Battery based vehicles of today and tomorrow pt 2

[5030]

I had a Prius hybrid as a company car for 5 years or so. They are like a modern day Studebaker Lark - no frills, no style and bigger on the inside than they are on the outside. One significant flaw though - the traction control is awful in snow country.If it detects any wheel slip, it just shuts down. If you hit a small patch of ice crossing an intersection, it just stops and pauses to think about moving forward again. If you get more than 2" of snow, it will not let you get up a head of steam.

Sounds like my Ford Focus RS. Has gobs of power but no traction in the snow. It has the track lock front end but it's still worthless. On dry pavement it will suck the paint off a lot of other cars but in snow or on ice, it's lost. I actually got stuck going in my driveway last winter and had to go get one of the tractors and a snatch strap to get it to the garage.

It does get 40 mpg combined city-highway if I keep my foot out of the turbo.

Glad I'm retired and don't have to drive to work anymore. If I did, I'd be driving something else.

No traction and way too low to the ground is a bad combination in the winter up here.

Least I don't have to worry about anyone sawing off my convertor. No way could anyone but a pin head get underneath it.

I've always sort of wanted a Prius, not because it's a hybrid but because I could add a set of Tweco disconnects to the battery terminals and do SMAW welding with it. Would be less issue than loading my Lincoln engine drive in the pickup for a field job.

 

[Grumpycat]

Salt and brine is especially hard on electrical connectors, even Molex style connectors that have internal 'o' rings. All it takes is a very small leak and the salt will get in and corrode the contacts and salt and moisture is a pretty good conductor of electricity too.

Could be issues as the vehicles age. Very expensive issues...

Why do you think it would be any different for an EV vs ICE?

The last ICE which would run without electrics was maybe a 1960's or 1970's diesel Mercedes-Benz.

 

[Grumpycat]

Just watched Scotty Kilmer (on YT), attempt to plug his very expensive Bosch scan tool into a new Ford electric Mustang. It plugs in ok (has an OBD connector) but the scan tool won't download anything because Fords made the access to the ECM proprietary. IOW you have to go to a dealer to access anything. Not that an EV will ever break...lol

Kind of smells like what tractor manufacturers did with their T4 final ECM controlled tractors.

By law there is a small common set of OBD-II commands. Something bureaucrats (who have never made anything before) think would enable non-dealer mechanics to diagnose and repair. In practice its is enough to start replacing parts willy nilly for a cylinder occasional miss problem but not enough to pinpoint the problem. So, customer gets screwed anyway but now the computer is blamed.

On top of the minimal required OBD-II, all manufacturers have layer after layer of proprietary modules accessible via OBD-II port with undocumented commands. A Ford scan tool can't get very far on a GM product.

If someone has time to hack the vehicle, or surreptitiously get their hands on the factory's dealer tool, then mere mortals can possess an excellent tool such as Forscan (for Ford, and oddly Mazda).

Other tools such as OBD-Link do a very good job of supporting most of the variations of everything made. May not be able to tweak the Ford door chime, DRL, or dome light timer, but can read things such as the Octane Adjustment Ratio as an indicator of whether the engine likes the fuel it is being given. Well beyond the standard OBD-II specification.

Tesla doesn't have an OBD-II port because the law doesn't require of an EV. Tesla's onboard network is ethernet.

 

[JasperFrank]

Back in the early 80's, I was a camp counselor in up state Michigan for one summer.
I was SHOCKED at the rust damage done to the vehicles. These cars and trucks seemed to have a life span of only 5 to 7 years. Even salt can't do that to a vehicle, but then I learned they used calcium chloride. It was almost amusing at the time to think of all those people in Michigan, buying new cars, only to have said cars bathed in acid for 3 months.

 

[5030]

Back in the early 80's, I was a camp counselor in up state Michigan for one summer.
I was SHOCKED at the rust damage done to the vehicles. These cars and trucks seemed to have a life span of only 5 to 7 years. Even salt can't do that to a vehicle, but then I learned they used calcium chloride. It was almost amusing at the time to think of all those people in Michigan, buying new cars, only to have said cars bathed in acid for 3 months.

Not only Michigan, all the States that apply a brine pre treatment to roads. The 'brine' pre treatment is CACL mixed with water. It's a wicked ruster. Why I'm curious as to how the aluminum clad battery packs underneath EV's will hold up over time as well as the suspension components. EV's share the same suspension parts and brake parts as a conventional IC vehicle. That and all the electrical and electronic connectors associated with them. A rust bucket is a rust bucket no matter how it's powered.

 

[5030]

A Ford scan tool can't get very far on a GM product.

I disagree with that. It all depends on the firmware associated with the scan tool. My Autel scan tool works on all OBD equipped vehicles both foreign and domestic and my scan tool not only deciphers the trouble codes it also tells you what component is at issue. Of course you won't get a quality scan tool for peanuts either. My Autel was over a grand.

 

[MossRoad]

My mechanic has a scan tool that will scan about anything ever made and reset about everything that’s resettable. About the only thing it cannot do is put the VIN into a few of the components, and that requires either a trip to the dealer, or for him to set up an appointment where he specifies a time and date, hooks up the scan tool to an internet connection, and ‘they’ log into the tool and reset the VIN sometime within that appointment time.

He has to pay a subscription for the basic capabilities of the scanner, then a per-use fee each time ‘they’ have to log into his scanner for a specific vehicle.

Some things he can put the VIN into, some things he cannot.

 

[5030]

Why do you think it would be any different for an EV vs ICE?

The last ICE which would run without electrics was maybe a 1960's or 1970's diesel Mercedes-Benz.

It appears there is a boatload more of electrical and electronics on an EV, all destined to fail at some point if 'salted' regularly.

 

[Grumpycat]

I disagree with that. It all depends on the firmware associated with the scan tool. My Autel scan tool works on all OBD equipped vehicles both foreign and domestic and my scan tool not only deciphers the trouble codes it also tells you what component is at issue. Of course you won't get a quality scan tool for peanuts either. My Autel was over a grand.

An Autel tool is not a "Ford tool". I agree Autel makes some of the best independent diagnostic tools.

 

[Gale Hawkins]

This guy does great teardown videos. I am finding the Prius impressive.