[mousepad]

He's talking about normal degradation of battery capacity. Nothing to do with fast charge.
And you're right Lucky. I've got 2 neighbors who own toyota prius. And after a couple of years the battery was degraded such that it was only good for maybe pulling out of a driveway before the engine had to kick in. Who knows if that's normal. Maybe the harsh winters did it.

It's perfectly normal for hybrids to run the engine. Doesn't mean the battery is degraded.

Dude, cut me some slack here, will you? Both of my neighbors report that when the car was NEW. The battery lasted way LONGER. They could drive half way to work before the engine kicked in. Nowadays the battery lasts a few miles down the road.

Here's some blurp about battery ageing. Ever noticed that your 5 year old laptop barely holds a charge anymore?
https://batteryuniversity.com/article/b ... vehicle-ev

[kublikhan]

Dude, cut me some slack here, will you? Both of my neighbors report that when the car was NEW. The battery lasted way LONGER. They could drive half way to work before the engine kicked in. Nowadays the battery lasts a few miles down the road.

Here's some blurp about battery ageing. Ever noticed that your 5 year old laptop barely holds a charge anymore?
https://batteryuniversity.com/article/b ... vehicle-ev

I would have to know the specifics. Are they getting half the range they did before? A third? They could try taking it in for service. If it is a bad battery, it should be covered under warranty. I believe Toyota warrants 70% battery life at up to 100,000 or 150,000 miles:

Hybrid Battery Warranty
10 Years / 150,000 Miles
whichever comes first *

EV Drive Components Warranty
8 Years / 100,000 Miles
whichever comes first *

Includes Traction Battery remaining below 70% of original capacity, Transaxle, Inverter with Converter

All-Electric and Hybrid Battery Warranty

[mousepad]

I would have to know the specifics.

No, you don't need the specifics. Fact is, ALL batteries degrade over time. Some more, some less.
Lucky's point above is that a hybrid, over time, will become a normal gas car, lugging around a heavy and dead battery, gradually becoming less and less environmentally "friendly", and more an more costly. It then obviously becomes a question of how clean and affordable such a car is over it's degrading lifetime.

[kublikhan]

No, you don't need the specifics. Fact is, ALL batteries degrade over time. Some more, some less.
Lucky's point above is that a hybrid, over time, will become a normal gas car, lugging around a heavy and dead battery, gradually becoming less and less environmentally "friendly", and more an more costly. It then obviously becomes a question of how clean and affordable such a car is over it's degrading lifetime.

Numerous studies have already asked this question. And the answer was hybrids are more environmentally friendly, even after factoring in the production of the battery.

According to an in-depth study by the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory, hybrid cars do, in fact, require more energy to produce than conventional cars, emitting more greenhouse gases and burning more fossil fuels during the manufacturing process. The production of hybrid batteries, in particular, requires much more energy than producing a standard car battery and results in higher emission levels of gases like sulfur oxide [source: Burnham et al].

But do the environmental impacts of hybrid vehicle production outweigh the long-term benefits of driving a cleaner running automobile? That answer is a resounding "no." If you drive both a conventional and hybrid car for 160,000 miles (257,495 kilometers), the conventional vehicle requires far more energy to operate and emits far more greenhouse gases over its lifetime, significantly canceling out any imbalance during the production stage.

Does hybrid car production waste offset hybrid benefits?

Also, the article below addressed the performance of hybrids with batteries that have had dramatic degradation. Surprisingly, they still got pretty good mpg. In their example, the Prius battery had degraded down to 39% of it's original charge. The car only lost 3.2 mpg. That's pretty good for a car that originally got over 50 mpg.

At 256,000km (160,000 miles), the two Honda Civic vehicles had 68% capacity, the Insight had 85% and the Prius had 39%. The capacity fade did not affect the fuel efficiency. The Insight showed a 1.2mpg (0.12L/km) decrease in fuel economy during the test, while the Prius reduced the fuel efficiency by 3.2mpg (0.33L/km).

BU-1002a: Hybrid Electric Vehicles and the Battery

[theluckycountry]

I would have to know the specifics.

No, you don't need the specifics. Fact is, ALL batteries degrade over time. Some more, some less.
Lucky's point above is that a hybrid, over time, will become a normal gas car, lugging around a heavy and dead battery, gradually becoming less and less environmentally "friendly", and more an more costly. It then obviously becomes a question of how clean and affordable such a car is over it's degrading lifetime.

Well I never even thought of the dead weight aspect but of course you're right, it's just another factor to consider. EV fanboys act as if the lipos in these cars are something special, but they are basically what's in their laptop or ipad and we all know the curve. Quoting manufacturer warranties is meaningless unless you have a valid track record to prove they are honored and not wheedled out of and I have plenty of experience with that. This isn't the 1970's, were living in it's an age now of total corporate greed. Hybrids typically use NiMH batteries though the plugin hybrid cars use lipo. More on that interesting point later.

Now here's an interesting story...
Is Toyota The Next Tesla? https://realinvestmentadvice.com/is-toy ... ext-tesla/

The article discusses the value of the corporations and then goes into the details of hybrid Versus EV.

...Might hybrids be the preferred technology until a more efficient battery evolves? Will EV competition from established and new auto manufacturers upend Tesla’s market share? Maybe most critical, could Toyota, not Tesla, be at the forefront of a significant technological advance for automobiles?

Well we are already seeing that in the choices of consumers but interestingly when they give the statistics for sales they caveat it with

This discussion of hybrid automobiles does not refer to models with gas engines and battery packs that can be plugged into a power source.

I assume that definition is in most of the statistics and makes the market share of the EV larger by proportion. How much larger is another matter and certainly would effect kubs boasts about 1000,000 EV's sold last year. But of course if it has a battery in it he's happy to classify it EV, even if has a tank full of gasoline as well.

[theluckycountry]

Lawsuit says Tesla fails to honor battery warranties for used vehicles

July 25, 2019

Electric car maker Tesla has been hit with a proposed class action accusing it of misleading thousands of purchasers of used Model S and Model X vehicles by failing to disclose results of inspections or honor all warranties for their batteries

. https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL2N24P1KQ/

Obviously more than one car for a class action.

Of course we all remember
Tesla hit by lawsuit claiming thousands of owners lost battery capacity after software update
Naturally! Lipos last longer if you don't fully charge them

[kublikhan]

The article discusses the value of the corporations and then goes into the details of hybrid Versus EV.

...Might hybrids be the preferred technology until a more efficient battery evolves? Will EV competition from established and new auto manufacturers upend Tesla’s market share? Maybe most critical, could Toyota, not Tesla, be at the forefront of a significant technological advance for automobiles?

I would love it if Toyota was at the forefront of the technological advance for automobiles. I trust the reliability of a Toyota a hell of a lot more than a Tesla. I am not married to any technology and will get anything that works for me: ICE, EV, hybrid, or other.

This discussion of hybrid automobiles does not refer to models with gas engines and battery packs that can be plugged into a power source.

I assume that definition is in most of the statistics and makes the market share of the EV larger by proportion. How much larger is another matter and certainly would effect kubs boasts about 1000,000 EV's sold last year. But of course if it has a battery in it he's happy to classify it EV, even if has a tank full of gasoline as well.

I just call those PHEV. Unlike you I don't dumb it down to 2 classifications of automobiles: ICE and EV. If a particular source combines PHEV and BEV together, they usually breakdown the numbers in that article as well. So you can very easily see how many BEV or PHEV were sold instead of whining about what category PHEV belongs to. However my most recent post with EV sales numbers was from last month not last year. And the data it included was for BEVs only(not including PHEVs). Personally I am interested to see how all of these technologies work out: BEV, PHEV, hybrids, hydrogen fuel cell, etc. So if I post data on PHEV and some article called it EV, feel free to ignore it. No need to get your panties in a twist screaming it's not a real EV.

[ralfy]

ICEVs are already expensive, hybrids more so.

Meanwhile,

"Visualizing The Future Demand For Battery Minerals"

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/sp/vis ... -minerals/

[theluckycountry]

ICEVs are already expensive, hybrids more so.

Oh yes, how could they not be? You're basically paying for two engines and a battery pack, two different drive systems. The people buying these are not necessarily rich, actually rich people wouldn't touch them with a barge-pole, no they are what's left of the middle-class, a niche group that's fast disappearing. I was surprised to see Sprott selling energy transition ETF's on that article though, I though they were smarter than that, or more honest? They are big Gold ETF runners... On following that link I see they are flogging investment in "Critical minerals" Probably not a bad play regardless of the EV collapse.

The business of mineral scarcity is real and some will pin hopes on Na batteries but these are well below the energy density of lipos and an unproven technology as far as cars go. How much extra weight to get the same power?

According to a linkedin article cited at bottom Oct 1, 2023

Sodium-ion batteries have a lower voltage (2.5V) than lithium-ion batteries (3.7V), which means they may not be suitable for high-power applications that require a lot of energy to be delivered quickly.

Lower voltage per cell = more cells per unit power, Power=Volts x Amps, P=V * I. There are some applications for the batteries now but no one is putting them in cars aside from some testing. Of course kub believes that because you can buy them off the shelf today cars will be running them tomorrow. That's nuclear fusion thinking, and who takes that seriously anymore outside of a bunch of toads in white jackets.

Mar 2023

Sharing a similar working principle to Li-ion batteries, the commercial Na-ion batteries exhibit competitive low-cost advantages and exceptional electrochemical properties, which can go from 80% charge in 15 min and maintain 90% of its nameplate capacity at −20°C.11,12,13 However, the reported commercial Na-ion batteries still suffered from the limited energy densities of 160 Wh kg−1, which is only 50%-80% of that of commercial Li-ion batteries, hindering their practical applications in the large-scale energy storage market.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9950943/

The EV was a great idea! It make Musk, wall street, and the Banks a fortune, and for a decade took people's focus off the most critical dilemma facing us, the depletion of Oil. That's why the governments backed it of course, it let them avoid the messy business of facing a problem with no solution. They just pointed to the EV and windmills as though they would save Western society from the nasty contraction in lifestyles we are all facing anyway. One day kub will wake up to that reality as everyone else on the forum clearly has. It will be too late then though if he's invested in this crap.


https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/current- ... jay-tharad

Wanted! Method to replace oil and coal in wind turbine supply chains

[theluckycountry]

Some Brain Food

The circular economy and an endless recycling of materials is an absurd proposal, and not only from a technical perspective; the very idea of a “sustainable” high tech society is in a direct conflict with the laws of physics.

...what about new life, or for that matter manufacturing? Aren’t these processes supposed to decrease entropy by creating a highly structured, well organized system like a beautiful pine tree or a nice and shiny solar panel? Indeed, both of these processes convert highly random, unorganized matter into a recognizable organism or object. However they do so by tapping into a steady flow of low entropy, high density energy, helping them to achieve their goals. Like sunlight, converting CO2 and water into sugars, or the heat from burning coal melting iron (1).

Here is the rub though: lowering entropy, or getting rid of chaos and replacing it with order, comes with creating much more entropy and disorder elsewhere. Mining, the topic I addressed last week, serves as a perfect example here. In order to make a golden ring weighing 5 grams, the mine producing the precious metal has to dig up and haul 5,000,000 grams (or 5 tons!) of ore to the surface...

https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/ ... um=reader2

[kublikhan]

Of course kub believes that because you can buy them off the shelf today cars will be running them tomorrow. That's nuclear fusion thinking, and who takes that seriously anymore outside of a bunch of toads in white jackets.

Wow. A lot to unpack there. Where to begin?
First off, you were so adamant that sodium ion batteries are not even being built at all. Does this mean you finally acknowledge sodium ion batteries are being built and sold commercially? Seems like you have taken a step forward. But then you equate them to fusion, which is not in fact in commercial use? One step forward, two steps backwards I guess.

Second, just because a technology is in production doesn't mean I think it will be running in cars. Where do you come up with this crap?

Third, forget tomorrow, EVs are already being made with sodium ion batteries today.

Sharing a similar working principle to Li-ion batteries, the commercial Na-ion batteries exhibit competitive low-cost advantages and exceptional electrochemical properties, which can go from 80% charge in 15 min and maintain 90% of its nameplate capacity at −20°C.11,12,13 However, the reported commercial Na-ion batteries still suffered from the limited energy densities of 160 Wh kg−1, which is only 50%-80% of that of commercial Li-ion batteries, hindering their practical applications in the large-scale energy storage market.

Yes, they are lower density than lithium ion. However, they are already developing the 2nd and 3rd generation of these products that have higher energy density. The exact same sort of trend we have seen playout in NMC and LFP with rising energy densities.

On December 28, 2023, China-based battery maker Farasis Energy saw a vehicle equipped with its sodium-ion batteries being rolled off the production line of JMEV, an EV brand of Chinese Jiangling Motors Group.

According to Farasis, the compact JMEV EV3 can enable a driving range of 251 kilometers, fulfilling the need for commuting and cross-city travel. The company said its mass-produced sodium-ion batteries have an energy density between 140Wh/kg and 160Wh/kg.

Farasis said it plans to release the second generation of its sodium-ion batteries in 2024 and bring the energy density to between 160Wh/kg and 180Wh/kg. In 2026, the density will be upgraded to between 180Wh/kg and 200Wh/kg to satisfy more applications.

China sees two EVs powered by sodium-ion batteries rolled off production lines

Northvolt, backed by Volkswagen, BlackRock and Goldman Sachs, is Europe’s only major homegrown electric battery manufacturer.

Sodium-ion technology will continue to evolve
One of the major disadvantages of sodium-ion batteries is their relatively low energy density – the amount of energy stored relative to the battery’s volume. Lower energy density means bulkier and heavier batteries.

Northvolt’s new battery has an energy density of more than 160 watt-hours per kilogramme, an energy density close to that type of lithium batteries typically used in energy storage, where size is not a problem. The Swedish group said that their battery has been designed for electricity storage plants, but in the future could be used in electric vehicles.

As the energy density of sodium-ion batteries continues to increase, so their share in the passenger EV market is set to rise.

The potential success of sodium-ion batteries would depend on how quickly battery manufacturers could scale up to commercialize the new technology and integrate this into the current manufacturing processes. Moves towards mass production of sodium-ion batteries are still in their infancy.

Diversification in battery chemistries will be key in the EV shift
Looking further ahead, we can expect more cars to be produced using sodium-ion batteries as manufacturing scales up, supply chains are formed, and technology evolves to improve the energy density.

We expect the lower cost, improved safety and supply chain advantages of sodium-ion batteries over lithium-ion batteries to continue to drive their technology towards mass production.

Although we don’t expect sodium-ion batteries to overtake lithium-ion ones in the short to medium term, sodium-based batteries have the potential to complement lithium-based ones, reduce dependence on a single material, and alleviate some of the pressure on lithium and battery material supply chains. This should all accelerate the green energy transition.

If sodium-ion batteries could take some market share from lithium-ion batteries, then this in turn could help to ease pressure on critical minerals supply, potentially at a much lower cost. Looking ahead, we believe it will be diversification in EV battery chemistries that will be key in any successful EV transition.

Can sodium-ion batteries replace lithium-ion ones?

Having said all that, do I believe sodium ion batteries are about to replace lithium? Hell no. First of all, sodium ion production capacity is tiny compared to lithium ion. It is growing, but still has a long way to go to capture even a faction of the lithium ion market.

Second, it's energy density is still too low to be used in long range versions of EVs. At present, they are better suited for stationary storage applications like grid storage where energy density is less of an issue. Or the ultra low end EV market such as small commuter cars in China where customers are more price sensitive.

Third, the price of the battery components for lithium ion batteries such as cobalt, nickel, and lithium have been falling like a rock lately. Good news for lithium ion battery prices, bad news for it's competitors like sodium ion. This rapidly falling price erodes one of sodium ion's biggest advantages: low cost. Of course, commodity markets are fickle and they can start skyrocketing up again just as easily. At that time, the price advantage of sodium ion will start looking alot more attractive.

[theluckycountry]

JP Morgan Pulls Out Of $68 Trillion "Climate Action 100+" Group

In other words, the "fight" to decarbonize is imploding.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/jp-mo ... -100-group
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... f=6uww027M

$68T, now that's a lot of money. What is this CA100+ and what is ESG?
Environmental Social Governance (ESG) investing is when a fund considers sustainability (including environmental, social and governance factors) to inform their investment strategy. We are talking about Electric cars, Wind farms, Solar installations. It's the future Karen, Get onboard

ESG fund losses near 40% for worst performers in mixed 2023 https://www.fnlondon.com/articles/esg-f ... 3-20240103

ESG funds are entering the new year on shaky ground after mixed performance and record outflows in 2023. After a challenging run in 2022, many green funds saw performance slump for a second year as rising interest rates and higher energy prices kept the asset class under pressure.

Strategies with a bent towards renewable energy and infrastructure had the toughest time last year, data from Morningstar prepared for Financial News shows. The Global X Hydrogen Ucits ETF was the worst performer, ...losing investors close to 40% over the 12-month period. Global X was also home to the second and third worst performers. Its Solar ETF fell 36%, while its China Clean Energy ETF lost 35%.

So, lots of change in the Wind (pun intended)

Ford, GM CEOs open to partnerships to compete with China https://www.reuters.com/business/autos- ... 024-02-15/

So, consolidation. But there is only one quote from this story worth mentioning. Because when it comes to investment, you have to cut through the waffle and get to the nub.

Ford has projected it will lose $5 billion to $5.5 billion on its EVs this year.

Once you pass the peak it's all downhill I am afraid and peakEV is going to take many retirement dreams with it. Once you understand the business of how faceless funds deal with other people's money, it's not hard to see why they are losing it hand over fist. These funds have momentum and are still hard at work losing money.

January 16, 2024 Fast Charging EV Network Provider Electra Raises $330 Million https://www.esgtoday.com/fast-charging- ... 0-million/

February 13, 2024 EV Battery Venture ACC Raises $4.7 Billion to Build Gigafactories Across Europe https://www.esgtoday.com/ev-battery-venture-acc-raises-4-7-billion-to-build-3-gigafactories-in-europe/

Both these stories are from ESG-Today, the mouthpiece of these huge funds. Why would they keep throwing good money after bad? Well if you haven't figured that out yet you simply don't understand how big finance works to enrich the fund managers.

[theluckycountry]

Ever had the urge to flush some money down the toilet?
Here's your ticket




Electric cars suffer ‘unsustainable’ depreciation in secondhand market

Electric cars lose as much as half of their value after just three years on the road, new figures show, as the rate of depreciation far outstrips petrol equivalents. ...Auto Trader’s latest report warned that “residual values of electric cars remain unsustainably low”. It said that the price of used electric cars could come under further pressure this year as thousands of motorists return vehicles acquired on three-year leases and as manufacturers cut the price of new vehicles.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/20 ... ree-years/

[mousepad]

Electric cars lose as much as half of their value after just three years on the road

That's good news for the little guy. Isn't everybody complaining ev are too expensive?

[ralfy]

The price is also still too high even for the cheapest EVs.

[theluckycountry]

Electric cars lose as much as half of their value after just three years on the road

That's good news for the little guy. Isn't everybody complaining ev are too expensive?

too true, but of course you're not buying a gasoline engine with hundreds of thousands of useful miles still on the clock, but a lipo battery that has perhaps 6 years of useful service left on it. So the question is, when do you sell it to a greater fool? And how much do you get for it when it only has one or two years left on the battery clock?

I don't know about anyone else here but I tend to keep cars for a decade or so, get my monies worth out of them. But a decade old EV? It will be a driveway ornament by then. Of course I could replace my cars every 5 years, but that's just flushing money down the toilet and I have more respect for it than that. Typically people have done that over the past decade or so using home equity loans etc, but higher interest rates killed that scheme.

[theluckycountry]

Biden Administration Is Said to Slow Early Stage of Shift to Electric Cars

The change to planned rules was an election-year concession to labor unions and auto executives, according to people familiar with the plan. Instead of essentially requiring automakers to rapidly ramp up sales of electric vehicles over the next few years, the administration would give car manufacturers more time, with a sharp increase in sales not required until after 2030, these people said. They asked to remain anonymous because the regulation has not been finalized. The administration plans to publish the final rule by early spring.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/17/clim ... 20familiar

So this is just an insider leak so to speak, but it was obvious from the recent sales figures the Government would have to back off with the wild dream of all cars being electric. Every President comes to power with a fist full of pipe-dreams, election promises basically. Look at that infrastructure spending bill. How many Presidents over how many decades have promised to rebuild the roads and bridges in the nation and yet nothing comes to pass.

This is not something you need to promise by the way, it's just an ongoing responsibility of government to maintain the nation's road network. It you have arrived at the point of promising to fix an unholy mess it's already too late.

[Plantagenet]

EV batteries are still very very dangerous even after they are removed the car.....900 TONS of EV batteries just burst into flames at a recycling plant in France

warehouse-with-900-tonnes-of-recycled-lithium-car-batteries-bursts-into-flames

The clouds of smoke rising above the fiery EV battery inferno are highly toxic.

The French meteorological agency is tracking the cloud and warning people to avoid the EV battery cloud fallout if possible.


Under the desks!!!! Toxic fallout from the EV battery explosion cloud is headed this way!!!

Cheers!

[theluckycountry]

Ford Slashing Prices And Increasing Incentives On Electric Mach-E, F-150 Lightning

The move away from EV investment and price cuts marks a sea change in attitude for EVs. As we noted earlier this month, the latest example of this was General Motors, who posted better than expected earnings earlier this month but also said that it plans on changing its product lineup to include more hybrid vehicles, drifting away from pure electric vehicles.

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/ford- ... -lightning

I have seen this phenomena before, we all have. You go into a supermarket and see the marzipan you have bought over the years suddenly reduced in price! Yippee, you load up, but when the shelf is empty that's the end of it, the store was just clearing out the existing stock and no longer carries it.

They won't come right out and say it of course, that would be breaking with the meme, but it's pretty clear what's going on. I don't see the gasoline powered Hybrids or the pure ICE cars getting slashed in price.

CEO Mary Barra said on the earnings call: “Let me be clear, GM remains committed to eliminating tailpipe emissions from our light-duty vehicles by 2035, but, in the interim, deploying plug-in technology in strategic segments will deliver some of the environmental benefits of EVs as the nation continues to build this charging infrastructure.”

Believe that if you want, it's more of a political statement than a statement of corporate policy. She's basically blaming public rejection of EV's on the inadequate charging infrastructure, which as we know is merely one negative aspect of owning an electric car. But the statement in and of itself is very telling, GM is putting a long time horizon on the uptake of EV as mass transit.

As I've said, the EV will not vanish entirely. It has it's niches, the Pikes Peak speed run is one, inner-city commuting another, at least for the wealthy middle-class who are happy to pay for increased insurance premiums, and perhaps a fireproof garage, something on the order of the bio-shields that surround nuclear reactors I would think.

[mousepad]

EV will not vanish entirely. It has it's niches, inner-city commuting ,

That's not a niche. That is the usecase where ev excels. And short errands/commute is the majority of miles driven. EV should target this specific application by:

1. install chargers in cities and suburbs, preferably at every workplace parking. (chargers in rural areas for long distance travel is a total waste of money)
2. build small, light EV with limited range (50 to 100 miles)
3. heavily incentivize small EV (and no incentives for luxury EV, like tesla, jaguar, f150, etc.)
4. indoctrinate how cool and great and awesome them small EV are. Indoctrinate the small EV as being the hip socially acceptable thing for suburbanites and city slicks. It must become morally unacceptable to own a big car.