Not all roses & sunshine to own an EV. I went down the EV path starting in 2013 with a 24kWh Nissan LEAF S. While the annual tabs for my Prius II were about $140, the LEAF tabs were over $600, in part because the State of Washington applies special EV taxes because of lost revenue from gasoline sale taxes that EV drivers are no longer paying. But the $350 EV fees are the same as gasoline taxes paid on a 14 MPG truck driven 15,000 mi per year. Thats not even close to what the 24kWh LEAF could accomplish, especially not if you used the cabin heater or AC for defrosting the windows or cooling the cabin in hot summer weather.
The whole time we tried Nissan LEAF's we had our 2005 Prius II hybrid gasoline powered car, that now belongs to Meg's dad Allan. Along the way I had purchased a new 2015 Honda CR-z with 6sp manual transmission & it was not until I broke my right wrist & had ankle problems that I reluctantly traded it in
In 2018 I got a used 2015 Nissan LEAF SL with the 30kWh battery, and it boosted range about 30% all around vs the first one. Had a nicer ride & better performance & more features too. We traded this 30 kWh LEAF for Meg's 2010 Prius III which is still her daily, and our Road Trip car until just recently.
In early 2023 I purchased a used 2019 Nissan LEAF SV & loved it when I had a shorter daily commute of only 20 mi round trip total daily. Then we had to move further away to lower our monthly costs & the route became all highway at higher speeds on a more mountainous route. We traded this in for a lightly used 2022 Toyota Corolla Hybrid, that is currently getting more than 60 MPG real world.
EV's are promoted as some sort of eco-friendly vehicle alternative to gasoline powered conventional vehicles, but there is more to it than such a simplistic assumption.
First mining the extra copper, making all the extra computer chips, not to mention the cobalt, aluminum, nickel & gold for electrical contact corrosion prevention. Just the EV specific parts, especially the minerals in the permanent magnets in the EV motors IPM or Axial Flux, those require rare earth minerals like dysprosium, neodymium, boron, lanthanum, silicon, vanadium, cerium, gadolinium, scandium, gallium, indium, between the computer chips, motor controllers, battery chargers, BMS, ADAS, computers, the wheels, tires, metals or composites or plastics, cars or automobiles are not & never have and never will be truly eco-friendly like the lifestyle of an pre-modern indigenous person living off the land in small groups of people living in the Rainforests of South America.
People are toxic to the biosphere of the Earth because of War, genocide, crime, pollution & many other factors. Ever wonder where all those tire tread erosion products end up? Yes, vehicle tires are the leading source of microplastic emissions. The tread that wears off your vulcanized rubber car tires ends up going everywhere into nature, including into other people's bodies.
Sure, petrochemical fossil fuel-based gasoline has a lot of problems from the way the crude oil or petroleum is mined or pumped out of the ground, to the way oil refineries processes petrochemicals in ways that produce many toxic emissions.
When these fossil fuels are burned in engines air pollutants released are toxic to the environment, people & animals, fungi, insects, bacteria, tail pipe pollutants like CO2, NOX & SOX make rainwater acidic, causing accelerated rusting & corrosion of metal vehicles & infrastructure by damaging stone, concrete, rebar, steel & other materials commonly used in buildings.
Acid rain is also toxic to marine wildlife, causing the acidification of lakes, rivers, streams, tributaries, oceans & with the greenhouse gas effects of global warming, those carbon emissions are also melting Earth's ice caps, which in turn also progressively raises sea levels. Warming from carbon emissions also makes storm systems more powerful & damaging.
Longer drying droughts with more forest fires. More intense rain & flooding, really powerful tropical cyclones & hurricanes made more powerful as all the carbon burning released ancient sunlight chemical emissions that trap more of the Sun's energy in Earth's atmosphere.
These are facts from Science, not my personal political or otherwise biased opinion. It's called Climate Change & it's being made worse faster by people who protect the entrenchment of the carbon energy industry, including all the oil that goes into make modern EV's, which like I said before, are not ecofriendly.
Industrialization is toxic to the biosphere of Earth, bad for environmental health & bad for public. It is well documented in medicine & physiology science that carbon combustion pollutants cause diseases that are costly to societies, costly to government, costly to business, & painful & costly to families who lose a loved one to premature death from cancer cause by pollution exposure. With tail pipe emission in traffic congestion, I am talking about lung, kidney & brain cancers. I am talking about leukemia or cancer of the blood or born marrow. I am talking about lymphoma or lymphatic cancers. Asthma, COPD, stoke, clotting & embolism, all of these medical conditions worsened by patient exposure to common pollutants.
If it was GGS or Guns, Germs & Steel back then, today its OVPCC or Overpopulation, Viral Pathogens, & Climate Change. The enormous & increasing scale of human activity, growing demand for more electricity, increasing global demand for automobiles, demand for advanced housing with utilities, stabile power, water, natural gas, sewer systems, & high-speed internet to stream 4K content to large LED LCD flatscreens or OLED TV or monitors. Fridge, microwave, dishwasher, content, stress, expense, failing fiat currencies, toxic negative news 24/7, it's enough to drive any reasonable person MAD & mental illness on the rise just like public mass shootings & other chaos & entropy trends. God never been rejected in more ways.
Not exactly roses & sunshine & no amount of EV's going to solve all those problems, especially given that the higher instant torque of EV motors shreds the tire tread off faster than ever before, noting also that longer range EV's are heavier, slow to charge, expensive, and scrub away microplastics off the tires faster. Sure, when charged up with renewables, the EV is a better solution, but the world we live in today is still largely energized by coal power, natural gas peek-er plant power production, gasoline, diesel & jet fuel.
Noting also that there is no practical way to upgrade every vehicle in the world with EV propulsion. It takes decades to phase out antiquated entrenched ideas like Diesel and a scandal like Diesel Gate emissions Cheating by VW to kick off the political persecution of bad dirty technology. Besides, diesel engine vehicles are better for pulling a boat, RV or heavy equipment, not as a passenger vehicle to ferry around people & small amounts of goods.
Slow Recharging does not match a 10-minute gasoline refueling session that adds hundreds of miles of range in a few minutes during a normal gas station sale of gasoline pumped into our Toyota Hybrid vehicles for example.
There are emerging 1MW level 5 charging station technologies in early commercialization, but the cables are liquid cooled & thicker than a fire hose & heavier still. Even Level 4 at 800kW not a big thing. Even level 3 chargers with 50-350kW are not nearly as common as the much slower level 2 public chargers at only serve about 20-60 miles or charge range per hour of charging! Thats way slower than gasoline vehicle refueling sessions.
Meg & I took her 10 Prius III all over America last summer, some 8,800 miles worth & two oil changes along the way, once like MacGyver by yours truly in some very rural area, once at an oil change shop in a big city. Prius III gave us 48.9 MPG average over the entire epic road trip.
Mixing LFP with NMC so the LFP cycles for shorter range use & the NMC helps to keep the LFP full for longer trips, the hybrid battery technology emerging going to be used in IX BMW EV's soon. Toyota coming out with solid state lithium-ion battery electric & hybrid & plug-in hybrid vehicles starting in 2025 ^^
I think super capacitors & ultra capacitors can improve EV' energy storage systems, with more peak power output & faster charging or much higher current absorbing during regenerative brake energy capture. The capacitors can reduce loads on the LFP & or NMC, making the batteries last even longer.
Better motor controllers with SiC transistors, enhanced software motor control, better motors & better batteries, EV's will continue to improve for hundreds of years. Eventually the BEV will be better than conventional vehicles running on synthetic or biological gasoline, long after petrochemical fuels have been phased out, banned to motorsports obscurity or outlawed.
Automakers love turbo-charging the 2L engine which is used today in more than 700 different automobile models. GDI got going 2011 when Hyundai had the bravado to give it a try in low-cost car engine applications, where it was previously only used in aerospace engines. Sadly, without gasoline port injection, the intake valve seats tend to get coke soot deposition that reduces engine compression & causes many other problems.
Better engine setups include a valve cleaning gasoline intake injector to prevent valve seat carbon buildup blockages. Better emissions controls clean up the tail pipe emissions to make lower toxicity exhaust gases that are less dangerous. Consider how a catalytic converted converts oxides of nitrogen or NOX emissions back into N2 and o2 safe nitrogen & oxygen gas. Continually variable valves, HCCI, SCI, new adaptive multi-mapping ECU modes, laser ignition, microwave ignition, higher compression gasoline engines, multi fuel engines & more :)
I will stick with our 10 Prius II & 22 Corolla Hybrid for a long time while EV continue to improve in all the ways mentioned above. Gasoline engines will continue to improve. Consider the Dynamic Force engines from Toyota Today with over 41% thermal efficiency. That GR Corolla looking even more sexy if it gets better fuel economy when driven normally in traffic, but still gives audacious fun performance when you get after it on a dirt road rally racing style :)
I am reminded of some hyper efficient supercars from Koenigsegg or that XL1 from VW. They really can make exceptional technology (Tesla Model Y) when they try, says Sandy Monro & associates in their related review videos of the Model S, 3, X & Y or SEXY if you will. Yes, BEV's can be dope, fresh, sic, ill, nifty or cool depending on your era, slang usage, thoughts & ect.
Solar Electric cars covered in CIGS modules, 5-15kW of high efficiency solar PV parked outside all the time, when the sky is bright, to capture those solar photons into the SBEV battery to use to drive the vehicle down the road later. Energy capture & energy saver. Efficiency means not being wasteful in order to spend less or safe more or become more capital efficient by lowering long term operating costs. Think like a business & save even more by fully using all you equipment from new till end of life. This is why I like reliable automobiles Made in Japan by Toyota :) say Lowest Total Lifetime Costs :) LCO or LTC :) Again, frugal, cheapskate, wise, tightwad, efficient. Hypermiling to go further with less fuel & lower emissions.
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