I guess, just to show me I am wrong 
Groetnis
At last, an EV caught my attention. Love that flat windscreen, reminds me of brown bulletproof trucks.
Sign me up too.
And I agree with Plonkster, it shows what can be done.
The first prize for me, convert ICE cars to EVs.
Or get an EV with OLI tech, that can be driven for decades ā¦ still like that windscreen. Damn, it is cool.
I have one main reason for wanting an EV. Because starting a Diesel car twice a day to drive a total of 10km is not only stupid, it is bad for the car too.
Fuel savings and being able to charge with solar (and never having to dodge a beggar while filling up at the local BP again) just add to it.
Being green and saving the earthā¦ I must admit those are rather low on the list.
When good affordable second-hand EVs drop into the sub-400k bracket, Iām seriously considering it.
On this topic, I was watching this video this morning, and he points out something a lot of people miss about Hybrids (something which is true about EVs as well). Do you know that a Hybrid as no Starter? It has no alternator, traditional water pump. No drive belt. And the brakes last forever too. Everyone is so worried about the electrical system (which lasts just fine as long as you take care of it), and they forget that in many other ways the cars are so much simpler.
Man, dont mistake my critique and dislike for that particular example, and itās not in production, as any negative view of EVs. I would prefer to buy my next car as an EV. Not giving up anything I currently own, but as the ideal runabout.
On my list is good crash performance, good efficiency, 300km range, home charge capability and a reasonable price. On price around R300k to say R350k. And the damn thing should look good, not like age and be outdated from a design aesthetic point. This Oly will be like a sore thumb in a few years.
Groetnis
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Itās a concept carā¦ I posted it without comment to see what you guys say.
I like that itās a bit of a reset of what we mean by ācarā without being a complete dinky toy.
But production model this certainly isnāt. Iām keen to see what survives focus group testing.
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Ireland has nothing else but diesel cars. They must have been sold the most economical pitch for this to have happenedā¦ 
I actually find a diesel to be only fuel efficient when cruising on the highway. For city driving, i.e. stop-go and short distances, it doesnāt seem to be. My Ford 2l bi-turbo (go ahead, judge away all you Toyota people 
) gets me under 9l/100km when I drive a long distance (Iāve managed under 8 before to Robertson) and keep my speed ~100km/h. In the city, especially Bellville/Durbanville area, which isnāt what you would call āflatā, I get 15l/100km on shorter distances, 12/13 otherwise. Pretty sure this is just about what a 4.0l petrol Prado would get as well.
Diesel engines seem to take much longer to heat up (probably a lot heavier) as well, which will surely contribute to poor longevity in city conditions.
Another data point for consideration as me thinks this is always left out for consideration.
Most ICE cars, and hybrids, need service intervals of lets say once a year or 15-20k km. EVās are serviced at a much longer timespan both in knm and time.
Now for the ill considered part. Lifespan of ICE compared to EVās and financial RoI. For most ICE and Hybrid cars, life duration is 250k km or say 10 years at 20k km/year. EoL is whenever that car is no longer reliable/maintainable. Obviously that will differ for different people, just look at them jalopies on the road.
EVās will likely last between 500k and 1million km. For normal consumers, this is almost indefinite. Reliability is better just from the less complex and fewer parts perspective. EVās lifespan is likely 4x that of ICE. So in calculating TCO and ROI, me thinks this factor is left out.
Groetnis
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That wonāt make any difference: These are positional goods. Look how they sell you another cellphone with no extra capabilities when the old model was doing just fineā¦
I spend my life getting all the hand-me-downs from the ācontractsā that my family have entered into.
But with that kind of lifespan I see upgrades happening at life-stage changes, i.e. working, married, kids, promotion, oops more kids, empty nest, etc. So I think the 2nd-hand market will do pretty well in couple of years.
We might even see longer financing terms offered; itās already happening with bigger and bigger balloon payments ā essentially a break between finance rounds.
Youāll always get people that buy the latest and greatest. Donāt judge, let people enjoy things 
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Current thinking yes, agreed. But as the shift happens, people will re-evaluate that position. Let me position the following as well: Transport as a service, no not Uber, but that gives you the idea. Will this work in SA? 
TaaS will make use of the 500K km cars, it should work out vastly cheaper just ordering a car for a trip, heck even Uber will get vastly cheaper. Buy 1 x car as EV vs 4x ICE cars. And then the life cycle cost and running cost differencesā¦
Groetnis
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In the video it is sort of hinted (at 10:30) that this is a test bed to develop features for the 2024 C3. So we will probably not see the Oli, but we may see a C3 with some of these features.
Indeed, it has a very Hummer H1 look to it.
It is not so much the āDieselā part. Petrol cars are really the same. When an engine is cold, it wears faster (thatās just physics), and an engine that spends the majority of its life at lower temperatures wear way faster (per km) than one doing longer distances. Diesel engines additionally tend to carbon up a little, especially those with EGR (which is all of them these days), and petrol cars tend to run rich while cold and some of that fuel gets into the oil and contaminate/dilute it. You can actually SMELL the petrol in the oil if you pull the dipstick on such cars.
Now Petrol cars have a PCV system (positive crankcase ventilation) to suck all those petrol fumes out of the crank case and burn it, but again, for that to work, the engine needs to get up to proper operating temperature.
Also, your catalytic converter (thankfully on the Diesel side weāre Euro level 4, no DPFs or DCATs, at least not on Toyotas), they donāt like a rich mixture.
So in addition to Sarelās point about longer service intervals, and my point about having much less things to go wrongā¦ that little niggly issue of a battery that could fail (and I still want to find out if that is not perhaps an insurable event)ā¦ it may not matter at all.
Plus, once we make this transitionā¦ politically weāre no longer under the thumb of oil producers. At least, much less so.
I keep my phones around 4 years. At the end of every cycle I briefly consider just buying the handset, but every time I end up with another contract, because the total value (they always throw in a heap of data and airtime) tends to make it worth it. I treat my phones well (never run the battery down to zero), and after 4 years they still show no battery issues. Which is another reason I donāt always understand the anti-EV naysayers telling us that these batteries will fail left right and centerā¦ my cell phone batteries, which I treat well, already donāt fail. Youāre telling me the much more expensive battery (with active cooling) in the EV is going to be worse? Come onā¦ pull the other one, it plays the banjo.
One should not look at oneās own good habits, then extrapolate the rest to do the same.
I will take a bet, the majority will run out of battery life and blame everything else they can think of, forgetting that the car cannot charge itself, needs the owner to plug it in.
We see it on newbiesā solar systems too, at least, in the beginning.
More of this needs to actually happen in the real world so we can get some stats. Itās been years, and there still isnāt enough data, which may be data in itself.
Iām wondering how many batteries will fail outright, i.e. it needs to go in the shredder. Could it be repaired and placed back in the same vehicle? Refurbished by the manufacturer? By someone else?
Basically, if your EV battery fails, is the value zero? 80%? 10%?
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I disagree. What is probably going to happen is people will plug the car in when they get home. Like people plug in their cell phone when they go to bed. They will leave the house every morning with a full battery. The majority of trips will be far below the 250km (or so) range of a small EV, so these cars will rarely be cycled deeply.
Of course there is always the minority, the people who are perpetually running on an empty tank, who forget to plug the car inā¦ only to discover too late that they donāt have the range to get to workā¦ and now there is load-sheddingā¦ in which case they will of course blame Eskom rather than their own forgetfulness. We all know these people existā¦ occasionally I do such things myself (eg forget to start the dishwasher), but I think the habit will develop quickly.
How many people leave the home in the morning with a full tank every single day?
Of course, thereās always people with zero mechanical sympathy. People who kill a set of brakes in under 35 000km, a clutch in under 100 000km, and a set of tyres every year.
The number I hear repeatedly is āthe battery is half the cost of the carā. By that metric, the car is worth less than 50% of the original value when the battery fails. But the same is true for a car with an engine failure, if you really think about it. Iām not going to buy a car for the original value minus the cost of a new engine. Iām going to account for the time, trouble and risk of buying a car on which I need to do an engine swap. What usually happens, is the original owner does the cheapest thing he can get away with to get the car out the doorā¦
Man, see this; Tesla data shows battery degradation is limited but not all packs are created equal | Electrek
Groetnis
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Now donāt everybody groan at the same time. 
Tesla data is the only publicly available data, this due to the fact that itās likely the larges number of EVās and by far the oldest that have data available.
Groetnis
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But chances are the battery itself if worth 60% of the value (in another form - 2nd life)
That is where the industry will setup up and repurpose EV batteriesā¦
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It is indeed possible that you will (at some point) go to a service center, get a āscrapā value for your old battery (much like you already do with a lead acid battery, or even a bad engine), and you will pay only the difference on the new pack. This will indeed greatly reduce the impact of a battery swap, and it is something that is not at all (yet) accounted for in the horror stories we hear of someone who had to pay for a new pack.
You will probably get quite a bit more for your old lithium battery (compared to lead acid, where youāre really selling the scrap lead), but Iām not sure if youāll get 60%. Letās say the battery is EOL at 80% original capacity (pretty common), at which point a recycler who wants to make a profit will maybe give you half of that, or 40%. Still, even if I am a little less optimistic on how much people will be willing to pay for the old battery, I do think a combination of cheaper batteries and getting money for the old one will more than halve battery costs.
A thought experiment is in order then. If a replacement battery for a Nissan Leaf is 200k (it is), and we postulate that in the near future that might be as little as 100kā¦ is that cheap enough not to scare people? Thatās probably going to be one of those āit dependsā things. If I save over 20k a year in maintenance and fuel costs, then after 5 years or so I technically saved enough for a battery replacement. If you are the kind of person who look at car ownership in such a long-term way, then yes, halving the battery cost may well do it.
And alsoā¦ I am still wondering about the possibility of insurance. There may be a business opportunity there: battery pack insurance. All you need is someone to put a risk on it, and work out a price, and as long as that monthly premium is less than the cost on the old ICE carā¦ it makes financial sense to the person who doesnāt have a 100k in savings somewhere.
In all my āresearchā a few years ago when Trojan T105REs were the rage vs today, Lifepo4 weighs a ātonā less, but the cost is a lot more.
Two factors play heavily with EVs.
- Weight of the vehicle
- Range needed to drive, keeping the weight in mind
Both of these impact heavily on the cost of the batteries, roughly Ā±50% of the EV cost, and also apply to conversions.
Phoned around a few months ago to have Lifepo4 recycled. Today, you have to pay for it to be recycled, not be paid for the scrap.
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