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Electric car engineering issues


CraigD

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Tesla model S is advertised as the only car you will ever buy. Which may be, given easily replacable battery, and some parts that do wear out.

 

Thing with electrics is that you buy your mileage beforehand. With 63 cents/wh and about 2000 cycle life you get to about 7$ per 100 miles. Taken that you get 24kwh for 100 miles. 24kwh of electricity costs about 4$ at my place, so total is about 11$ per 100 miles. The diesel I am driving gets me around for about 10$/100 miles.

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Thing with electrics is that you buy your mileage beforehand. With 63 cents/wh and about 2000 cycle life you get to about 7$ per 100 miles. Taken that you get 24kwh for 100 miles. 24kwh of electricity costs about 4$ at my place, so total is about 11$ per 100 miles. The diesel I am driving gets me around for about 10$/100 miles.

 

You aren't exactly comparing apples to apples though.

If you are going to add the cost of the battery to your calculations for an EV, you should also subtract the cost of maintanance you will avoid by using an EV over an ICE. Such as oil changes, spark plugs and most of any engine maintanance costs.

Also realize that the 'lifespan' for the batteries is defines when the batteries are reduced to a 75% range. So your 200 mile range would be cut to a 150 mile range, but the batteries still work.

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By a car I meant a highway capable car, (like the model S). However, not necessarily that luxurious- something more like a volvo or any other large family car. Does anyone know what those nano titanate batteries cost? (And why doesn't Tesla use them?)

 

The nano titanate batteries are only made by altair nanosystems to my knowledge. So you have smaller production and likely much higher costs. However, I have not been able to find any site yet that lists the price.

I suspect low availability, little real world use/testing, and cost are the reasons Tesla isn't using them yet.

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Its true that I forgot some of the figures. Its just that all in all the electricity cost comes to about 30% of the cost per mile. So in that sense solar power could come in as the electricity can be pricier but still dont change the economics much.

 

I heard of the project Beter Place, I think its a neat idea. Like a car that costs 35k with battery can be like 20k without it and you pay for the battery usage.

 

Also you can simply build cheap 10k car without a battery and make it compatible.

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