5 ms·

There are so many myths about charging, mostly coming from people who don't own an EV. Most people don't realize that BEVs (not hybrids) have batteries large e

by pornel 4y ago

There are so many myths about charging, mostly coming from people who don't own an EV. Most people don't realize that BEVs (not hybrids) have batteries large enough to last a whole week of commuting. This gives a lot of flexibility in when and where they can be charged. They're typically configured to charge overnight, when charging speed doesn't matter, and electricity demand is low (if the demand shifts, they could be configured to charge at different times, e.g. when they're parked at work). EVs are designed to be left charging unattended, so they can just be left plugged in whenever they're parked. That's a different use-case than quarter-megawatt chargers for road trips. New cars have vehicle-to-load capability built-in already, and there are trials to use them as grid storage. The more EVs there are, the more they can be used to shift renewable energy and flatten the duck curve. EVs can help the grid, not strain it. Large fast charging sites for road trips typically have their own batteries, because it allows them to have cheaper lower-power connection to the grid, do price arbitrage, and use their own renewables. This is also a place where degraded batteries from old EVs can be reused. Of course the electric grid will need to be expanded. Lament about that sounds like developed countries have forgotten how to develop infrastructure?

spywaregorilla 4y ago
Using electric vehicles as batteries seems like a good way to run extra cycles through your car and need a replacement battery. It would seem to be a useful emergency feature, but not a steady state part of the grid.
- pornel 4y ago
  It can be a simple free market thing: you earn enough from renting your battery to make it worth the extra cycles. Or if the grid operator can build enough cheaper energy storage themselves, then they won't use your v2l capability. If there's going to be an increased demand for grid-stabilizing storage, it will price the supply accordingly.
  - spywaregorilla 4y ago
    If its a simple free market thing, then you won't use your car battery to supply the grid, because the economics wouldn't work out. So the issue remains.
    - bryanlarsen 4y ago
      In the Tesla virtual grid test in California currently they're paying 50 cents per kWh. That causes 2 cents worth of degradation to the battery, but only if that's a 100% to 0% to 100% cycle. If instead it's a 80% to 20% to 80% cycle, it's about 0.2 cents worth of degradation.
    - carlmr 4y ago
      I think OP made the point that in the free market the companies could pay you a certain fee per charge used or something, so that you get remunerated for your battery being used.
      - spywaregorilla 4y ago
        Yes and the value you provide to the grid is less than the cost of cycling your car battery. So it wouldn't work out. You could also pay people to turn magnet wheels for power at night. But it wouldn't work out.
        ahahahahah 4y ago
        You've provided very little support for your position. To be fair, I don't think you are claiming that the idea of using batteries in such a way doesn't make sense as we already know that there are successful deployments of batteries doing exactly this (I mean, you could argue that those deployments aren't actually successful and that they aren't properly taking into account the replacement costs of their batteries, but I don't think there's evidence of that). So then the argument comes down to, why would a power supplier pay individual owners of relatively small batteries to do this when they could just deploy batteries at scale. That then is the more interesting consideration and I don't think it's actually clear that the economics don't work out. Private batteries have some benefits to power companies, for example the infrastructure to support them is almost free (as it's otherwise already required), there's no long-term risk of building out too much (i mean, there is, but the power company doesn't have that risk), etc. All in, it could be that the power company is better served by building out batteries themselves, but that their own battery storage ends up always under-provisioned and that it is economically beneficial to everyone that they then use private distributed battery storage to shore that up.
- whatever1 4y ago
  Do we even know the battery pack replacement cost ? Has any customer paid for it yet or are we still in the honeymoon phase where the manufacturer covers the cost to lure more customers?
  - pornel 4y ago
    Of course the prices are available, for every car model. It's not US healthcare :D There's also long-term battery health data available now from Teslas and Leaf. Tesla batteries degrade 1%-2% per year on average. Here are UK battery prices (this is the priciest component of an EV, the upside is that motors and transmission may last car's lifetime): Audi e-tron - £6,194.40 (71.2) Audi e-tron GT - £8,125.80 (93.4) Audi e-tron Sportback - £6,177 (71) Audi Q4 e-tron - £4,524 (55) BMW i3 - £3,297.30 (37.9) BMW i4 - £7,020.90 (80.7) BMW iX3 - £6,423.21 (73.83) BMW iX - £6,177 (71) Citroën ë-Berlingo - £4,350 (50) Citroën ë-C4 - £4,350 (50) Citroën ë-Spacetourer - £4,350 (50) Cupra e-Born - £5,394 (62) DS 3 Crossback E-Tense - £4,350 (50) Fiat 500e - £2,088 (24) Ford Mustang Mach-E - £6,585.90 (75.7) Honda e - £3,088.50 (35.5) Hyundai Ioniq 5 - £5,063.40 (58.2) Hyundai Ioniq Electric - £3,332.10 (38.3) Hyundai Kona Electric - £3,410.40 (39.2) Jaguar I-Pace - £7,830 (90) Kia EV6 - £6,733.80 (77.4) Kia e-Niro - £5,568 (64) Kia Soul EV - £5,568 (64) Lexus UX300e - £4,724.10 (54.3) Mazda MX-30 - £3,088.50 (35.5) Mercedes-Benz EQA - £5,785.50 (66.5) Mercedes-Benz EQB - £5,785.50 (66.5) Mercedes-Benz EQC - £6,960 (80) Mercedes-Benz EQE - £7,830 (90) Mercedes-Benz EQS - £9,378.60 (107.8) Mercedes-Benz EQV - £8,700 (100 kWh) MG5 EV - £5,315.70 (61.1 kWh) MG ZS EV - £4,445.70 (51.1) MINI Electric - £2,836.20 (32.6) Nissan E-NV200 COMBI - £3,480 (40) Nissan Leaf - £3,393 (39) Peugeot e-208 - £4,350 (50) Peugeot e-2008 - £4,350 (50) Peugeot e-Rifter - £4,350 (50) Peugeot e-Traveller - £4,350 (50) Polestar 2 - £6,003 (69) Porsche Taycan - £6,890.40 (79.2) Renault Zoe - £4,524 (52) Škoda ENYAQ iV - £6,699 (77) Škoda ENYAQ Coupe - £6,699 (77) Smart fortwo EQ - £1,531.20 (17.6) Tesla Model 3 - £5,420.10 (62.3) Tesla Model S - £8,700 (100) Tesla Model X - £8,700 (100) Tesla Model Y - £6,525 (75) Vauxhall Combo-e Life - £4,350 (50) Vauxhall Corsa-e - £4,350 (50) Vauxhall Mokka-e - £4,350 (50) Vauxhall Vivaro-e Life - £4,350 (50) Volkswagen ID.3 - £5,046 (58) Volkswagen ID.4 - £4,524 (52) Volkswagen ID.5 - £6,699 (77) Volvo C40 Recharge - £6,787 (78) Volvo XC40 Recharge - £6,787 (78)
- manholio 4y ago
  I'm very skeptical it will ever take off: the wear and tear of your high performance, high density, mobility optimized battery that has a unique vendor that tightly controls the spare parts market for maximum profit would be much more expensive then intra-day price differentials of the energy market. On the long run you are effectively competing against industrial scale storage operations that use exceptionally large infrastructure, optimized for low cost, lower density chemistries (Sodium instead of Lithium), with charge profiles optimized for very high number of daily cycles, or even multiples per day etc. So even if grid battery storage becomes the main thing stabilizing the renewable grid, it still makes little sense to use your car for that, except in emergencies, a "virtual energy supplier", you are paid for the availability, not the actual delivery.
- antisthenes 4y ago
  Really depends on depth of discharge. A 5x time 20% drain to help the grid isn't anywhere as harmful as a full 100% discharge in emergency mode trying to get to a charging station and not get stranded. Besides, we could have methods of compensating people for helping stabilize the grid. And of course no one is forcing you to participate in this scheme anyway.
  - spywaregorilla 4y ago
    > Besides, we could have methods of compensating people for helping stabilize the grid. And of course no one is forcing you to participate in this scheme anyway. We don't have profitable methods, so it's moot.
jstanley 4y ago
Do you really want the grid taking energy out of your car when it needs it? Would you want petrol stations siphoning fuel out of your car when they are running low?
- MontyCarloHall 4y ago
  Why not, as long as I got paid for it?
  - jstanley 4y ago
    Because you'll get back to your car to find that its tank is empty and you can't drive anywhere. They'd have to pay a substantial premium for that to be worthwhile.
    - Misdicorl 4y ago
      It won't drain below X% and will charge when below Y%
    - jffry 4y ago
      I mean obviously there would be some kind of floor in terms of how much range you are willing to be left with. If you're willing to discharge your car lower, you can take greater advantage of arbitrage opportunities, but obviously your car could be lower at any point in time.
    - pornel 4y ago
      You can control how much is given to the grid, and say that e.g. it has to have 60%+ left at all times. There's no need to keep cars charged to 100% all the time. They already have batteries that are overkill for daily commutes, and if you suddenly need to make a long trip, you can top it up in 20 minutes from a highway charger. BTW, on the Internet there's always some guy who just has to have a 500-mile daily commute while towing a boat, through a desert, in snow, uphill both ways. That's fine, they can opt out. Note that the charging connector isn't a dumb plug like a household appliance. It has a two-way communication protocol that negotiates all of the parameters.
CottonMcKnight 4y ago
Wouldn't it be great if the grid and the car could negotiate when to charge?
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  They already can if your car and utility supports it.

by pornel 4y ago

spywaregorilla 4y ago

Using electric vehicles as batteries seems like a good way to run extra cycles through your car and need a replacement battery. It would seem to be a useful emergency feature, but not a steady state part of the grid.

pornel 4y ago
It can be a simple free market thing: you earn enough from renting your battery to make it worth the extra cycles. Or if the grid operator can build enough cheaper energy storage themselves, then they won't use your v2l capability. If there's going to be an increased demand for grid-stabilizing storage, it will price the supply accordingly.
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  If its a simple free market thing, then you won't use your car battery to supply the grid, because the economics wouldn't work out. So the issue remains.
  - bryanlarsen 4y ago
    In the Tesla virtual grid test in California currently they're paying 50 cents per kWh. That causes 2 cents worth of degradation to the battery, but only if that's a 100% to 0% to 100% cycle. If instead it's a 80% to 20% to 80% cycle, it's about 0.2 cents worth of degradation.
  - carlmr 4y ago
    I think OP made the point that in the free market the companies could pay you a certain fee per charge used or something, so that you get remunerated for your battery being used.
    - spywaregorilla 4y ago
      Yes and the value you provide to the grid is less than the cost of cycling your car battery. So it wouldn't work out. You could also pay people to turn magnet wheels for power at night. But it wouldn't work out.
      - ahahahahah 4y ago
        You've provided very little support for your position. To be fair, I don't think you are claiming that the idea of using batteries in such a way doesn't make sense as we already know that there are successful deployments of batteries doing exactly this (I mean, you could argue that those deployments aren't actually successful and that they aren't properly taking into account the replacement costs of their batteries, but I don't think there's evidence of that). So then the argument comes down to, why would a power supplier pay individual owners of relatively small batteries to do this when they could just deploy batteries at scale. That then is the more interesting consideration and I don't think it's actually clear that the economics don't work out. Private batteries have some benefits to power companies, for example the infrastructure to support them is almost free (as it's otherwise already required), there's no long-term risk of building out too much (i mean, there is, but the power company doesn't have that risk), etc. All in, it could be that the power company is better served by building out batteries themselves, but that their own battery storage ends up always under-provisioned and that it is economically beneficial to everyone that they then use private distributed battery storage to shore that up.
whatever1 4y ago
Do we even know the battery pack replacement cost ? Has any customer paid for it yet or are we still in the honeymoon phase where the manufacturer covers the cost to lure more customers?
- pornel 4y ago
  Of course the prices are available, for every car model. It's not US healthcare :D There's also long-term battery health data available now from Teslas and Leaf. Tesla batteries degrade 1%-2% per year on average. Here are UK battery prices (this is the priciest component of an EV, the upside is that motors and transmission may last car's lifetime): Audi e-tron - £6,194.40 (71.2) Audi e-tron GT - £8,125.80 (93.4) Audi e-tron Sportback - £6,177 (71) Audi Q4 e-tron - £4,524 (55) BMW i3 - £3,297.30 (37.9) BMW i4 - £7,020.90 (80.7) BMW iX3 - £6,423.21 (73.83) BMW iX - £6,177 (71) Citroën ë-Berlingo - £4,350 (50) Citroën ë-C4 - £4,350 (50) Citroën ë-Spacetourer - £4,350 (50) Cupra e-Born - £5,394 (62) DS 3 Crossback E-Tense - £4,350 (50) Fiat 500e - £2,088 (24) Ford Mustang Mach-E - £6,585.90 (75.7) Honda e - £3,088.50 (35.5) Hyundai Ioniq 5 - £5,063.40 (58.2) Hyundai Ioniq Electric - £3,332.10 (38.3) Hyundai Kona Electric - £3,410.40 (39.2) Jaguar I-Pace - £7,830 (90) Kia EV6 - £6,733.80 (77.4) Kia e-Niro - £5,568 (64) Kia Soul EV - £5,568 (64) Lexus UX300e - £4,724.10 (54.3) Mazda MX-30 - £3,088.50 (35.5) Mercedes-Benz EQA - £5,785.50 (66.5) Mercedes-Benz EQB - £5,785.50 (66.5) Mercedes-Benz EQC - £6,960 (80) Mercedes-Benz EQE - £7,830 (90) Mercedes-Benz EQS - £9,378.60 (107.8) Mercedes-Benz EQV - £8,700 (100 kWh) MG5 EV - £5,315.70 (61.1 kWh) MG ZS EV - £4,445.70 (51.1) MINI Electric - £2,836.20 (32.6) Nissan E-NV200 COMBI - £3,480 (40) Nissan Leaf - £3,393 (39) Peugeot e-208 - £4,350 (50) Peugeot e-2008 - £4,350 (50) Peugeot e-Rifter - £4,350 (50) Peugeot e-Traveller - £4,350 (50) Polestar 2 - £6,003 (69) Porsche Taycan - £6,890.40 (79.2) Renault Zoe - £4,524 (52) Škoda ENYAQ iV - £6,699 (77) Škoda ENYAQ Coupe - £6,699 (77) Smart fortwo EQ - £1,531.20 (17.6) Tesla Model 3 - £5,420.10 (62.3) Tesla Model S - £8,700 (100) Tesla Model X - £8,700 (100) Tesla Model Y - £6,525 (75) Vauxhall Combo-e Life - £4,350 (50) Vauxhall Corsa-e - £4,350 (50) Vauxhall Mokka-e - £4,350 (50) Vauxhall Vivaro-e Life - £4,350 (50) Volkswagen ID.3 - £5,046 (58) Volkswagen ID.4 - £4,524 (52) Volkswagen ID.5 - £6,699 (77) Volvo C40 Recharge - £6,787 (78) Volvo XC40 Recharge - £6,787 (78)
manholio 4y ago
I'm very skeptical it will ever take off: the wear and tear of your high performance, high density, mobility optimized battery that has a unique vendor that tightly controls the spare parts market for maximum profit would be much more expensive then intra-day price differentials of the energy market. On the long run you are effectively competing against industrial scale storage operations that use exceptionally large infrastructure, optimized for low cost, lower density chemistries (Sodium instead of Lithium), with charge profiles optimized for very high number of daily cycles, or even multiples per day etc. So even if grid battery storage becomes the main thing stabilizing the renewable grid, it still makes little sense to use your car for that, except in emergencies, a "virtual energy supplier", you are paid for the availability, not the actual delivery.
antisthenes 4y ago
Really depends on depth of discharge. A 5x time 20% drain to help the grid isn't anywhere as harmful as a full 100% discharge in emergency mode trying to get to a charging station and not get stranded. Besides, we could have methods of compensating people for helping stabilize the grid. And of course no one is forcing you to participate in this scheme anyway.
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  > Besides, we could have methods of compensating people for helping stabilize the grid. And of course no one is forcing you to participate in this scheme anyway. We don't have profitable methods, so it's moot.

jstanley 4y ago

Do you really want the grid taking energy out of your car when it needs it? Would you want petrol stations siphoning fuel out of your car when they are running low?

MontyCarloHall 4y ago
Why not, as long as I got paid for it?
- jstanley 4y ago
  Because you'll get back to your car to find that its tank is empty and you can't drive anywhere. They'd have to pay a substantial premium for that to be worthwhile.
  - Misdicorl 4y ago
    It won't drain below X% and will charge when below Y%
  - jffry 4y ago
    I mean obviously there would be some kind of floor in terms of how much range you are willing to be left with. If you're willing to discharge your car lower, you can take greater advantage of arbitrage opportunities, but obviously your car could be lower at any point in time.
  - pornel 4y ago
    You can control how much is given to the grid, and say that e.g. it has to have 60%+ left at all times. There's no need to keep cars charged to 100% all the time. They already have batteries that are overkill for daily commutes, and if you suddenly need to make a long trip, you can top it up in 20 minutes from a highway charger. BTW, on the Internet there's always some guy who just has to have a 500-mile daily commute while towing a boat, through a desert, in snow, uphill both ways. That's fine, they can opt out. Note that the charging connector isn't a dumb plug like a household appliance. It has a two-way communication protocol that negotiates all of the parameters.

CottonMcKnight 4y ago

Wouldn't it be great if the grid and the car could negotiate when to charge?

toomuchtodo 4y ago
They already can if your car and utility supports it.