Electric Car News
- Thread starter Kyle
- Start date
kwillia
n/a
Is anybody really shocked or surprised?
What Ponsin didn’t know was that Tesla employees had been instructed to thwart any customers complaining about poor driving range from bringing their vehicles in for service. Last summer, the company quietly created a “Diversion Team” in Las Vegas to cancel as many range-related appointments as possible.
The Austin, Texas-based electric carmaker deployed the team because its service centers were inundated with appointments from owners who had expected better performance based on the company’s advertised estimates and the projections displayed by the in-dash range meters of the cars themselves, according to several people familiar with the matter.
Electric cars can lose driving range for a lot of the same reasons as gasoline cars — but to a greater degree. The cold is a particular drag on EVs, slowing the chemical and physical reactions inside their batteries and requiring a heating system to protect them. Other drains on the battery include hilly terrain, headwinds, a driver’s lead foot and running the heating or air-conditioning inside the cabin.
www.reuters.com
What Ponsin didn’t know was that Tesla employees had been instructed to thwart any customers complaining about poor driving range from bringing their vehicles in for service. Last summer, the company quietly created a “Diversion Team” in Las Vegas to cancel as many range-related appointments as possible.
The Austin, Texas-based electric carmaker deployed the team because its service centers were inundated with appointments from owners who had expected better performance based on the company’s advertised estimates and the projections displayed by the in-dash range meters of the cars themselves, according to several people familiar with the matter.
Electric cars can lose driving range for a lot of the same reasons as gasoline cars — but to a greater degree. The cold is a particular drag on EVs, slowing the chemical and physical reactions inside their batteries and requiring a heating system to protect them. Other drains on the battery include hilly terrain, headwinds, a driver’s lead foot and running the heating or air-conditioning inside the cabin.
Tesla’s secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints
About a decade ago, Tesla rigged the dashboard readouts in its electric cars to provide “rosy” projections of how far owners can drive before needing to recharge, a source told Reuters.
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China Looks to Flood U.S. Market with Cheap Electric Vehicles
Chinese automakers are looking to flood the United States market with cheap Electric Vehicles (EVs) as President Joe Biden’s administration has made a rapid all-electric, green energy push without having first ensured domestic manufacturing capacity.
According to Axios, Chinese automakers like BYD Co. Ltd., Li Auto, Xpeng Motors, Nio Inc., and Geely are looking to the U.S. market to sell cheap EVs to Americans as the Biden administration makes its push for an all-electric economy.
“William Li, CEO of Chinese EV company Nio, recently told the Financial Times that the U.S. should offer Chinese EVs equal access to the American market, arguing that carmakers shouldn’t be victims of U.S.-China political tensions,” Axios reports:
Breakthrough In Supercapacitor Technology Could Energy Storage
By Brian Westenhaus - Jul 23, 2023, 12:00 PM CDT- Led by Luis Echegoyen, Ph.D., from UTEP and Marta Plonska-Brzezinska, Ph.D., from Poland, the team developed a supercapacitor that achieved a record level of energy storage, or capacitance.
- Unlike batteries that use chemical transformations to store and retrieve energy, supercapacitors use oppositely charged surfaces, allowing them to charge much faster than batteries.
- The new supercapacitor uses a carbon "nano-onion" core structure to create multiple pores, enabling it to store a greater volume of energy, potentially revolutionizing energy storage in electronics and electrical systems.
Supercapacitors are devices that store electrical energy between two metal plates that are close together but separated by a surface that cannot conduct electricity. Supercapacitors are similar to batteries, except that batteries store and retrieve energy using chemical transformations, while capacitors store energy by using oppositely charged surfaces. They are frequently used in machines that require rapid discharge of energy, like electric cars, buses, trains and cranes.
Echegoyen, a longtime faculty member within UTEP’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry noted, “This is a big step forward and gets us closer to achieving supercapacitors with high energy density, which would radically change how we store and manage energy.”
Supercapacitors have high potential because they can charge much faster than batteries – within seconds to fractions of a second, according to Echegoyen. However, current supercapacitors can only store a low amount of energy, which limits their range of potential applications. If supercapacitors could be designed to store more energy, they would be physically lighter and charge much faster than batteries, which would have a significant commercial impact, according to scientists.
The new supercapacitor designed by Echegoyen and Plonska-Brzezinska achieved a record level of storage, or capacitance, using a material with a carbon “nano-onion” core structure, which creates multiple pores that allow storage of a greater volume of energy.
glhs837
Power with Control
Ah, data. Gotta love. 5,000 owners, cars five years old, and they have been super reliable and the people still love them. Note this was a Bloomberg survey and there's a link to the data.
www.teslarati.com
Tesla Model 3 proves amazingly reliable in long-term ownership survey
The Tesla Model 3 is the battery electric vehicle that effectively brought EVs to the mainstream auto market.
www.teslarati.com
LightRoasted
If I may ...
For your consideration ...
Will be waiting for the "super capacitor" pop. Just like those little ones do at times with just a little pop and smoke. And since everything nowadays is manufactured minimally to the lowest cost, I'd image a "super capacitor" popping off would go more like a mini explosion.
Will be waiting for the "super capacitor" pop. Just like those little ones do at times with just a little pop and smoke. And since everything nowadays is manufactured minimally to the lowest cost, I'd image a "super capacitor" popping off would go more like a mini explosion.
glhs837
Power with Control
Yeah, like flywheels and hydrogen, the risk math doesn't work for me. Same math between hurricanes and earthquakes. One, it just happens and it's a crapshoot, the other you see coming and have time to take action.
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Setting off electrolytic capacitors was a fun past time in my electronics class.
run a plug to one of them, controlled by a switch and wait for the fun to begin.
some of the big cans like they used in tube style televisions would go off so hot they leave a black mark on the table.
Still Junk! But keep up your boot licking for the cause.Ah, data. Gotta love. 5,000 owners, cars five years old, and they have been super reliable and the people still love them. Note this was a Bloomberg survey and there's a link to the data.
Tesla Model 3 proves amazingly reliable in long-term ownership survey
The Tesla Model 3 is the battery electric vehicle that effectively brought EVs to the mainstream auto market.
glhs837
Power with Control
Nope just EV's.The junk here just might be your biased judgement.
glhs837
Power with Control
Yeah. So, most of these losses are due to build out of production. Lots of investment required once you figure out you cant just slap battery into the ICE body and make money. You need to tear out entire production lines, build new factories for battery production or hire a third party, which means sharing profit with them.
But even so, I don't think Fords making much, if any money on each EV they sell. Ford themselves have stated they hope to be making a 8% profit on EVs by 2026. Spotted a nice red Z4 in Fords lot on 235 coming home. Decided to see how much they wanted for that. Going in, saw six different Mach-Es on the lot. Decided to see what markup hell led to that. Not marked up at all. But the problem is, even building them in Mexico the price on the lowest spec was 47K. The other problem is that making them in Mexico to keep costs down means no $7500 tax credit. And they have little to no margin to cut prices to compete with anyone, let alone Tesla. Who are still making 19% profit even after the price cuts. GM is still learning this lesson also. I'm not sure Stellantis has even started figuring it out.
A brand new Model y with a 2K pint job and a 6K advanced autopilot option that gets well over 300 miles of range compared to the MAch-Es 247 miles range, crushes in in 0-60 can be had for right around 40K after the federal rebate. Thats one reason Ford cant sell Mach-es. Hell, a Model Y Performance with a $1000 dollar paint job and the 6K AAP comes in at 47K. Why the heck would you buy the less advanced, slowed, lower range Ford?
PeoplesElbow
Well-Known Member
Something goes wrong with the Ford I can take it right there on RT235 a couple miles away. I didn't buy a Honda because the closest Honda garage is in Waldorf.
glhs837
Power with Control
I see your point. My calculation would take into account that I would live with the effects of higher price and lower range every day, in return for the rare benefit of closer service and repair, which on an EV should have a much lower incidence. But everyone has different thoughts on that.
PeoplesElbow
Well-Known Member
I never understood the people down here the buy a new Mercedes or BMW and have to take it to Alexandria all the time. I get the enthusiasts that buy ones that are five years old and cheap as dirt because they lost all their value, but the people that pay $100k for a new one and have to take it 2hours away quite often.... Had a coworker that bought a convertible M3, she cursed that car all the time, most of the issue she had was just the logistics of getting it there.
Sneakers
Just sneakin' around....
I had to buy my Slingshot in Unionville, VA because there weren't any closer dealers, except up by Manassas. I still get recalls and service done there. It's 2 hours out and 2 hours back plus the wait time. If it's a long job, I trailer it out and leave it overnight. I make a day out of the trip, so it's not painful, and the drive is rather pleasant thru VA.