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I'm surprised I'm not seeing more about the Mach-E. I figured there'd be more hype than there currently is
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Sep 23, 2020 17:59
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BabelFish posted:Very late, but I wanted to say thanks for bringing this up when you did. We'd been looking at electrics to replace my wife's aging Corolla when it finally died, and the Kona had been high on our lists. Test drove one from the same dealer (they're the only one in the state who had any, as I understand they sold out of them in two weeks) and she fell in love with it immediately. Congrats! My Kona has been fantastic, I'm about to top 800 miles since I bought it, no issues. What trim did you get? Technology Connections did a video on EVSE that I found informative, as a stupid newbie to EVs I had no idea they were that simple. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMxB7zA-e4Y
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Sep 23, 2020 18:11
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Ola posted:But you can get that by just adding 16% more battery of the current tech, so it's unclear if they mean for the same price, weight, volume or whatever. I would assume they're talking about for the same weight and/or volume, what with that being the primary focus of EV battery R&D over the past decade.
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Sep 23, 2020 18:25
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Preorder site is up for those who care. I tossed one in just in case I need to get a car before next fall
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Sep 23, 2020 18:43
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PIZZA.BAT posted:I'm surprised I'm not seeing more about the Mach-E. I figured there'd be more hype than there currently is Honestly I think we're at a point where Ford has released everything they're going to on the car, and we are just waiting for it to hit the market. There hasn't really been much news on it, and the vast majority of Mach Es are going to Europe anyway.
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Sep 23, 2020 18:52
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I reserved an id4. Excited about it. 250 does what it needs to and is 25 miles more than my personal comfort level on range anxiety. Doing awd and waiting until mid 2021 though.
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Sep 23, 2020 19:00
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knox_harrington posted:I have a hard time telling how plausible this stuff is, what do you think given you are qualified in this area? While trying to avoid Musk chat, a number of people in lithium mining and batteries had "the realization"* on Twitter yesterday, but a lot of that may be due to their lithium mining plans and not the actual battery technology. I'm just starting a Webinar that's going to go over their battery claims, we'll see what they had to say. * When someone who is knowledgeable in an industry/technology hears Musk talk about that industry/technology and realizes he has no idea what he's talking about
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Sep 23, 2020 19:02
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good Lord that configurator is bad, how do you not have that ready to roll
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Sep 23, 2020 19:03
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:good Lord that configurator is bad, how do you not have that ready to roll I mean it wasnt even up until like 3 hours after the event thing
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Sep 23, 2020 19:08
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McStephenson posted:I reserved an id4. Excited about it. 250 does what it needs to and is 25 miles more than my personal comfort level on range anxiety. Same. Put a reservation down on an AWD model. Going to likely be between that, the XC40 electric or the Ariya for our next car.
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Sep 23, 2020 19:48
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YOLOsubmarine posted:Same. Put a reservation down on an AWD model. Going to likely be between that, the XC40 electric or the Ariya for our next car. Those are the three we are looking at too: we have a gen 1 leaf and it is... fine. If I can not Nissan then I’m going to not Nissan. I love volvos but I’m worried the price point for the xc40 is too high for us. Id4 meets what I want and the knowledge that I know service will be a bit more typical. Edit: I’d say I’d do the Mach e but... ehhhhhhhhhhhh the price and I trust Ford dealers as far as I can throw them.
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Sep 23, 2020 20:17
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Westy543 posted:Honestly I rather look at things like percent range increases and things like that, they broke them down by category. Tesla has been steadily increasing in efficiency yearly, so I think it's possible, but it may not be on their projected timeline, scaling up is a motherfucker. Things like 6x more energy dense seem like bullshit to me, which is why I didn't include them in my summary. However several battery manufacturers have halved the price of lithium ion already from a few years ago, and are approaching sub $100/kWh pack prices already. Rumor is Northvolt is already there for Volkswagen. Their total range increases and such are a combination of a few different factors, so really it just comes down to implementation. That's not that impressive compared to Kona/Niro EV's ... I was hoping for more range.
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Sep 23, 2020 20:24
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VideoGameVet posted:That's not that impressive compared to Kona/Niro EV's ... I was hoping for more range. The German site says 225 - 325 miles. https://www.volkswagen.de/de/modelle-und-konfigurator/id4.html Lower kWh model? Anti Euro EPA? Underpromise, overdeliver?
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Sep 23, 2020 20:32
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McStephenson posted:Those are the three we are looking at too: we have a gen 1 leaf and it is... fine. If I can not Nissan then I’m going to not Nissan. Ah yes, better to go with the always trustworthy VW.
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Sep 23, 2020 20:38
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Here's my summary of the Benchmark Intelligence webinar on Tesla's battery day. Overall they were positive on the downstream improvements, very suspect on the upstream improvements. They thought the physical changes (new pack format, going tabless) to the batteries were of much greater importance than the chemical changes, and were very positive on those developments. "Big maybes" on the dry electrode process and silicon anodes, and "red flags" on Tesla's lithium clay mining in Nevada and attempting to go nickel free in batteries. My notes I took cleaned up just enough to post: Initial thoughts: Guy #1: downstream plans make sense, upstream plans generate more questions than answers Guy #2: what they set out to achieve is impressive, and if it works out it will be impressive, but thinks moving further upstream is going to be hard. A lot of the ideas discussed have been looked at by the industry before and were dismissed. Thinks it is unlikely to happen on their timeframe. Guy #3 former Tesla battery guy (left 16 months ago) - all the projects discussed on battery day had been in process when he left. These have been long term plans. Took years to get to these announcements, will take years to get these technologies to play out. Has brain damage because he just said Tesla is a battery and software company, not a car company. Positives - focused on right metrics (range); transparency regarding cobalt supply chain is becoming a big issue; going cell to pack - mostly mechanical process, will further reduce costs. Open questions - the whole event was too high level; timelines as promised were "certainly interesting to say the least"; terrafactory at a smaller footprint than the gigafactory - what is the path to get there? not enough details to evaluate; doesn't believe they'll by recycling batteries in 10 years; cathode discussion raised a lot of questions/concerns - doesn't believe them; doesn't believe they can build a complete vertical integration in 10 years; came out of the presentation confused about their methods and/or plans to get to their stated goals. Thinks lithium ion batteries are here to stay based on this presentation, not a huge push to some alternative. Effects of presentation will reverberate across supply chain and affect other battery manufacturers. Future is less based on Tesla's promises and more based on inherent limitations of lithium mining and other factors. Dry electrode process Sounded like it wasn't particularly reliable / consistent. Going to be very challenging to pull off, but would be huge benefit if they can. Seems skeptical this will ever get delivered, but it's critical to scaling down the battery plants and the CapEx reductions, so this is on the critical path to their planned reduction in costs. ESG benefits too because nasty chemicals. Tesla producing 3TWh of batteries in 2030 Currently all 160+ battery factories on the planet combined produce 2.7TWh/year (not sure if this is currently or projected for 2030 actually), supply chain issues alone made them very suspect of Tesla reaching this goal. Lithium section Tesla guy talking: thought this was the most confusing section of Tesla's presentation. Thinks Tesla's statement that Nevada has enough lithium for all of Tesla was quite damaging to their credibility and really misstates the difficulty of mining. Tesla just introduced 50 projects, no CapEx to cover all of these. A lot of discussion of elimination of steps of the mining process - obviously lower costs, but Tesla didn't say how these steps would be eliminated. Thought the NaCl discussion with regards to lithium mining was ridiculous and opened up a large can of worms in terms of criticism. Supply chain issues - if Tesla actually can mine their own lithium, will largest lithium suppliers still want to work with them. Other guy: by 2023 to 2027 thinks many of the suppliers in the lithium market face structural issues (not sure why - follow up on this). Says multi-billion dollar lithium companies work very hard to add 10% capacity. Laughs all around at Tesla doing such a huge increase in supply with minimal CapEx. "Disservice to the industry" - presentation was too geared for retail investors and drastically oversimplified the whole chain of lithium mining -> batteries. Nickel "Disservice to the nickel supply chain as well" - takes issue with Musk's claim of talking to the nickel CEOs and saying they need to increase production - not how this works. Need to guarantee a price of nickel higher than the current price for the suppliers to justify CapEx to build new mines, this was all not discussed. Cathodes Tesla claims no need for a sulfate to make a cathode - but no detail, very skeptical this is possible. Thinks in reality there is still a lot of work to do in developing this, seems unlikely Tesla figured this out while LG, CATL, etc all working on making their process cheaper. Anodes Tesla gave the impression the new anodes would be 100% silicon - can't be accurate. Would still have to be majority graphite. Talked to everyone in the anode industry and no one buys it. New process is not viable in the short term. Silicon anodes been around since 1990, hasn't been commercially viable yet to have 100% silicon, seems extremely unlikely to work out. Silicon anodes are "active in some way" even when car is just sitting, leads to breakdown of the anode. Something about silicon swelling when charged and problems fitting that in a pack in the car? Does not believe 10x reduction in costs because no details. Very skeptical. More questions than answers. 250k tons of anode material this year - synthetic graphite prices at historic lows, took years for supply chain to get to this point, if you tried to scale up to make silicon the dominant material in the anode it would take years to expand the supply chain sufficiently. Q&A Why is Musk so against cobalt: raw material is very expensive, prices volatile. Current Tesla batteries are low cobalt in the cathode. Lot of ESG issues associated with using cobalt (child labor, forced labor, etc). As you reduce the cobalt, you decrease the stability. Provides the structure for the cathode. When you take cobalt out, manganese doesn't want to sit in the crystal structure, degrades faster. Thinks their move to cobalt free cathodes is aspirational, not developed. How many of Tesla's announcements are ready to go vs a product roadmap: thinks most of these gains will be incremental, not revolutionary. Upstream is by far the biggest question. 3TWh of cells by 2030: implied nickel demand for Tesla alone - 1.15 million tons (based on assumptions that they develop lower nickel batteries that may not be possible). Nickel market in 2020 is 2.3 million tons. By 2030, 4+ million tons but additional supply will be at higher CapEx. If Tesla recycled every car battery they sold this year (10 year lifespan of battery) they'd have 20k tons of nickel. Nickel pricing will be a big problem.
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Sep 23, 2020 21:30
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Thanks for that summary!
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Sep 23, 2020 21:39
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So it's been a month since I started my weekly Carlsbad->Malibu commute (about 110 miles each way with the Niro and then 30 more just getting around town). Some observations on charging in LA: 1. Charge Point is only useful if you leave the car parked for some time (it's level 2). It's running about $0.67/kwh. Volta (free) charges just as fast. 2. Evgo is cool. Charges the Niro at over 50kw, runs only $0.40/kWh. But good luck finding one thats open. Last night I ended up at a Sprouts on Brea that had 4 of them, but the open one was unable to connect to their servers. I ordered the card in case that happens again. 3. At home I can (in theory) charge all 64kwh for $4.54, I'm paying 7.1¢/kWh (the lower rate I previously quoted was when I got some carbon credits). Problem is I rent a duplex and apparently they sent each phase to each unit and the 6-20 plug is 110v. Fixing that (sub panel) would run $1500 (Welcome to La Cost-You) BUT since I don't drive that much around home, the slow charge makes sense, ditto for the office parking garage. 4. No joy on the charge point in the apartment garage. Since that ends in a few months (moving it) it doesn't pay to spend $$$ on the annual charge to access it. The apartment management also disconnected the 110v socket I had discovered. Nice. I'm reluctant to drive home with just 130 miles left of range so I add charge at the office and where I can find a spare charger. Having the folding bike makes it easy to grab breakfast while the Evgo (or Volta if that's taken) charges the car. I'm here from Tuesday thru Thursday most weeks and use the bike on Wednesday to get from the apartment to the office (the beach bike path is great). I'm glad I went for the Niro instead of the Ionic. That 60 to 80 more miles of range is a big deal. I love the car, just have to find a bike rack that works with it and doesn't cost me when I turn in the lease. May go for a roof rack.
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Sep 23, 2020 21:46
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VideoGameVet posted:I love the car, just have to find a bike rack that works with it and doesn't cost me when I turn in the lease. May go for a roof rack. just pick up a seasucker rack, they work great and can go on any car you buy.
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Sep 23, 2020 21:57
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That sounds like a reasonable summation of the Tesla battery event. It was overall a pretty interesting presentation. Less Musk and more of the main engineer. The individual claims were not too outlandish and the overall impact when combined was significant. Definitely the lithium clay mining bit was the point when my bullshit detector was really firing. It seemed like magical thinking. But the factory and form factor stuff all looked real. The timelines will be wrong but still it seemed real. The silicon part was very sketchy and the dry rolling clearly is difficult to get good yields. They were open about that last point at least. Overall it was pretty good.
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Sep 23, 2020 22:14
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That's a fantastic summary, thank you for posting that. I agree with pretty much all of those interpretations. EV adjacent news, but the governor of California just issued an executive order to the California Air Resource Board to set guidelines and regulations to prohibit the sale of new internal combustion engine vehicles after 2035. https://www.reuters.com/article/aut...5-idUSL2N2GK1EF gently caress yeah. I'm sure the final legislation will have exemptions and finesse bullshit, it's still CARB, but god this was sorely needed to put into writing in the United States.
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Sep 23, 2020 22:33
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If you're a Ford dealer you're going to make an absolute killing selling F-150s at 2x MSRP in 2034
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Sep 23, 2020 23:27
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kill me now posted:just pick up a seasucker rack, they work great and can go on any car you buy. That's a better deal than the other vacuum mounts and it looks like it will work with the recumbent too. Thanks.
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Sep 23, 2020 23:34
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Murkyhumor posted:Congrats! My Kona has been fantastic, I'm about to top 800 miles since I bought it, no issues. What trim did you get? Had to get a new breaker box put in last year for unrelated reasons, so I had them add a 14-50 socket with it's own dedicated 240w/40a circuit at the same time. Went with a ClipperCreek HCS-40P and it's worked fine so far, one hell of a clunk when it starts charging but apparently that's both normal and disturbing enough that it's the second question on their technical support page. Of course the electrician had to cut a stud in half to get the wiring correct, so I was forced to screw a plank of plywood into neighboring studs to give the charger something to mount to:  Edit: As a side note, you can find home chargers where the 14-50 plugs have longer cables, but if they're over one foot long they don't conform to some fire codes. Buy at your own risk. BabelFish fucked around with this message at 02:56 on Sep 24, 2020 |
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Sep 24, 2020 02:08
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quote:Hi M, the AWD version of our ID.4 will have the same size battery as the RWD version, and there wouldn't be an increased range. Also, a heat pump is not included in US-spec models, but I recommend working with your local VW dealer to discuss possible aftermarket options. -KO
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Sep 24, 2020 06:08
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From what I was reading on Reddit, it sounds like a decent number of features are missing from the European ID.4 version. Some for regulatory reasons, some for ???? reasons.
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Sep 24, 2020 06:16
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Westy543 posted:From what I was reading on Reddit, it sounds like a decent number of features are missing from the European ID.4 version. Some for regulatory reasons, some for ???? reasons. We aren't actually missing that much for the base 1st model as far as I know--things like the hud and matrix led headlamps were only on the 1st max afaik. They're probably trying to trim costs wherever they can, but it's really annoying that they cut the heat pump since that actually affects range in the winter
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Sep 24, 2020 06:24
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CAT INTERCEPTOR posted:(still want to see video!) Good news! The driver put it on their YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBjp91zqnn8
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Sep 24, 2020 16:18
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I'm in Ohio, and I have a plate transfer question. Earlier this year I renewed the plates on my Volt for five years so I could avoid our crazy EV tax for a bit. Now that I'm thinking of buying a Bolt, I should just be able to pay the transfer fee right and keep the same registration right? Or am I missing something?
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Sep 24, 2020 18:57
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My Spark EV's making some strange noises. Can you help solve the mystery? We went to go to the store last night, and when we got in the car we heard a sound. I thought I hit my foot on the side of the car as I was getting in, though it was louder than I'd expect for something like that. My wife thought she opened the door too wide and hit our other car. Since we both thought we caused it, maybe the sound came from somewhere in the middle? Ok, weird, but whatever. We go to back out of the garage, and now I'm hearing a scraping sound. I figured I was dragging something that was on the garage floor, so I pulled back into the garage and took a look. Nothing under the car. Ok, weird, but whatever. I pull out all the way, sound is still there and start driving down the street. Now that there's forward motion, instead of a dragging sound, it's more like something is getting hit periodically. At this point we turned around and switched out for our other car. I inspected the wheel wells and looked under the car and don't see anything that looks out of place. Nothing hanging around. I looked under the hood and honestly don't know much of what I'm looking at in there, but there weren't any mangled squirrels or anything that looked out of place. The last time we drove it was last Friday, so almost a week ago. It was raining hard and some of the puddles we drove through were deeper than we'd expected. Only mentioning for completeness, the car made it home fine. No error messages on the screen. Does this sound like anything obvious? I'm hoping to avoid taking it to a dealer for exploratory diagnostics.
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Sep 24, 2020 19:22
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Fun. So, it makes noise when you get in (like a thunk noise) and when you drive (backward, like a scraping noise, forward, thumping?). Did you look under it with someone sitting in it? I'd try to locate the sounds while someone gets in and out of the car first - it's likely finding one will illuminate the other, and it's easier to troubleshoot that one. Have your wife get in and out of the car, find where the sound is coming from while she does so.
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Sep 24, 2020 19:42
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I'm gonna guess the water you drove through popped loose one of the front inner wheel well liners and it's contacting the back of the wheel/a-arm/CV axle.
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Sep 24, 2020 21:00
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angryrobots posted:I'm gonna guess the water you drove through popped loose one of the front inner wheel well liners and it's contacting the back of the wheel/a-arm/CV axle. I agree that it's something like this. The car has a lot of aero panels underneath so it could also be one of those. I'm guessing as you loaded up the suspension getting in to the car that something came in to contact with the part that got lose, making the noise.
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Sep 24, 2020 21:15
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Thanks for the good guesses. I pressed all the wheel well liners and everything seems sturdy. The undercarriage panels checked out as well. Work was pretty busy today, but maybe tomorrow or sometime this weekend I'll be able to have my wife drive slowly so I can pinpoint the source of the sound.
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Sep 25, 2020 04:44
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Cancelbot posted:e-Niro havers; how is the trunk space? My golf is "380 litres" and the Niro is "450 litres" but does that translate into useful space, i.e. the cables don't take up those 70 extra litres? My kids bikes are 14" and 16" and I can just about get one in the trunk of the golf and one over a folded seat and drive 3-up. I'd like it to be less lovely to get them in & out, however I will probably get a carrier and render this moot in a month. My e-Niro hasn't arrived yet so I don't have first hand experience of fitting stuff in but I did find this website for disabled people that provides a bunch of useful car measurements the manufacturers don't make easy to find. It might help. e-Niro: https://www.ridc.org.uk/features-reviews/out-and-about/choosing-car/car/e-niro-64-kwh-5dr-saloon-2019 Golf Hatch: https://www.ridc.org.uk/features-reviews/out-and-about/choosing-car/car/golf-20-5dr-hatch-2020
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Sep 25, 2020 16:35
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 Went ahead and bought the Bolt. Loved it during the test drive, it feels way quicker than it should be. I was used to EV acceleration from my Volt but this higher power motor is neat. Seats were perfectly fine. Not the most comfy I guess but perfectly ok. I'm very happy with it and even happier to finally ditch the last bit of gasoline in my house
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Sep 26, 2020 02:02
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Nice! I think that car looks best in blue.
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Sep 26, 2020 02:08
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Grrr... so tempted. They have definitely changed the seats though at some point.. I sat in one of the first production 2017s at a Drive Electric event, and it was terrible. But the 2018 I drove (built late 2017) was different. At least I didn't feel like I was going to fall off it.
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Sep 26, 2020 02:19
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stevewm posted:Grrr... so tempted. The dealer mentioned this too. He didn't mention a specific year but they were apparently narrower
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Sep 26, 2020 02:22
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Oh poo poo!! Congrats.  Enjoy your car!In EV news: ID.4 first edition sold-out in the US in a day, and the Polestar Precept is going to production. Concept: 
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Sep 26, 2020 08:03
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That looks pretty good. There seems to be lots of competition in the premium 4-door space, it feels like Tesla will need a Model S update to stay competitive.
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Sep 26, 2020 10:32
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