EV Batteries Are Dangerous to Repair. Here’s Why Mechanics Are Doing So Anyway
EV Batteries Are Dangerous to Repair. Here’s Why Mechanics Are Doing So Anyway
Fixing car and e-bike batteries saves money and resources, but challenges are holding back the industry
Fixing car and e-bike batteries saves money and resources, but challenges are holding back the industry
Jacking Up a Car Is Dangerous. Here's Why Mechanics Are Doing So Anyway
M.O.N.E.Y.
Yep. Other than thrill seekers, the only reason any business does something is for the money. If you can go, "Hey, you don't need to spend $12k on a new battery pack! Bring it down to Bubba's Batteries Bazaar and we can fix it for less!", you will get business.
C.R.E.A.M.
Yeah, thats pretty much it. Doesnt VW repair or recycle their own batteries?
Eh. That's not really comparable to lithium-ion batteries. Lithium-ion batteries are similar to bombs in that they're highly dense stores of energy. If something goes wrong and that energy storage medium gets exposed to air, or there's a failure in a charging safety mechanism, that's a chemical fire at best, explosion at worse, but no matter what, it's extremely toxic.
Acetylene and oxygen is also explosive, but you’re still allowed to have it and use it. Battery acid is extremely corrosive and poisonous. Gasoline is extremely flammable. A garage is filled with dangers. If you can’t service a lithium-ion battery in a safe way, you shouldn’t do it, just like you shouldn’t service your brakes if you don’t know what you’re doing.
Lol. A single gallon of gasoline contains approximately 34khw of energy. An EV with ~300 miles of range, will have a battery with between 80 and 100 khw. Or the same potential energy as about 3 gallons of gas.
People are familiar with gas, so it seems safe. But every gas tank is a literal bomb, and that's just for a car. I have no idea how big the storage tanks at gas stations are, but I'm assuming there's enough explosive in there to level a couple hundred square feet if one of those goes.
Lead-acid batteries also present a risk of explosion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead–acid_battery#Risk_of_explosion
That's why you attach jumper cables to the dead battery first.
A car sitting 6 feet in the air is also a highly dense storage of energy that could be released at any moment. I do get your point, but there are ways to mitigate the dangers associated with working on a pack, and they're not as volatile as you think. Being exposed to air isn't going to cause a cell to explode as the lithium is mixed with other chemicals inside the cell to make it fairly inert. The danger comes from short circuits, whether it be a puncture or bridging contacts with something conductive.
Have you ever attached jumper cables to a dead lead-acid battery?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead–acid_battery#Risk_of_explosion
The whole repair thing should made super easy if we want EVs to succeed.
- Make all batteries use an easily swappable set of standard cell sizes.
- Make battery controllers standardised and swappable.
- …. Er… that’s it.
But that will never happen because the EV manufacturers couldn't charge ridiculous amounts of money for proprietary batteries.
Make all cars rechargeable with a single charging port. And that port should be USB-C
I've said it before, and I'll say it again allow.. cars with CATL or Nio battery swap cassettes into the US.. It is so dumb that there are different battery setups for every manufacturer .. In a Nio I can swap batteries for less than a pack of beer.. Why not do that instead of this current BS system where you have only one pack and once that is done it is $10k
This was posted to one of the communities I sub to a day ago: https://spectrum.ieee.org/flow-battery-2666672335
This would probably be the best option if it takes off.
Is it money?
Is it money? I bet it's money
Mostly it's money for the consumer. I have a Prius so it might be a little different. But when the hybrid battery goes out costs something like $7,000 to have it replaced. A mechanic in town will repair it for $1000.
Now my car isn't worth $7000 so if I had to replace the battery then I would just get a new car and this one might end up in the scrap heap. In getting it repaired I have gotten something like 6 more years out of it, at least, and that's a pretty significant environmental savings.
And that's essentially what the article is saying.
A battery that is utter trash for driving purposes still has tons of life left for other uses.
So it is about money.
A Subscription Is Required to Continue Reading
A Subscription Is Required to Continue Reading
Interesting.
First of all apparently ublock, no script, or some combination of my add-ons kept me from seeing the message and I'm able to view the entire article.
Even more interesting is this text at the end of the article-
This story was originally published by Grist, a nonprofit media organization covering climate, justice, and solutions.
So this source basically spun an article from Grist and put it behind their paywall.
Following the link from Scientific American, the first line of the Grist article is-
This story was co-published with WIRED.
It's clowns the whole way down, yaaaaar.
We should all strive for this level of rigor when understanding sources of articles online.
The world would be so much better.
A Continuation is Read To Require Subscription
Worked fine for me! I’m not a subscriber to SA.
Because that's literally a mechanic's job.
I loved how Renault solved this for the Twizzy (and other cars). You bought the car. You leased the battery for something like 50 euros a month. (Probably more now).
Sure, that sounds expensive, but I suspect it worked out less than replacing the battery after a decade.
Suspect it also helped resale value. The most expensive repair to worry about for a second hand buyer, is the battery. Making that a lease removes that worry entirely. You know exactly how much it's going to cost.
Of course, having to pay that monthly lease fee for the battery, does make it more obvious that electric cars aren't necessarily that much cheaper to run than an ICE.
I've got enough subscriptions in my life. 50 euros a month would be 6000 euros after 10 years (figure a couple years more than the 8-year warranty in the US) that could be put towards a refurbished battery if the car needed one at that point. The reality is, on a 10-year-old car, a little range degradation isn't a huge deal, especially if that car is being driven around town and can be charged nightly. I'd rather own the things I buy, and not pay to be tied into yet another monthly bill.
We have an BMW i3. 8 years old. Battery is fine. But car is written off now because the inverter failed. 11k€ repair. Worst part is that due to BMW software locks it’s almost impossible for third party repair to work on the car. Any replaced part needs to be “blessed” by BMW.
That's the bullshit we should be focusing on. And not only in the EV space. See John Deere
whatever happened to Teslas distributed powergrid? Now that was a game changer, offloading the cost of the battery entirely could have made EVs actually affordable.
It's up and running for the Powerwall, on some grids anyway (it works in my state - but depends on having an agreement with the grid).
The thing is there needs to be coordination between your battery and the grid - you don't to drain your battery every night, they only last about 4,000 cycles.
If every home in the state had a Powerwall, then maybe it could help provide baseload power but the reality right now is all it can do is help with temporary disruptions, for example keeping the grid up when a cloud passes over a major solar farm.
They're in the planning stages of doing Vehicle to Grid or V2G power. Right now though, it's just for standalone batteries. This isn't just Tesla by the way - when it comes it'll likely be for most EVs.
EVs are still much cheaper to run than ICEs though. Yes the battery is an expensive replacement but maintenance is still much cheaper because they don't have gearboxes, clutches, turbo chargers, catalytic converters, particulate filters, spark plugs, engine oil, timing belts, head gaskets, cylinders, exhausts, etc. etc.
It's cheaper, but not that much cheaper. Anecdotally, my current car is 8 years old and has cost me roughly 400 euros a year in repairs and servicing. Manual gearbox is fine and should outlast the car.
Also, if I do a simulation for extended warranty and servicing (8 years/210k km) on the manufacturers website for a petrol car and for an equivalent electric car, the difference is roughly 600 euros per year. I suspect that'll be down to the battery. Traditional car the costs are spread over a longer period. Electric the battery or whatever sneaks up on you. The whole thing becomes doubly annoying when you factor in high electricity prices, meaning (sometimes) fuel costs are lower than electricity costs.
To be clear, electric is the future, it's a good thing they'll be banning the sale of new ICE cars here in the foreseeable future, and an electric car almost certainly is cheaper to run. It's just not _that _much cheaper. I assume prices will come down when they're forced to start making more of them and competing with the Chinese.
Danger, Danger, High Voltage!
Although it annoys me that mechanics consider even 400V "high" voltage. HV is supposed to be 1,000V, minimum.
400V is dangerous though. The traditional 12V is not.
Absolutely, but 400V isn't as dangerous as 1,000V. IEC standards have already established all of this, above 1,000V is HV, below 50V is ELV and generally safe. Automotives have come in and labelled anything above like 24V as "HV", which is just silly.
Support right to repair. You wouldn't have to deal with this shit.
LMAO