EEVblog #1337 - I Bought An Electric Car

[EEVblog]

Dave finally bought a fully electric car!
A 2020 Hyundai IONIQ Electric Elite.
A discussion about buying an electric car in Australia, comparison to the Nissan LEAF and others, and picking up the car.



The 30min drive back to the lab:

[SilverSolder]

In some countries, we can have power outages lasting a week or more.  That makes a good case for a plug-in hybrid! 

[maginnovision]

Or a propane/lng/diesel whole home generator backup.

[SilverSolder]

I like the idea of doing it the other way round, i.e. let the PHEV act as a power source for the home during a blackout.  Saves having an expensive generator standing around doing nothing for 99% of the time.

[maginnovision]

That only works for short bursts, certainly not a week. Besides the generator is only 7k with install. You ruin your car battery trying to backup the house it'll probably be similar cost but also mess up your car for some time.

This is just the conclusion I came to when trying to find a good source for batteries I could use to build a home backup system. The cost of batteries and an inverter alone is hugely costly while still not backing up the whole house(include AC since I'm in california).

[Lord of nothing]

A new Car and the Stearing on the Wrong side. 
  Joke. Have fun with your Car! Where did you want to recharge it? 

[SilverSolder]

It isn't so much about using the battery, as it is about using the ICE/generator set in the car -  in other words, you let the car sit there and cycle the engine and provide power to the house, like a generator on wheels...

I did that during the last outage, but with a hybrid car (not a plug-in).  It just stood there, cycling the engine, as the power was consumed.  It did that for several days in a row with no ill effects.  The battery level was maintained within about a 20% window so not worse than actually driving the car in terms of wear.

The "missing link" is some way to convert the 300V - 400V main battery power directly to 115VAC, rather than going via the 12V system like I did, which is much more limited!

The reason for choosing PHEV rather than Hybrid for this, is simply to get longer cycles between the recharges, and of course the normal benefits of a PHEV when it is being used as a normal car.

[Lord of nothing]

using the battery

its expensive to replace the battery every some km! 

[Fellonium]

Next project: get the Australian government to use 'green' power. Apparently 85% of Australian power comes from (mostly) coal or other carbon based derivatives, according to the guy in the vid below. A brand new car on petrol that complies with all the most recent euro6-regulations might actually be 'greener'.

https://youtu.be/euGIg7lp3XY?t=128


Hyundai does make a good offer for 'value' EV's though. No other brand is even worth looking at if price is an issue.

[SilverSolder]

using the battery

its expensive to replace the battery every some km! 

Exactly, which is why you don't use the battery -  you use the engine and generator?

[Lord of nothing]

How about an Accu? 

[Neilm]

Congrats Dave,

I am sneaking up on owning an EV for 1 year now. My fuel cost has dropped to £220. I spent £2300 on petrol with my last year of petrol car (hybrid) - and I only managed to get onto an EV electricity tariff just a the Covid lockdown started.

[SilverSolder]

How about an Accu? 

What's an Accu?  if it's a brand of beer, I'm in! 

[Lord of nothing]

An Accumulator you never visit a School?! 

[EEVblog]

Next project: get the Australian government to use 'green' power.

You can pay more for audited and accredited "green power" here. We've been doing that for probably 15 years now.

[Monkeh]

An Accumulator you never visit a School?! 

Accumulator is not a word in common usage to refer to capacitors or electrochemical cells ('batteries') in English - it has not been for generations. Even if one recognises the archaic term, shorthand is substantially more opaque.

[tszaboo]

An Accumulator you never visit a School?! 

In english this is called a secondary battery. Or rechargeable battery.
Don't worry, I've learned it making the same mistake.

[Fellonium]

An Accumulator you never visit a School?! 

Accumulator is not a word in common usage to refer to capacitors or electrochemical cells ('batteries') in English - it has not been for generations. Even if one recognizes the archaic term, shorthand is substantially more opaque.

Yeh, this is most likely a translation snafu. It's in fairly common use for that purpose in German, French and Dutch though, to create some context.

[sandalcandal]

An Accumulator you never visit a School?! 

Accumulator is not a word in common usage to refer to capacitors or electrochemical cells ('batteries') in English - it has not been for generations. Even if one recognises the archaic term, shorthand is substantially more opaque.

In this context I thought they were referencing a (Honda) Acura 

[sandalcandal]

Also, I know it's more hybrids as gensets rather than full EVs as backup storage people are suggesting here but there was some good discussion in this thread (https://www.eevblog.com/forum/renewable-energy/nissan-leaf-as-home-energy-storage/) on the latter and it's not as bad as some people think imo.

And more on topic, I think Dave does a good job pointing out solid reasoning for his purchasing decision. Hyundai/Kia definitely a top choice at this point in time for a solid car at a good price though. The Nissan Ariya also looks like it might be an excellent car too when it comes now that they've finally thrown out that awful direct air cooling design.

I think the newer Tesla models (3 and Y) are also good value (outside Australia) if you can consider stuff like supercharger networks, auto pilot and reputation for excellent battery life. Although on the point of battery life, all manufacturers are offering pretty equal warranty on batteries for their newer models. With the news Tesla is likely to start shipping cars out of their Giga Shanghai factory (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-11/tesla-plans-to-start-shipping-china-built-cars-to-europe-asia) the cost of a Tesla in Australia will hopefully go down in the "near future".

[SilverSolder]

Wonder why there aren't more electric sports cars - remember the original Tesla / Lotus Elise concept? 

It would be awesome with an electric convertible of some kind...

[Howardlong]

Wonder why there aren't more electric sports cars - remember the original Tesla / Lotus Elise concept? 

I had a Lotus Elan S2 25 years ago, man that was such a fun car, stuck to the road like glue. and it weighed next to nothing. I could see an electric version of the Elise being super fun.

Coincidentally, today I ordered an Ioniq PHEV. As I only have on street parking, and roadside charging here in central London is horrendously expensive ($0.47/kWh at best), I went for the PHEV.

It's not my first foray into this, I've had three Priuses before this, the last one being a plug in. It's like an arms race, each time I get a new one, the CO2 limits for various tax/congestion charges are altered again. Not sure how buying a new car full of batteries every four or five years is good for the environment TBH.

[SilverSolder]

Wonder why there aren't more electric sports cars - remember the original Tesla / Lotus Elise concept? 

I had a Lotus Elan S2 25 years ago, man that was such a fun car, stuck to the road like glue. and it weighed next to nothing. I could see an electric version of the Elise being super fun.

Coincidentally, today I ordered an Ioniq PHEV. As I only have on street parking, and roadside charging here in central London is horrendously expensive ($0.47/kWh at best), I went for the PHEV.

It's not my first foray into this, I've had three Priuses before this, the last one being a plug in. It's like an arms race, each time I get a new one, the CO2 limits for various tax/congestion charges are altered again. Not sure how buying a new car full of batteries every four or five years is good for the environment TBH.

That Lotus Elan sounds like fun - I guess it was the inspiration for the Mazda MX-5 (Miata in the US).  I have one of them, a 1990, in very nice shape.

Re the Ioniq, I think the PHEV probably does make the most sense overall for British driving, unless you drive hundreds of miles per day and can get cheap electricity somehow.

[EEVblog]

Looks like my care does not have the VESS simulated engine noise sound system. Manual shows a button for it which my care doesn't have.
I thought that was a mandatory thing?

[SilverSolder]

Looks like my care does not have the VESS simulated engine noise sound system. Manual shows a button for it which my care doesn't have.
I thought that was a mandatory thing?

Sounds like an opportunity for a creative electronics project -  how about generating the sound of a Maserati Bi-Turbo?