Charging an Electric Car

[solardreamer]

Not a fair comparison, fly by wire and central communications
such as I worked on, used duplicated or even triplicated electronics.
Errors were detected and automatic cut over to good units made.
Equipment would be reported and restored before service affected.
I have not heard of such things in the car biz.

Someone else can disect the very latest IC and EV reliability, I am
only interested in the mission critical parts. Thoughts here are more
a comparison to older stuff. Bruce Roe

May not be a fair comparison but you just gave a great example of how adding more transistors actually improves system reliability. It's too simplistic to assume more transistors lead to lower system reliability in general.

[bcroe]

. And also, so it would seem, to not spend it. The not spend it option seems to have been mostly brainwashed out of our culture.

Yes. But like energy, a good way to have enough, is to avoid all the
ways money keeps leaking out of the budget. Without doubt that
was a big incentive in the final, solar PV fix for home energy here. The
77 Olds seen in front of the PV is another, running an only slightly
used car (bought for $4000) well past 300,000 miles and DIY all the
mechanical maintenance, is another. Avoid interest charges. Bruce Roe

[J.P.M.]

It is a free country, you get to spend your money any way you want.

And also, so it would seem, to not spend it. The not spend it option seems to have been mostly brainwashed out of our culture.

[Ward L]

As far as the complexity of EVs vs ICE cars.... Lets just assume the body, wheels, suspension, radio, oops, I mean the entertainment center, chips, circuit boards, etc, are all the same except for the ICE engine and the battery/motor. What is more complicated, an ICE or a battery and electric motor? How about that transmission? My Tesla doesn't have a transmission. It has a really sexy beveled gear with a 9:1 ratio. Seems pretty obvious an ICE is more complicated than a battery and electric motor. Throw in the transmission and boom, the ICE engine transmission is much more complicated than a sexy beveled gear. I have saved about $7k in reduced fuel costs with my solar panels producing electrons for my Tesla versus buying gasoline over the 4 years I have had my Tesla.

I applaud anyone who buys a car with cash and holds onto that car for as long as possible. I think it is sad how so many buy an expensive vehicle because they can make the monthly payments. Sad because when they reach retirement age they won't have saved enough money to retire in style. I don't mean to judge anyone. It is a free country, you get to spend your money any way you want.

[Ward L]

It is easy to miss many of the underlying points of the oil industry. When prices drop, the high-cost provider gets hurt the worst and they shut down, reducing supply and increasing prices. In 1970 there were about 250 refineries in the USA. Today there are about 135 refineries in the USA. Of course, the 135 refineries increased their throughput somewhat to make up for the closed refineries. But you can see how "supply" might have dropped to increase prices to the customer. I suppose my point is, as a casual customer buying gas and wondering why the price never drops, has no idea what is going on in the industry to cause prices to go up or down. The other variable that is hard to follow is inflation. I looked at one chart just now that says the price of gasoline is less today, adjusted for inflation, than it was in 1918. Who do thunk it?

[bcroe]

It seem you are implicitly assuming modern ICE cars have a lot fewer transistors than electric cars. Not sure that's valid. Modern ICE cars already have lots of transistors.

Your concerns remind me of the old criticism about fly-by-wire/drive-by-wire being less reliable. Perhaps true to some extent but the overall benefits have been generally proven to outweigh the drawbacks.

Not a fair comparison, fly by wire and central communications
such as I worked on, used duplicated or even triplicated electronics.
Errors were detected and automatic cut over to good units made.
Equipment would be reported and restored before service affected.
I have not heard of such things in the car biz.

Someone else can disect the very latest IC and EV reliability, I am
only interested in the mission critical parts. Thoughts here are more
a comparison to older stuff. Bruce Roe

[solardreamer]

I do not mean to exclude them, just point out that they are tiny
part of the device count in cars containing complex electronics.

I am not prepared to break out an analysis of probability for
different components on different designs, failing because of
wear out, hostile environment, or age. We have improved on
some (though the car MFRs are hardly motivated to delay your
next purchse), but added new complexity problems.

I see most pure mechanical stuff as just a matter of routine
maintenance, not so much sudden failures. Not so for
electronics. My cars carry spares for critical electronic parts.
I am sure, there is no silver bullet cure all, time will tell how it
plays out. Bruce Roe

It seem you are implicitly assuming modern ICE cars have a lot fewer transistors than electric cars. Not sure that's valid. Modern ICE cars already have lots of transistors.

Your concerns remind me of the old criticism about fly-by-wire/drive-by-wire being less reliable. Perhaps true to some extent but the overall benefits have been generally proven to outweigh the drawbacks.

[bcroe]

Why would moving/mechanical parts be excluded from system reliability assessment?

I do not mean to exclude them, just point out that they are tiny
part of the device count in cars containing complex electronics.

I am not prepared to break out an analysis of probability for
different components on different designs, failing because of
wear out, hostile environment, or age. We have improved on
some (though the car MFRs are hardly motivated to delay your
next purchse), but added new complexity problems.

I see most pure mechanical stuff as just a matter of routine
maintenance, not so much sudden failures. Not so for
electronics. My cars carry spares for critical electronic parts.
I am sure, there is no silver bullet cure all, time will tell how it
plays out. Bruce Roe

[solardreamer]

I did not base reliability on MOVING parts, but rather the electronics.
They have quite literally billions of transistors, with plenty of backup
wiring.

Why would moving/mechanical parts be excluded from system reliability assessment?

[SunEagle]

Sun Eagle: My greenie is the US Dollar. If what you say is true that oil companies set any price they want high or low, then why don't they price it even higher than now? Sure they are making a Billion dollars today, but why stop there. Let's make $ 1.5 Billion! Your belief would say no one will stop buying gas no matter how high they price it. At some point Mr. Big Oil will price it so high, even Sun Eagle decides to conserve a little and save some gas.... BINGO! You just implemented the supply vs demand curve. Don't like that example? Let's say you run a gas station and you decided to keep your prices low because you think the oil companies just charge too much for gas. So you are 5 cents under the market. Everyone rushes to your station and fills up. Oh ****, Mr. Low Price better order more gas! Calls up the terminal and says I need more gas right away and the terminal says to go fish, all their drivers are busy and can't deliver the load of fuel until tomorrow when Mr. Low Price was originally scheduled. Another point on the supply vs demand curve.

If a retail site prices their fuel too high for their customers, their volume slows down because their customers decide to buy somewhere else. In my area, Mobil seems to be the highest price gasoline around. People go to Mobil and pay the high price for several reasons. Maybe convivence, they have a Mobil credit card or maybe the station is never busy. The Mobil station is happy to sell a little less gas volume at a higher price. Then there is the ARCO station down the street with the price 10 cents lower. The station is packed and people go inside and buy beer too. The ARCO station makes 10% on the gas, but the 6-pack is marked up 100%. Costco happens to be the lowest price gasoline in my area. Costco has razor thin margins but the highest quality of gasoline as well. Why not buy Costco gas if you can? Because people hate waiting in line at Costco. Oh, the quality of the ARCO gas? It is the same as Mobil. Not that it matters much, but I say these things after 37 years of working for Mr. Big Oil. And yes, if we could charge more for gas and hold our volume, we would have.

I guess it is fruitless to make you understand what i am thinking. All I can do is try to tell you that 30 years ago gas stations seem to have had price wars where they would reduce the cost of a gallon by X cents to get more customers. Now it seems that they all raise the price to be the same and don't care if their competitor is charging what they are. IMO it is strange thinking and they no longer follow the price/demand curve that I was taught in my economics class back in the 70's.

Maybe you are correct and that the price of gas will come down if more people don't purchase it but then again I see nothing that indicates that will be the trend. Especially if you look at the price of gas in a state that has a lot of EV's compared to the price where there are more ICE vehicles.

Again what I think may be wrong but for right now I do not believe that purchasing less gas will drive the oil companies to lower their prices.

You can respond to this post but I am out of this thread and will no longer try to convince others what I believe.

[bcroe]

The electronics used for an EV powertrain and battery management are likely similar in complexity to the electronics used for a modern engine. A modern engine has electronics that are dealing with timing, fuel injection, emission control, etc.
And they have very high reliability. Much higher than the computers from 70s fuel injectors.

I expect the body panels will have rusted away on most EVs before they have electronics problems.


How is it different?
I take my foot off the gas pedal, and the car slows down because of engine braking or regenerative braking.
Either way it's only 2 wheels that are being slowed.
I need to slow quickly, so I step on the brake pedal, and the physical brakes are applied in both cases to all 4 wheels.
Still looks like the same deal to me.

The TH400 trans I have standardized on, has free wheeling clutches for
when you take your foot off the gas. There are a pair of friction bands
that engage when you pull the gear selector down, eliminating the free
wheeling, and giving you engine braking. So that is manually selected.
I am not sure about the top gear without more reserch.

Time is a killer of electronics, moisture eventually gets into any silicon
that does not have premium military components. That is the effect I
so often see, it is just a matter of time. Cosmic rays are a problem as
the geometry of transistors shrinks with very high density. I read one
projection that the lifetime might be 7 years. That may be wrong, but
the latest stuff is certainly more vulnerable. Anyway, something with
100 times the complexity will have a hard time being more reliable.

Rust is a problem, the biggest one I have. Most of the lines under my
cars eventually get replaced with rust resistant stainless, copper, of
copper-nickel. New cars could be built that way, I have not seen it yet.
Bruce Roe

[Ward L]

Sun Eagle: My greenie is the US Dollar. If what you say is true that oil companies set any price they want high or low, then why don't they price it even higher than now? Sure they are making a Billion dollars today, but why stop there. Let's make $ 1.5 Billion! Your belief would say no one will stop buying gas no matter how high they price it. At some point Mr. Big Oil will price it so high, even Sun Eagle decides to conserve a little and save some gas.... BINGO! You just implemented the supply vs demand curve. Don't like that example? Let's say you run a gas station and you decided to keep your prices low because you think the oil companies just charge too much for gas. So you are 5 cents under the market. Everyone rushes to your station and fills up. Oh ****, Mr. Low Price better order more gas! Calls up the terminal and says I need more gas right away and the terminal says to go fish, all their drivers are busy and can't deliver the load of fuel until tomorrow when Mr. Low Price was originally scheduled. Another point on the supply vs demand curve.

If a retail site prices their fuel too high for their customers, their volume slows down because their customers decide to buy somewhere else. In my area, Mobil seems to be the highest price gasoline around. People go to Mobil and pay the high price for several reasons. Maybe convivence, they have a Mobil credit card or maybe the station is never busy. The Mobil station is happy to sell a little less gas volume at a higher price. Then there is the ARCO station down the street with the price 10 cents lower. The station is packed and people go inside and buy beer too. The ARCO station makes 10% on the gas, but the 6-pack is marked up 100%. Costco happens to be the lowest price gasoline in my area. Costco has razor thin margins but the highest quality of gasoline as well. Why not buy Costco gas if you can? Because people hate waiting in line at Costco. Oh, the quality of the ARCO gas? It is the same as Mobil. Not that it matters much, but I say these things after 37 years of working for Mr. Big Oil. And yes, if we could charge more for gas and hold our volume, we would have.

[foo1bar]

I did not base reliability on MOVING parts, but rather the electronics.
They have quite literally billions of transistors, with plenty of backup
wiring. Those problems may not be much in the first years, but the
time will eventually come.

The electronics used for an EV powertrain and battery management are likely similar in complexity to the electronics used for a modern engine. A modern engine has electronics that are dealing with timing, fuel injection, emission control, etc.
And they have very high reliability. Much higher than the computers from 70s fuel injectors.

I expect the body panels will have rusted away on most EVs before they have electronics problems.

Manual engine braking is fine, you chose when to do it. Seems to me
regenerative braking is a bad idea on a 2 wheel drive car.

How is it different?
I take my foot off the gas pedal, and the car slows down because of engine braking or regenerative braking.
Either way it's only 2 wheels that are being slowed.
I need to slow quickly, so I step on the brake pedal, and the physical brakes are applied in both cases to all 4 wheels.
Still looks like the same deal to me.

[bcroe]

What do you mean by they are more complex than what came before them?
The complexity of a Tesla Model 3 is IMO less complex than a Honda Civic. It has fewer moving parts and less things that need to be lubricated.


The data that's been seen so far from small EV fleets indicates that the number of days in the shop for EV's is smaller, and the
service costs are less. Tesloop is one small fleet owner that's shared their data on how much it costs them for maintenance and how many days their vehicles are in the shop for fairly high mileage vehicles (they have multiple cars at 300K+ miles and some close to 500K )

Some are 4 wheel, some are 2 wheel.
However all 4 wheels still have brakes.
So they're not any different than ICE vehicles. I'll often use engine braking in my car, even in poor conditions. And that would be very similar to the regenerative braking of an EV.


I think they've reached the point where most of the US population can afford an EV.
Median US income (half make more, half make less) is $67,571 for 2020 (most recent data I found)
Used EVs can be found for $10k.
A new Nissan Leaf can be bought for $28k.
So they are definitely affordable for most of the US population.

10 years ago, they were much less affordable, but their prices have been coming down.

I did not base reliability on MOVING parts, but rather the electronics.
They have quite literally billions of transistors, with plenty of backup
wiring. Those problems may not be much in the first years, but the
time will eventually come. And by then the factory will not be supporting
that older models. I am already dealing with this, fixing extremely simple
(by comparison) computers for 70s Cadillac fuel injection. I have fixed
them from 18 countries.

Days in the shop means it is too difficult for me to fix myself. The more
complex the car, the less likely I can fix it. I started rebuilding my
transmissions in 1985.

Manual engine braking is fine, you chose when to do it. Seems to me
regenerative braking is a bad idea on a 2 wheel drive car.

Might be interesting to see what fraction of the population actually
can afford anything but used cars. Only recently did I feel new
were affordable to me. Bruce Roe

[foo1bar]

The jury is still out on long term EV ownership. But they are
more complex than what came before them, which tends toward
more frequent and complex failures. Cars did steadily improve
in reliability and elegant design. IC cars can last too, there is a
Honda here now needing me to replace the clutch, after 459,000
miles.

What do you mean by they are more complex than what came before them?
The complexity of a Tesla Model 3 is IMO less complex than a Honda Civic. It has fewer moving parts and less things that need to be lubricated.
Will we see EVs commonly at 100K+ - Yes. In fact, you can buy used vehicles with 100k+ miles now.
Will they be more or less common to hit the 460k mark than ICE vehicles? Too soon to know for sure I think. But so far it looks like EVs are more likely to last for 400k+ miles than similar ICE cars.

The data that's been seen so far from small EV fleets indicates that the number of days in the shop for EV's is smaller, and the service costs are less. Tesloop is one small fleet owner that's shared their data on how much it costs them for maintenance and how many days their vehicles are in the shop for fairly high mileage vehicles (they have multiple cars at 300K+ miles and some close to 500K )

Are the EVs 4 wheel drive? Otherwise, regenerative braking will
only be applied to 2 wheels, not a good thing esp in poor conditions.

Some are 4 wheel, some are 2 wheel.
However all 4 wheels still have brakes.
So they're not any different than ICE vehicles. I'll often use engine braking in my car, even in poor conditions. And that would be very similar to the regenerative braking of an EV.

At the moment much of the population cannot afford an EV, and the
grid could not support a complete conversion, so it will be a while to
see how it all plays out. Bruce Roe

I think they've reached the point where most of the US population can afford an EV.
Median US income (half make more, half make less) is $67,571 for 2020 (most recent data I found)
Used EVs can be found for $10k.
A new Nissan Leaf can be bought for $28k.
So they are definitely affordable for most of the US population.

10 years ago, they were much less affordable, but their prices have been coming down.