Battery based vehicles of today and tomorrow pt 2

[Grumpycat]

Good grief! That's like buying a new ICE vehicle only to have the warranty null and void if the engine has 30% wear. It comes with 150,000 mile warranty but if it burns or leaks more than a pint of oil between changes you are s.o.l.

Says the opposite of that.

Says you get a new one, no charge.

 

[Grumpycat]

The worst newish car I had that was Bad like that was VW Rabbit .

36000 miles and I was getting about 400 miles a quart. It was a great mosquito fogger when first fired up.

VW had the Nerve to actually put it in the owners manual that 500 miles per quart was to be considered "Normal" oil consumption. Eventually the FTC caught up with them and I got the head rebuilt with new valve guides and seals.

1968 Chevrolet 327 said 300 miles/quart. Parents had one and were none too happy.

Years later Hot Rod magazine had an excellent in depth article on how to build the 327 fixing the oil consumption problem.

I don't recall the details but this might have been the start of putting a pin in piston ring grooves to prevent piston ring gaps from lining up to provide a direct path for oil to reach the combustion chamber.

 

[wawajake]

Says the opposite of that.

Says you get a new one, no charge.

Grumpy don't you hate having to defend Trad's missinformation.....with me being privileged to be on his childish ignore list......others have to correct his missinformation like me clarifying the true wording of the Tesla battery warranty.

 

[Agvg]

Charging problems. Chargers failed, cars were too cold to take a charge, long lines and very frustrated EV owners.

“Public charging stations have turned into car graveyards,” reporters said, while calling depleted EVs “dead robots.”

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www.npr.org

What Happened With The 'Stranded Teslas' EV Charging Panic In Chicago

Teslas are having trouble charging in the extreme cold, but there's a myriad of factors that contribute to the problem. Let us help explain.

insideevs.com

0 F is not particularly cold, if I'm not mistaken it's ca -17 C. What was the reason for the charger failures?

 

[Grumpycat]

I've heard that. The worse car I ever had I bought brand new 1972 Toyota Celica (I was 19, car in showroom with pretty college girls in it saying how cute it was .
At 14K miles it died...valves shot. I bought new valves, machine shop reworked head.
I bought an '82 VW Rabbit diesel pickup that was fantastic.

1978 Dodge (Mitsubishi) Challenger with 2.6L 4 cylinder.

Cylinder heads cracked between intake and exhaust valves, #3 cylinder. #4 cylinder had a coolant passage significantly closer to the cylinder than any other which also leaked causing me to do a head job at 50,000 miles only to find the crack.

Should have reassembled with the cracked head but found a shop to weld (aluminum) for $200 vs $750 for new head (which turned out to be unobtainium because everyone else's head cracked before mine).

 

[Grumpycat]

I am seeing more negative articles on EVs. Some of the "faults" have been there for years. But now, the same faults seem to have become justification for vilifying EVs.

Is anyone else seeing this or am I imagining it?

Sells clicks on websites.

Those who write such articles have zero to no EV experience and readily believe anything bad they can stir up.

Just consider Jeff Flock's drive of a Hertz Tesla Model Y Standard Range from Chicago to NYC. He criticized the keycard entry, because he didn't bother to listen when given the card and didn't bother to read the picture on the card. He claimed errors in range estimates but didn't publish the numbers. Yet miraculously made it to each Supercharger but barely for one when they stupidly winged it on their own.

Find fodder for a negative article and one has an audience!

 

[Grumpycat]

Grumpycat sourced and sent Tesla the cash for his 2013 Model S. Ten years later he sent Tesla half as much cash to source his 2023 Model Y from Tesla.

IIRC the sticker was $93,500. Forget if that included the usual $1000 destination fee.

On top of that was $4000 for warranty extension to 8 years. $4000 for 8 years of prepaid maintenance. And the real jewel was that Tesla was offering prepaid pickup/delivery service for $100/year. For any warranty or regular service they would come get the car and leave me a loaner. So I bought 8 years because initially the Service Center was 220 miles away. Later one opened 92 miles away. I think they hauled it 4 times round trip in the 8 years.

In the initial years the Service Center had their own guys with Ford SuperDuty Powerstroke diesel pickup trucks in Tesla livery with an open aluminum trailer. In later years they hired flatbed tow truck companies. I learned when my S failed out of warranty that it cost $530 each direction. $100 more if it wouldn't drive.

My S was delivered to my house by an independent contractor (at Tesla's expense) with a RAM diesel and enclosed trailer, from the service center in Marietta GA.

 

[Grumpycat]

Grumpy don't you hate having to defend Trad's missinformation.....with me being privileged to be on his childish ignore list......others have to correct his missinformation like me clarifying the true wording of the Tesla battery warranty.

Fuddyduddy1952 said if the engine burned or leaked more than a pint the warranty was void. I said the opposite, that one gets a new engine no charge.

tradosaurus makes great posts.

 

[Grumpycat]

0 F is not particularly cold, if I'm not mistaken it's ca -17 C. What was the reason for the charger failures?

Operator error.

Many Chicagoians were throwing the charging umbilical down in the snow rather than hang it in the pedestal. The connector would get filled with ice. Many noticed this, defrosted the connector, and were able to charge. But that didn't fit the narrative of the reporter.

The other issue is the Tesla battery has to be warm to take a fast charge. If one has not been driving the car any distance then it can take 30 minutes to warm sufficiently when plugged in before faster charging can commence. Even then it won't charge but at about 25% of what is possible at ideal temperatures.

In 2013 Tesla had a "cold weather prep package" option. I didn't order that for my S. I didn't see it available for the Y.

This is partially why it is so important to have night time charging at home, it takes just as long to warm on a home L2 (that is 240VAC) as a Supercharger, plus when one arrives home and connects then presumably the car has been driven and has a warm battery ready to accept a charge.

But these sort of things are too complicated for the simple mind of the Modern Journalist and their audiences.

 

[txdon]

0 F is not particularly cold, if I'm not mistaken it's ca -17 C. What was the reason for the charger failures?

The NYT did get into another aspect of this, the lack of infrastructure in the U.S. While Norway, where nearly 25% of cars on the road are electric, is the easy comparison, the NYT article explains, "The majority of people in Norway live in houses, not apartments, and nearly 90 percent of electric vehicle owners have their own charging stations at home" — a key point, that.

An automaker association representative in the UK told the outlet, "the problem was less about the capacity of electric vehicles to run well in cold weather, and more about the inability to provide necessary infrastructure, like charging stations."

Yes, EVs had trouble charging in Chicago cold. No, it wasn't entirely their fault - Autoblog

A lack of charging infrastructure, the tendency of all batteries to suffer in extreme cold, and potentially a lack of owner knowledge may have added up to a perfect winter storm for Chicago EV owners.

www.autoblog.com