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This is possible because most cars have ICEs. An under-discussed aspect of EVs, in my opinion, is the large amount of waste they will produce. The batteries h

This is possible because most cars have ICEs. An under-discussed aspect of EVs, in my opinion, is the large amount of waste they will produce. The batteries have much shorter lives than an ICE, and are so expensive that I predict entire vehicles will be scrapped long before an equivalent ICE model would be.

cmrdporcupine 3y ago
I don't think is fair. We actually don't have a lot of data on real world battery lifetimes, but a properly engineered system with good heat & charge mgmt can last a decade for sure. There are 2011, 2012 Chevy Volts on the road like this, with minimal degradation, from my understanding. It is true that some manufacturers (cough cough Nissan) have been slack on the battery longevity front. But Tesla and GM at least put a lot of engineering into temperature and lifecycle mgmt and I expect others are now doing the same That and I'm sure in the long run, cost effective battery replacement will become entirely feasible in various manufacturer pipelines, once things mature and standardize. Meanwhile in an EV most other components will have a longer lifetime.
- sangnoir 3y ago
  Even early, pre-2013 Nissan Leafs with uncooled batteries have battery capacities that are holding up surprisingly well.
jopsen 3y ago
> I predict entire vehicles will be scrapped long before an equivalent ICE model would be. That's a easy prediction today with so many early EV models on the road. As the technology matures so will the life-span.
uoaei 3y ago
Does anyone have leads on where to find de-commissioned EV batteries for reuse as local energy storage? I want to hook some in to a renewable energy generation platform.
- cmrdporcupine 3y ago
  In general it's an ad-hoc market, but even eBay is fine for this. Lots of older Nissan and Volt cells available for sale. Challenge being shipping. I got a single Gen 1 Volt pack sitting in my shop, waiting for a project, and I got it for a good price off eBay two years ago, from a Canadian supplier so shipping was also domestic and reasonable. Quite handy. 48V, still has most of its capacity. Reasonable form factor to work with.
- jhoechtl 3y ago
  I predict that second hand business will be made illegal for whatever reasons ever not to endanger an economic potential IF <insert your country> will become serious at producing batteries.
laweijfmvo 3y ago
This seems wrong. Tesla has estimated their batteries to be good for over a million miles[1]. [1] https://www.electrive.com/2020/10/19/tesla-researchers-present-battery-with-2-million-mile-lifecycle https://www.electrive.com/2020/10/19/tesla-researchers-prese...
- everdrive 3y ago
  But are they good after 10, 15, or 20 years? A battery will wear out due to time alone. This is somewhat true for cars, but not in the same way. Most people will never drive a million miles, but many people will keep a car for 10-20 years.
  - bryanlarsen 3y ago
    There are still lots of 1st year Leafs with original batteries, so we know they last at least 12 years.
    - everdrive 3y ago
      That’s good to know. My LEAF is 6 years old, and has only lost one bar, leaving it with something like 92-93% of its original battery life, which is no major sacrifice. I do wonder how it will look when it reaches 10 years. I’d like to drive it as long as possible.
tclancy 3y ago
Isn't this offset by the much smaller number of moving parts that wear out?
- porkbeer 3y ago
  There are just as many moving parts in most evs as ice cars.
mschuster91 3y ago
> The batteries have much shorter lives than an ICE At least for Tesla, their batteries live very very long [1]. An ICE car with 500.000km on it would be by that point at the very least on their second engine and 3rd/4th clutch, probably on its second transmission, and god knows how many oil changes and belt replacements. A classic combustion engine consists of ~1.500 parts, some of which are under immense thermal and mechanical stress, and that's just the engine and engine-associated parts and doesn't include the whole exhaust management system with all its components. In contrast, electric engines are ~200 parts and have way less thermal stress. That marked difference in complexity is also the reason why classic ICE car dealerships are so furious about the switch to electric cars - there is, crash repairs aside, barely any maintenance and repair but tire, brake and air-condition fluid/filter changes to do on an electric vehicle. No oil changes, no AdBlue refills (at least pre-Dieselgate diesel cars with their cheating system only had AdBlue refills during regular maintenance), no DPF deep-cleaning, no engine rebuilds, no transmission/clutch fixes... On top of that, the batteries themselves are perfectly fine to re-use in a stationary scenario after their degradation makes them too incapable of using in an EV (=below 60% capacity). Even the first-generation base Model S battery with 60 kWh would still have 36 kWh - more than enough to cover a week worth of an entire household's consumption as a backup battery. [1] https://electrek.co/2020/06/06/tesla-battery-degradation-replacement/ https://electrek.co/2020/06/06/tesla-battery-degradation-rep...
- jhoechtl 3y ago
  What is your definition of part? Is a resistor on a PCB a part?
  - injb 3y ago
    I presume he means parts are likely to need replacement- i.e. that either move or are susceptible to degradation from heat. If you have to replace a resistor that's a freak occurrence. Yes electic cars do have heat and moving parts but it's more manageable. Fewer moving parts, no reciprocation like connecting rods and valves, no vibrations to speak of, and lower temperatures. If you look at the service manual for even quite modern cars, you'll see a vast number of parts that need to be "inspected, replace if necessary" at various mileage intervals. Sensors, hoses, filters etc. All due to combinations of reciprocating motion, heat cycles, and chemical breakdown. Also you have to bear in mind that we are probably close to the peak of ICE technology. What we have now, we have after decades of development. Electric cars are already competitive after a couple of decades of serious R&D.
legitster 3y ago
The most I have ever spent on a car is $4000. And at that price I still expect to get another 60-80k out of a car. If an EV ever gets that cheap, I will be sure to give them a spin. But until then I will take their reliability claims with a grain of salt.
- jhoechtl 3y ago
  Absolutely. Will never come true for EVs even after inflation adapted
- uticus 3y ago
  $4000 for me meant something totally different 4 years ago, than what it means today. I used to expect to get a very used, high mileage but repairable and dependable vehicle for that amount with some effort searching. I can remember buying before internet, you could look at local paper or dealerships but the best hope for a larger pool of searching was phone calls, printed listings, etc. When internet searching really caught on I thought it would open up a larger market and drive prices down with the extra competition. Not sure to what extent that happened but in any event prices have done anything but go down over past 10-15 years, with a massive spike in prices especially past 4 years.
- tonyedgecombe 3y ago
  I do wonder if that end of the market is going to disappear. It’s going to be hard justifying spending $10k for a new battery when the car is only worth half that.
yardie 3y ago
A moderately popular ICE car[0] is shitting 5.6t of CO2 every year. You don't see that waste but it's all around you. [0]https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=45101 https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=45101
- cmrdporcupine 3y ago
  Unfortunately all efforts to make the population as a whole see/feel that waste -- in the form of appropriate carbon/fuel taxes and surcharges -- are likely to end in riots or deposed governments.
svnt 3y ago
I drive a 12-year-old EV. The very aged battery, which works fine for my use, is still worth as much as an entire comparable ICE economy car if I were to remove it and sell it. People use them in other projects where their energy density to cost is still reasonable. This is the worst-performing and shortest-lived lithium car battery produced in the past decade. All the recent ones are much better. You should examine your assumptions.
- Aperocky 3y ago
  How much miles do you get out of it? Or a better question, how much range was lost as a percentage compared to when it was originally released?
  - lnsru 3y ago
    First generation Leaf I guess. Without battery thermal management. I know a guy who has it. The car is good enough for daily commuting in the city.
r00fus 3y ago
> An under-discussed aspect of EVs, in my opinion, is the large amount of waste they will produce. Compare and contrast to the prodigious waste and pollution that the petroleum supply chain causes, I think it's a pittance. Batteries outlive an ICE lead-acid battery by about 5-10x. And the beauty of EVs is that everything is completely recyclable include, especially the battery.

cmrdporcupine 3y ago

I don't think is fair. We actually don't have a lot of data on real world battery lifetimes, but a properly engineered system with good heat & charge mgmt can last a decade for sure. There are 2011, 2012 Chevy Volts on the road like this, with minimal degradation, from my understanding. It is true that some manufacturers (cough cough Nissan) have been slack on the battery longevity front. But Tesla and GM at least put a lot of engineering into temperature and lifecycle mgmt and I expect others are now doing the same That and I'm sure in the long run, cost effective battery replacement will become entirely feasible in various manufacturer pipelines, once things mature and standardize. Meanwhile in an EV most other components will have a longer lifetime.

sangnoir 3y ago
Even early, pre-2013 Nissan Leafs with uncooled batteries have battery capacities that are holding up surprisingly well.

jopsen 3y ago

> I predict entire vehicles will be scrapped long before an equivalent ICE model would be. That's a easy prediction today with so many early EV models on the road. As the technology matures so will the life-span.

uoaei 3y ago

Does anyone have leads on where to find de-commissioned EV batteries for reuse as local energy storage? I want to hook some in to a renewable energy generation platform.

cmrdporcupine 3y ago
In general it's an ad-hoc market, but even eBay is fine for this. Lots of older Nissan and Volt cells available for sale. Challenge being shipping. I got a single Gen 1 Volt pack sitting in my shop, waiting for a project, and I got it for a good price off eBay two years ago, from a Canadian supplier so shipping was also domestic and reasonable. Quite handy. 48V, still has most of its capacity. Reasonable form factor to work with.
jhoechtl 3y ago
I predict that second hand business will be made illegal for whatever reasons ever not to endanger an economic potential IF <insert your country> will become serious at producing batteries.

laweijfmvo 3y ago

This seems wrong. Tesla has estimated their batteries to be good for over a million miles[1]. [1] https://www.electrive.com/2020/10/19/tesla-researchers-present-battery-with-2-million-mile-lifecycle https://www.electrive.com/2020/10/19/tesla-researchers-prese...

everdrive 3y ago
But are they good after 10, 15, or 20 years? A battery will wear out due to time alone. This is somewhat true for cars, but not in the same way. Most people will never drive a million miles, but many people will keep a car for 10-20 years.
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  There are still lots of 1st year Leafs with original batteries, so we know they last at least 12 years.
  - everdrive 3y ago
    That’s good to know. My LEAF is 6 years old, and has only lost one bar, leaving it with something like 92-93% of its original battery life, which is no major sacrifice. I do wonder how it will look when it reaches 10 years. I’d like to drive it as long as possible.

tclancy 3y ago

Isn't this offset by the much smaller number of moving parts that wear out?

porkbeer 3y ago
There are just as many moving parts in most evs as ice cars.

mschuster91 3y ago

> The batteries have much shorter lives than an ICE At least for Tesla, their batteries live very very long [1]. An ICE car with 500.000km on it would be by that point at the very least on their second engine and 3rd/4th clutch, probably on its second transmission, and god knows how many oil changes and belt replacements. A classic combustion engine consists of ~1.500 parts, some of which are under immense thermal and mechanical stress, and that's just the engine and engine-associated parts and doesn't include the whole exhaust management system with all its components. In contrast, electric engines are ~200 parts and have way less thermal stress. That marked difference in complexity is also the reason why classic ICE car dealerships are so furious about the switch to electric cars - there is, crash repairs aside, barely any maintenance and repair but tire, brake and air-condition fluid/filter changes to do on an electric vehicle. No oil changes, no AdBlue refills (at least pre-Dieselgate diesel cars with their cheating system only had AdBlue refills during regular maintenance), no DPF deep-cleaning, no engine rebuilds, no transmission/clutch fixes... On top of that, the batteries themselves are perfectly fine to re-use in a stationary scenario after their degradation makes them too incapable of using in an EV (=below 60% capacity). Even the first-generation base Model S battery with 60 kWh would still have 36 kWh - more than enough to cover a week worth of an entire household's consumption as a backup battery. [1] https://electrek.co/2020/06/06/tesla-battery-degradation-replacement/ https://electrek.co/2020/06/06/tesla-battery-degradation-rep...

jhoechtl 3y ago
What is your definition of part? Is a resistor on a PCB a part?
- injb 3y ago
  I presume he means parts are likely to need replacement- i.e. that either move or are susceptible to degradation from heat. If you have to replace a resistor that's a freak occurrence. Yes electic cars do have heat and moving parts but it's more manageable. Fewer moving parts, no reciprocation like connecting rods and valves, no vibrations to speak of, and lower temperatures. If you look at the service manual for even quite modern cars, you'll see a vast number of parts that need to be "inspected, replace if necessary" at various mileage intervals. Sensors, hoses, filters etc. All due to combinations of reciprocating motion, heat cycles, and chemical breakdown. Also you have to bear in mind that we are probably close to the peak of ICE technology. What we have now, we have after decades of development. Electric cars are already competitive after a couple of decades of serious R&D.

legitster 3y ago

The most I have ever spent on a car is $4000. And at that price I still expect to get another 60-80k out of a car. If an EV ever gets that cheap, I will be sure to give them a spin. But until then I will take their reliability claims with a grain of salt.

jhoechtl 3y ago
Absolutely. Will never come true for EVs even after inflation adapted
uticus 3y ago
$4000 for me meant something totally different 4 years ago, than what it means today. I used to expect to get a very used, high mileage but repairable and dependable vehicle for that amount with some effort searching. I can remember buying before internet, you could look at local paper or dealerships but the best hope for a larger pool of searching was phone calls, printed listings, etc. When internet searching really caught on I thought it would open up a larger market and drive prices down with the extra competition. Not sure to what extent that happened but in any event prices have done anything but go down over past 10-15 years, with a massive spike in prices especially past 4 years.
tonyedgecombe 3y ago
I do wonder if that end of the market is going to disappear. It’s going to be hard justifying spending $10k for a new battery when the car is only worth half that.

yardie 3y ago

A moderately popular ICE car[0] is shitting 5.6t of CO2 every year. You don't see that waste but it's all around you. [0]https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=45101 https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=45101

cmrdporcupine 3y ago
Unfortunately all efforts to make the population as a whole see/feel that waste -- in the form of appropriate carbon/fuel taxes and surcharges -- are likely to end in riots or deposed governments.

svnt 3y ago

I drive a 12-year-old EV. The very aged battery, which works fine for my use, is still worth as much as an entire comparable ICE economy car if I were to remove it and sell it. People use them in other projects where their energy density to cost is still reasonable. This is the worst-performing and shortest-lived lithium car battery produced in the past decade. All the recent ones are much better. You should examine your assumptions.

Aperocky 3y ago
How much miles do you get out of it? Or a better question, how much range was lost as a percentage compared to when it was originally released?
- lnsru 3y ago
  First generation Leaf I guess. Without battery thermal management. I know a guy who has it. The car is good enough for daily commuting in the city.

r00fus 3y ago

> An under-discussed aspect of EVs, in my opinion, is the large amount of waste they will produce. Compare and contrast to the prodigious waste and pollution that the petroleum supply chain causes, I think it's a pittance. Batteries outlive an ICE lead-acid battery by about 5-10x. And the beauty of EVs is that everything is completely recyclable include, especially the battery.