Electric Vehicles

I’m a vampire, so I only drive at night.

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I’m a vampire too. Sadly, the way my eyes react to those damned LED headlights, I have to avoid driving at night.

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I hear that, even the brake lights are too much.

Tesla lights are incredibly bright. I aim mine down lower than factory settings, and the new matrix feature helps me not blind folks, it’s actually quite impressive.

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Same here. I hate those headlights.

I had to double check, I thought my home battery was lithium ion, and it appears it indeed is. I recalled being a little surprised when they installed it that it wasn’t LFP. It was just installed this year, and my understanding is that LFP is cheaper and a little more durable than lithium.

This is the battery my utility installed, that I pay $10/mo for. Thus far we haven’t had a power outage since it was installed but we average 1-2 outages per year. The worst so far in the 5 years we’ve been here was about 28 hours without power.

LFP is also less energy-dense than LiCoMn and other Li combos, but that’s less of a consideration in a stationary application.

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I came very close to pulling the trigger for this car, but am happy my wife torpedoed the idea. This is a big time fail by Musk.

https://www.techspot.com/news/110093-tired-waiting-75-years-sam-altman-tries-ndash.html

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So, how close are we to solid state batteries? They’ve been teasing those for years.

25 years sooner than fusion.

I have a theory that Toyota kept saying ‘two to three years away, wait for it!’ as a tactic to keep selling ICE cars, Toyota is really dragging their feet on EVs.

I think the holy grail type of solid state batteries is more like 5-10 years out. But there are some manufacturers saying semi-solid state batteries using manganese instead of lithium will be here in a year or two, with energy density that might be 20-30% above what is normal now.

Toyota knows the market well, sells hybrids and PHEVs like no tomorrow. Also, their cars don’t self-immolate.

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Here’s an article about a Chinese manufacturer claiming to be in production mode.

The article also claims two of the biggest, CATL and BYD, are looking at 2027 production, with mass production by 2030.

I hate that for now the only way to go full EV is to give China money. On the other hand, it’s basically impossible to boycott made-in-China without stopping buying basically everything.

I bought a hybrid last year so I’m not on the market right now, but we’ll see where the industry – or my lottery-ing – is in a few years.

2030 has been bandied about by a few companies for the last few months. If they start saying 2031 next year, the answer would always be “n+5 years” where n is the current year. At least it’s an improvement on nuclear fusion (as @SteveGrondin mentioned), which was “n+30 years”.

https://www.autoevolution.com/news/what-s-wrong-with-toyota-suvs-18-million-american-rav4-suvs-are-at-risk-of-catching-fire-223842.html

Shit, all cars are at risk of catching fire, cuz gasoline.

Not really Toyota’s fault, but they pony up to fix it anyway.

More to the point, the carmaker somehow found out that some of the replacement 12-volt batteries have smaller dimensions than the ones normally used on the SUVs. It means that whenever a standard battery is replaced with these faulty ones, there is a risk that the hold-down clamps won’t tighten correctly.

EVs don’t use gasoline. Studies show that hybrids are more than 100 times likely to catch on fire than EVs.

An additional study by that agency and an American insurer found that just 25 out of 100,000 EVs suffer fire damage.

By comparison, 1530 per 100,000 ICE cars experience fire, and hybrid vehicles suffer a much higher risk of 3475 per 100,000​​​.

Tesla makes cars in the US

GM also makes a lot of EVs here, including manufacturing the batteries in TN. Rivian and Lucid are made in the US, but I don’t know where they source the batteries. I think every Tesla sold in the US is made in the US, mine was made at the Fremont plant in CA.

I guess it’s kind of hard to completely avoid China, I assume these cars might use Chinese motors to fold and unfold the mirrors, or whatever. And it’s possible that even if the batteries are made in the US, it’s with Chinese lithium. But I don’t know that EVs are materially worse here, ICE cars are also ‘made in the US from foreign and domestic components.’

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yeah but not an SUV form that isn’t the Cyberjunk