High car payment? No problem…

[2kwik4u]

$30k for almost 90,000 miles on a 6 year old Electric Vehicle, and a battery that is recommended to be replaced at 8 years or 100,000 miles for what I just searched and would cost between $10,000 - $16,000 circa. Meh.

Recommended to be replaced, not must be replaced. Wonder what the range remaining is on that car, and how degraded the battery actually is.

 

[HangOutdoors]

But still. There is a life expectancy and degraded performance. I tend to follow manufacturers recommendations or do better. Someone who buys a 30k car is not going to appreciate a 16k bill or may not even be able to pay for it. I personally wouldn't be happy. Also it is unrealistic to expect the masses to understand and research all the pitfalls of owning an EV. For example I would do my research to see if it is the best fit and what I am getting myself into. My daughter would probably just buy it and the come crying that she needs a new battery and no one ever really told her that would be the cost. People are different, it is unrealistic to expect the masses to be fully educated on it.

 

[2kwik4u]

But still. There is a life expectancy and degraded performance. I tend to follow manufacturers recommendations or do better. Someone who buys a 30k car is not going to appreciate a 16k bill or may not even be able to pay for it.

They won't replace it. They'll just keep driving and charging more often until it fails completely.

 

[HangOutdoors]

They won't replace it. They'll just keep driving and charging more often until it fails completely.

Right and then no more car since that battery would be to expensive. Hell If I got a bill half that much right now for any of our vehicles or if I had to replace an engine in my boat, it would be sitting for quite some time before that happens as it is.

 

[FSH 210 Sport]

From the post up your funny meme’s a while back..



Electrifying the fleet is not going to happen in the U.S. until there is a complete rebuild / doubling (doubling at a minimum) of the entire grid in this country, and a commitment to a huge expansion of nuclear electrical generation. By the way, not in the news unsurprisingly, was France recent vote in Parliament to further expand their nuclear generation, I think Frances’ generation portfolio is 85% nuclear generation currently.

The cost of such a build out of the current system in the U.S. alone would be in the tens of trillions of dollars. What do you think your electrical rates per KWh are going to look like? And where will the money come from that currently comes from the excise taxes on fuel sales to maintain the roads?

The people who usually say there is plenty of room on the grid for car charging are either ignorant of the facts, trying to sell electric cars, are bald faced liars, or have ulterior motives. Most people are totally ignorant of what it takes to keep the integrity and reliability of the grid in place, there has to be plenty of reserves in addition to the capacity. This goes beyond the quintupling of the mining for the necessary elements to make the batteries.. regardless whether or not they can recycle the batteries at any reasonable recovery rate, there still has to be the build out of the batteries in the first place.

 

[2kwik4u]

@FSH 210 Sport
I love reading. Have some links to digest on those points?

Sounds like you're assuming a single instant changeover and not a slow migration on several front. I'm open to other viewpoints though.

 

[2kwik4u]

Right and then no more car since that battery would be to expensive. Hell If I got a bill half that much right now for any of our vehicles or if I had to replace an engine in my boat, it would be sitting for quite some time before that happens as it is.

And they go buy another one. This is literally how low cost automotive markets work. Drive it until it doesn't move anymore, then replace.

Just like losing an engine in a car, most don't fix, most replace. It's a major component in a machine, just like a transmission or engine. Have you priced either for your Expedition?

The point I'm getting at is that the idea of a major expense on a heavily used depreciating asset isn't anything new. What's the risk difference between a traditional car, and an EV? From where I sit, your risk exposure isn't much different. The real difference is it's new/different.

 

[FSH 210 Sport]

@FSH 210 Sport
I love reading. Have some links to digest on those points?

Sounds like you're assuming a single instant changeover and not a slow migration on several front. I'm open to other viewpoints though.

For right now I’ll give you some math. California’s all time time record set in 2005 was 50,205 MW’s for one hour, set in June of that year. Last year, the record was reset for the first time since 2005, at 51,292 MW’s for one hour. The forecast in 2000 was for a 75,000 MW load, LED’s and other conservation measures went a long way towards that, but there has been a ton of industries that have left CA as well as a lot of people.

Lets just say you took half of the fleet of registered cars in ca and made them electric, the total number or registered vehicles in ca currently is 36,000,000. Take half that number and times it by 3500 W (level 2 car charger), 18,000,000 x 3500/ 1,000,000=63,000 MW’s. That is what the load for charging those 18M vehicles would be when they are all plugged in at the same time. I’ve heard all the arguments about how those cars won’t need to be charged everyday, but from a grid planning perspective you have to plan as if those vehicles would all be plugged in at once, because it will either happen, or will come very close to it, as well, electric cars do not get the range that the manufacturers say due to AC and heating loads in the car. And then there has to be 5% reserve on top of that for reliability. So lets just take the base math at face value, 63,000MW’s is more than double the current all time peak load, and this will be a year round load scenario.

Last summer when the peak load was set, there was the usual appeal to the public to reduce load or perhaps even a bit more Orwellian than a public appeal.



Three days earlier CARB stated that as of 2035 no new sales of gas or diesel powered vehicles would happen in CA. On this particular day, the CA ISO included in their appeal to not charge electric vehicles. The current number of EV’s in CA is 1.8% or or 648,000 vehicles.

I just love that EOS alert… unless you take action, like I’m the one who caused the problem. Conveniently ignoring the fact that for strictly political reasons the state either shutdown or didn’t build in 25,000 MW’s of generation since the mid 70’s ( political side step there).

This is what myself and the other grid operators were screaming about for years. Our job is to keep the lights on, not to demand on rolling black outs that are becoming prevalent where they never were before because of the early retirement of power plants for political reasons with out building in the reserves necessary.

I’m looking at the raw numbers of what it is going to take to power 1/2 of one states current fleet of vehicles. A lot of people like to think that some miracle will happen along the way, that’s not the way I look at it. I look at it from a feasibility point of view based on known facts. I really can’t impress on you the magnitude of how much load that is, other than to say imagine two CA’s with the same Generation, Transmission, and distribution network. The transmission and distribution network is currently maxed out during the summer at 51,292 MW’s. Again there are many other facets that come into play with the AC transmission system such as loop flow etc…

 

[2kwik4u]

@FSH 210 Sport I think the premise of selling and instantly having to support 50% of the automotive public is a quite far fetched. Nothing at this scale happens overnight. According to this article, California only purchases about 1.8mil cars a year (or rather registers them). That's 1/10 of what you predicted above. And you have the full year to find the capacity. So we're not talking about adding instantaneous demand here.

Now, the chart found here, basically shows a flat line in growth for the state (those power plants that didn't get built certainly aren't helping). This article (although a few years old) shows decent growth in renewables and imports, despite total generation being somewhat down for the year. While not a rosey great story, I suspect it's not as bleak as you portray either. That being said if I was in power generation and looking at the trends I would be worried as well.

 

[zpaul]

There are a couple on the "buy here pay here" lots around me. Which means they've reached mainstream status locally, and the prices will reflect that.

Here's one for under $30k with reasonable miles for it's age. Just a few miles from me.

https://www.cargurus.com/Cars/inventorylisting/viewDetailsFilterViewInventoryListing.action?#listing=353098405/NONE

So the price of 2017 Model 3 RW new was starting $36K
Basically in 5 years it dropped to $28K. Not a huge depreciation while gas cars would drop 50%.
There was a moment a year ago when people would pay $55k for it.
Now EV market dropped because of Inflation Reduction stimulus of $7500 on Tesla. That may go away by 4/18 and almost $10k+ drop in price vs last year because Elon wanted to crash competition and capture Government hand out of $7500.

 

[zpaul]

$30k for almost 90,000 miles on a 6 year old Electric Vehicle, and a battery that is recommended to be replaced at 8 years or 100,000 miles for what I just searched and would cost between $10,000 - $16,000 circa. Meh.

Actually there is a guy who did 1,000,000 miles on 2014 Model S.
Yes he replaced 3 batteries under unlimited Tesla warranty of first cars. But that is still 300k on battery.
There are decent amount that passed 500k mark.
Depends how you calculate depreciation, maintenance and what cars you compare.
You get $65k BMW 5 series and in 3 years it is worth $30k to Carmax. And repairs will be expensive on that 3 year old car.

 

[2kwik4u]

@HangOutdoors Stumbled over this a few minutes ago.

 

[HangOutdoors]

Really wish there were more affordable options that would tow the boat and seat 8. Expedition, Yukon, Tahoe, Suburban all ridiculous in price.

 

[adrianp89]

We had our Tesla for 2 years and traded it in for more than we paid for it....

Also the model 3 is not a premium car, it is an entry level EV. Comparing it to an Audi is not fair. They also are louder because they need to keep weight down to maximize range.

Anyways I think the battery replacement thing is kinda BS.... Will it not be as good as brand new, sure... thats why you pay less. The car is still going to get you from A to B, it's not like it just stops working. It will take just as long (if not longer) for that to happen as to when people junk an ICE.

 

[2kwik4u]

Really wish there were more affordable options that would tow the boat and seat 8. Expedition, Yukon, Tahoe, Suburban all ridiculous in price.

Seat 8 is a tall order.

I would add Sprinter Van and Transit Van to the list.

There is a family around the corner from us that has a Transit Van. I talked to the dad the other day during a walk and he was super enthused about it. Said it's the best vehicle he's ever owned. More storage space than his pickup, more seats than a suburban. He was just completely enamoured with the thing. Doesn't look bad either; all black with a decent set of wheels and dark windows.

 

[adrianp89]

Seat 8 is a tall order.

I would add Sprinter Van and Transit Van to the list.

There is a family around the corner from us that has a Transit Van. I talked to the dad the other day during a walk and he was super enthused about it. Said it's the best vehicle he's ever owned. More storage space than his pickup, more seats than a suburban. He was just completely enamoured with the thing. Doesn't look bad either; all black with a decent set of wheels and dark windows.

Transit vans are sweet. We rent them on group vacations. I would love a loaded up Sprinter.

 

[2kwik4u]

We had our Tesla for 2 years and traded it in for more than we paid for it....

Also the model 3 is not a premium car, it is an entry level EV. Comparing it to an Audi is not fair. They also are louder because they need to keep weight down to maximize range.

Anyways I think the battery replacement thing is kinda BS.... Will it not be as good as brand new, sure... thats why you pay less. The car is still going to get you from A to B, it's not like it just stops working. It will take just as long (if not longer) for that to happen as to when people junk an ICE.

$60k Model 3 performance is only $15k (25%) shy of my Q7. It might be an entry level car, but it represents a luxury car price tag. Guy that was driving it sold his modded S6 for it, so cross shopping is a pretty obvious example of what people are expecting.

I do agree it's NOT a luxury car after having ridden in and driven it.

 

[FSH 210 Sport]

@FSH 210 Sport I think the premise of selling and instantly having to support 50% of the automotive public is a quite far fetched. Nothing at this scale happens overnight. According to this article, California only purchases about 1.8mil cars a year (or rather registers them). That's 1/10 of what you predicted above. And you have the full year to find the capacity. So we're not talking about adding instantaneous demand here.

Now, the chart found here, basically shows a flat line in growth for the state (those power plants that didn't get built certainly aren't helping). This article (although a few years old) shows decent growth in renewables and imports, despite total generation being somewhat down for the year. While not a rosey great story, I suspect it's not as bleak as you portray either. That being said if I was in power generation and looking at the trends I would be worried as well.

The problem is, that the generation capacity isn’t there, anywhere, and furthermore the transmission capacity isn’t there to import the power. You don’t just add another, 6,300 MWs on an annual basis, for the annual upgrade of 1.8M cars. Thats, 12.3 % a year of the current peak, that’s a huge increase, read not sustainable, in growth. Renewables are not going to solve this problem because the largest is PV, and it comes off line around 1700hrs in summer, that’s currently 11,000 MW’s, and most people don’t get home from work until 1800hrs. Thats right at the time when the day peak is finally starting to fall off, and all those fast start peaking units are coming off line, and those units are not meant or designed to be online continuously, besides the fact they are very expensive to run, and this is when folks are going to get home and plug in their cars. Delay plugging them in I hear you say? Well now you have this load curve that extends well beyond what is called super peak. Have them charge in the middle of the night? You mean when all the generation is backed off during the wee hours? Now there will be a new load curve to deal with say from 0000hrs to 0500 hours when prices have been historically cheaper, and they will no longer be cheaper as there is more load and growing on annual basis.

I appreciate your remarks about being a power generation guy, but, again, the enormity of the situation is not what’s realized, and it is a bleak as I portray, unless power plants, transmission and distribution systems are upgraded to meet that load, and that takes decades to do. Its not just the materials, its the qualified personnel to build the infrastructure. Not to mention the lead time to build all that equipment, the typical lead time on a large transformer used to be two years. If you get too much generation / load on a given system its easy to exceed the fault breaking capacity of existing Ultra High 750KW +, High 500KV / 230KV / 138KV transmission systems, as I said eluded to before, we are talking about building up a completely new system just to support this EV load.

On the distribution side you have substations that by and large are heavily loaded, these are stations are redundant systems, for example, in a typical unit you have an A bus and a B bus, each has its own transformer, there is a bus tie between the busses, in the event of a sub transmission line failure the bus tie automatically closes to keep the other buss going, thereby doubling the load on the remaining bank, so these systems have to have that level of redundancy built into them. Theses units are designed for that amount of load, you can’t just add larger transformers to these units as that would exceed the load capacity of the busses in the units, the load break capability of the circuit breakers, and ultimately will exceed the fault capacity of the subtransmission systems. Now then these unit subs that take sub transmission voltage, say 35KV / 69KV and step it down to the 12.5KV, 4.16KV etc.. that goes on the lines into your neighborhood.. try and imagine that, all of the infrastructure you see in and around your home having to be doubled or even tripled in capacity to meet the demand car chargers, and now CA wants to make everything electric, heating both comfort and water, cooking etc… its mind numbing to me to think about the amount of capacity increases that will be necessary. Then you start to get into Frequency Demand response in the ACE (Area Control Error) Equation from the generators when this massive amount of load is applied within a very short time frame, this requires a lot, read massive, amounts of inertia from the all the power plants that have connected but unloaded amounts of generation this is known as spinning reserve and is part of the redundancy that is required for a reliable power system. So, top all of this off, you have to build a system wherein the MSSC or most severe single contingency must be met, that is, if you loose the largest single piece of your system, say a 3000MW transmission line, the system must not suffer a cascading collapse or in other words must have dynamic stability, think of an oscillation that who’s magnitude dampens out over time, time in this case is somewhere in the 60-120 cycle range, otherwise you have dynamic instability which leads to a collapse.

Now realize that CA can barely keeps the lights on as it is in the summer. the grid is right on the edge for most of the summers. If their MSSC happens during the summer, there will be a massive UFLS (under frequency load shedding) event.

Those are just the highlights of how the system works.

My Dad used to tell me, “all you can do is tell people”. I told my leadership at my job on many occasions about what was coming. Let me give you an example, when San Onofre nuclear generating station was taken off line that was a loss of 2400 MW’s. All the experts were saying oh no problem that’s not going to affect us, including my bosses, they wouldn’t listen so I went to the General Manager and told her that we are going to have a problem next summer and now is the time to secure other resources. She told me that the experts said we will be good, I pleaded with her to at least take some precautionary steps, nope. Guess what? The next year a study came out and it detailed exactly what I said was going to happen, I’m not clairvoyant, I just know my job and how the system works. I sent her the power point of the study and she said you were right what can we do about it? I told her the time to do something was when I came to you a year ago when I told you about it. Much drama followed.. including $5000 MWh prices on peak, that’s $5 per kWh at your house. If it wasn’t for the fact that the people who were supposed to destroy the steam turbines on huntington beach units 3&4 hadnt done so in a manner that was repairable there would have been daily rolling black outs. This was supposed to have been done per CARB as the smog credits for those units had been traded so a new peaking generation plant could be built up north. As it was, it took a Herculean effort by those who had worked at this gas fired plant to get it on line within a couple of months. Other wise there would have been daily rolling black outs because there was no way to import the power, and in this case, the reactive power to support the power factor for the system in that area.

That is just one of the several cases wherein disaster was avoided. The difference is that those resources were in place already and just needed to be pm’d and brought back on line. There a few gas fired units along the coast that were decommissioned in 2020 but who know what state they are in, and those were shut down for “environmental” concerns about these plants using once through condensate cooling with ocean water.

Think these are the ravings of a mad man? We’ll see. If CA doesn’t change its ways and really fast they are headed for a real problem. Remember, 2035 is only 12 years away, I sincerely doubt CA leadership has the political where with all to do what is necessary. Oh sure, CA leadership can come up with some sort of lame excuse (reality) why they will push back that 2035 number, and they will have to if they are going to be adding 12% load growth per year. I’m sure that CA is not alone in its situation, in fact I know its not, Tennessee just had rolling black outs last year due to energy constraints caused by the political decommissioning of some large super critical coal fired units.

 

[I_squared_r]

The problem is, that the generation capacity isn’t there, anywhere, and furthermore the transmission capacity isn’t there to import the power. You don’t just add another, 6,300 MWs on an annual basis, for the annual upgrade of 1.8M cars. Thats, 12.3 % a year of the current peak, that’s a huge increase, read not sustainable, in growth. Renewables are not going to solve this problem because the largest is PV, and it comes off line around 1700hrs in summer, that’s currently 11,000 MW’s, and most people don’t get home from work until 1800hrs. Thats right at the time when the day peak is finally starting to fall off, and all those fast start peaking units are coming off line, and those units are not meant or designed to be online continuously, besides the fact they are very expensive to run, and this is when folks are going to get home and plug in their cars. Delay plugging them in I hear you say? Well now you have this load curve that extends well beyond what is called super peak. Have them charge in the middle of the night? You mean when all the generation is backed off during the wee hours? Now there will be a new load curve to deal with say from 0000hrs to 0500 hours when prices have been historically cheaper, and they will no longer be cheaper as there is more load and growing on annual basis.

I appreciate your remarks about being a power generation guy, but, again, the enormity of the situation is not what’s realized, and it is a bleak as I portray, unless power plants, transmission and distribution systems are upgraded to meet that load, and that takes decades to do. Its not just the materials, its the qualified personnel to build the infrastructure. Not to mention the lead time to build all that equipment, the typical lead time on a large transformer used to be two years. If you get too much generation / load on a given system its easy to exceed the fault breaking capacity of existing Ultra High 750KW +, High 500KV / 230KV / 138KV transmission systems, as I said eluded to before, we are talking about building up a completely new system just to support this EV load.

On the distribution side you have substations that by and large are heavily loaded, these are stations are redundant systems, for example, in a typical unit you have an A bus and a B bus, each has its own transformer, there is a bus tie between the busses, in the event of a sub transmission line failure the bus tie automatically closes to keep the other buss going, thereby doubling the load on the remaining bank, so these systems have to have that level of redundancy built into them. Theses units are designed for that amount of load, you can’t just add larger transformers to these units as that would exceed the load capacity of the busses in the units, the load break capability of the circuit breakers, and ultimately will exceed the fault capacity of the subtransmission systems. Now then these unit subs that take sub transmission voltage, say 35KV / 69KV and step it down to the 12.5KV, 4.16KV etc.. that goes on the lines into your neighborhood.. try and imagine that, all of the infrastructure you see in and around your home having to be doubled or even tripled in capacity to meet the demand car chargers, and now CA wants to make everything electric, heating both comfort and water, cooking etc… its mind numbing to me to think about the amount of capacity increases that will be necessary. Then you start to get into Frequency Demand response in the ACE (Area Control Error) Equation from the generators when this massive amount of load is applied within a very short time frame, this requires a lot, read massive, amounts of inertia from the all the power plants that have connected but unloaded amounts of generation this is known as spinning reserve and is part of the redundancy that is required for a reliable power system. So, top all of this off, you have to build a system wherein the MSSC or most severe single contingency must be met, that is, if you loose the largest single piece of your system, say a 3000MW transmission line, the system must not suffer a cascading collapse or in other words must have dynamic stability, think of an oscillation that who’s magnitude dampens out over time, time in this case is somewhere in the 60-120 cycle range, otherwise you have dynamic instability which leads to a collapse.

Now realize that CA can barely keeps the lights on as it is in the summer. the grid is right on the edge for most of the summers. If their MSSC happens during the summer, there will be a massive UFLS (under frequency load shedding) event.

Those are just the highlights of how the system works.

My Dad used to tell me, “all you can do is tell people”. I told my leadership at my job on many occasions about what was coming. Let me give you an example, when San Onofre nuclear generating station was taken off line that was a loss of 2400 MW’s. All the experts were saying oh no problem that’s not going to affect us, including my bosses, they wouldn’t listen so I went to the General Manager and told her that we are going to have a problem next summer and now is the time to secure other resources. She told me that the experts said we will be good, I pleaded with her to at least take some precautionary steps, nope. Guess what? The next year a study came out and it detailed exactly what I said was going to happen, I’m not clairvoyant, I just know my job and how the system works. I sent her the power point of the study and she said you were right what can we do about it? I told her the time to do something was when I came to you a year ago when I told you about it. Much drama followed.. including $5000 MWh prices on peak, that’s $5 per kWh at your house. If it wasn’t for the fact that the people who were supposed to destroy the steam turbines on huntington beach units 3&4 hadnt done so in a manner that was repairable there would have been daily rolling black outs. This was supposed to have been done per CARB as the smog credits for those units had been traded so a new peaking generation plant could be built up north. As it was, it took a Herculean effort by those who had worked at this gas fired plant to get it on line within a couple of months. Other wise there would have been daily rolling black outs because there was no way to import the power, and in this case, the reactive power to support the power factor for the system in that area.

That is just one of the several cases wherein disaster was avoided. The difference is that those resources were in place already and just needed to be pm’d and brought back on line. There a few gas fired units along the coast that were decommissioned in 2020 but who know what state they are in, and those were shut down for “environmental” concerns about these plants using once through condensate cooling with ocean water.

Think these are the ravings of a mad man? We’ll see. If CA doesn’t change its ways and really fast they are headed for a real problem. Remember, 2035 is only 12 years away, I sincerely doubt CA leadership has the political where with all to do what is necessary. Oh sure, CA leadership can come up with some sort of lame excuse (reality) why they will push back that 2035 number, and they will have to if they are going to be adding 12% load growth per year. I’m sure that CA is not alone in its situation, in fact I know its not, Tennessee just had rolling black outs last year due to energy constraints caused by the political decommissioning of some large super critical coal fired units.

NYC is also going to 100% electrical for HVAC, cooking, and dryers. We have been upgrading older buildings "electrification jobs". I did 1 so far and the increased demand on even the smallest buildings creates a lot of issues with space constraints. The local utility needs to bring in extra feeders, we need to increase switchgear sizes, etc. The last job had a relatively large transformer that couldn't fit through the doors and stairs to the main electrical room. I'm not sure what the contractor ended up doing, because I've been too busy on other projects.

Then the current code says that we must provide future EV charging to 20% of parking spots. That also adds up really fast, even just for 20% of the parking spaces. Sometimes I specify power share EV stations, OK so you're charging at 7.2kw fast charge and then your neighbor plugs in, now it's at 3.6kw and maybe you won't have a full charge in the morning. Some owners want it this way because it significantly reduces their cost. But the code reads that I only need to provide the means to install EV charging stations to 20% of parking spots. So I increase the size of the distribution board and provide a 1200amp circuit breaker for future use Easy math, average building we have to provide charging to 40 parking spaces.

Relatively large building:
EV stations 40 parking spaces x7.2kw=288kw
Parking Stackers = 50kw
Lighting/Recept = 45kw
1,063amps at 208/120v
That's a 1200amp service just for the parking garage
Then provide electric HVAC and cooking and the apartments require 5000amp service
And after house loads we're talking 6200amp demand (ignoring diversity). But the point is, before all the electrification the same building would only require maybe 2000amp to 3000amp service. It's a significant change in demand and we're only providing charging capabilities to 20% of the residents.

I was in a virtual meeting with NYC's engineers or whatever they are. And they showed all these fancy slides about electrification and how somehow the electrical grid has diversity to avoid issues. I'm not an expert with distribution outside the building, but the math just wasn't mathing for me because they neglected to talk about EV charging. I'm definitely a skeptic.

EDIT: I wrote a mess. Kind of jumping all over the place, but you get the point lol

 

[adrianp89]

$60k Model 3 performance is only $15k (25%) shy of my Q7. It might be an entry level car, but it represents a luxury car price tag. Guy that was driving it sold his modded S6 for it, so cross shopping is a pretty obvious example of what people are expecting.

I do agree it's NOT a luxury car after having ridden in and driven it.

You are comparing Apples and Oranges. EVs have a higher cost to entry. Also the M3P will be doing 60 before the Q7 can react to you pressing the gas pedal. If you consider it a sports car vs a luxury car, it’s one of the best values to be had. You certainly wouldn’t compare a corvette to an audi suv.