remember Fisker? They've just released a concept image of a new all-electric car they've got planned: I don't think the company's technology is a drop-in replacement for a lithium-ion battery. Their technology is a super-capacitor which I don't think is a technology for long-term storage of energy. I don't have a great first-hand understanding of the potential for their technology, but the company heavily uses one of those bad words, nano-technology (I call it the 'n-word'), and that alone makes me knee-jerk and say that the company probably doesn't have anything special. 'Nano-technology' has been the boy who cried wolf for the past 30 years. Companies who actually do what could be labeled as 'nano-technology', like chemical companies and integrated circuit manufacturing companies, don't heavily use the word.
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Nov 1, 2016 17:11
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Collateral Damage posted:It was about 5C so it's possible, but I had just taken it off the charger so the battery should have been warm. Hybrids will often run the internal combustion engine enough to keep the exhaust system, notably the catalytic converter, warm enough to do the reaction to reduce the pollutants of the exhaust. Plug-in hybrids will sometimes let you bypass this but it usually involves a mode locking the vehicle to speeds and accelerations that don't require the ICE to add power and sufficient battery charge that the ICE isn't needed to charge the battery.
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Nov 1, 2016 17:12
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Ah that makes sense, thanks.
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Nov 1, 2016 19:22
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silence_kit posted:I don't think the company's technology is a drop-in replacement for a lithium-ion battery. Their technology is a super-capacitor which I don't think is a technology for long-term storage of energy. There has also been research into using graphene to produce better lithium-ion batteries: http://spectrum.ieee.org/nanoclast/semiconductors/materials/potential-of-silicon-and-graphene-together-for-liion-electrodes-realized
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Nov 1, 2016 20:35
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ClassH posted:So far it has been great. We have little over 1000 miles on it and used around 1 gallon of gas. The all electric range is usually around 60 miles, which most days we put a dent into but don't drain completely. The ride is excellent, extremely quite and smooth, and the acceleration is pretty good since it has 297ft/lbs of torque. The biggest complaint is the headroom in the back is low but our kids are still small so that isn't an issue. Sounds good. Do you live in a part of the country where you've had to deal with cold weather yet? twerking on the railroad fucked around with this message at 11:01 on Nov 2, 2016 |
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Nov 2, 2016 09:30
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twerking on the railroad posted:Sounds good. Do you live in a part of the country where you've had to deal with cold weather yet? In Ohio but it has been mostly warm so far. The few days it has been cold I noticed a small range decrease but it wasn't much. We do preheat while it's still plugged into a 240v charger so that probably helps a lot. In general we get around 60 miles from the battery.
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Nov 3, 2016 14:21
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Updates on the paid model for Tesla superchargers. https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/blog/update-our-supercharging-program quote:For Teslas ordered after January 1, 2017, 400 kWh of free Supercharging credits (roughly 1,000 miles) will be included annually so that all owners can continue to enjoy free Supercharging during travel. Beyond that, there will be a small fee to Supercharge which will be charged incrementally and cost less than the price of filling up a comparable gas car. All cars will continue to come standard with the onboard hardware required for Supercharging.
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Nov 7, 2016 15:14
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Ola posted:Updates on the paid model for Tesla superchargers. A little surprised that they didn't keep the model for S, though I suppose S drivers tend to not be that price-sensitive. Does make me want to upgrade with more urgency though.
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Nov 7, 2016 15:23
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And boom, Toyota changes their tune after their execs no doubt have read this thread. http://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/Toyota-to-mass-produce-electric-vehicles quote:NAGOYA, Japan -- Toyota Motor intends to start mass-producing electric vehicles by 2020, hoping to expand its lineup of green automobiles beyond hybrid and fuel-cell cars.
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Nov 7, 2016 16:32
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I wish Chevy would put out some lease pricing info for the Bolt.
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Nov 7, 2016 16:57
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Anyone in this thread sold or traded-in an EV yet? My housing situation is changing, and is finally going to allow access to 220vac, which means I could get a stage II charger for the Volt. Thing is, I don't plan on keeping it more than two or so years, so I doubt I'd recoup the full value of the charge unit. Do dealers typically give you a couple dollars if you throw in the charger, or do they look at you funny and ask why there's an unrelated appliance in the trunk? (And then sell it for $800 to the new owner.)
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Nov 7, 2016 18:22
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Not sure it answers your question but I'm still looking at used volts, and I've never seen one that didn't include the charger.
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Nov 7, 2016 18:50
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Is leasing an option? Sounds like the perfect use case. And I haven't experienced it, but it seems like electric cars are depreciating at a faster rate than ICE cars just due to the fact that the technology is changing so quickly.
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Nov 7, 2016 18:53
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Internet Explorer posted:Is leasing an option? Sounds like the perfect use case. I think that might have a lot to do with customer apprehension in general. It's hard to get excited about buying a new car that will seemingly be overshadowed by a better/cheaper/longer range model in short order. Leasing is probably the best way to push electric as it is - takes the sting out of the big electric consumer worries like the massive initial cost and battery pack degradation/replacement.
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Nov 7, 2016 19:00
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MrYenko posted:Anyone in this thread sold or traded-in an EV yet? I had to sell a year-old P85D because I was moving, and took a 30K bath.
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Nov 7, 2016 19:23
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