General I could see my self in a new 500e in the near future.

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General I could see my self in a new 500e in the near future.

Sounds like it depends on who's sueing who this week, Ford have got caught in the middle of a case between LG Chem and SK Innovation over trade secrets and if it can't buy them in and has problems importing the materials, they might have little choice than to change tack and go into partnership with someone, just like GM and Tesla.

And Tesla producing their own batteries?
Your own link states they are already in a partnership and CATL's involvement with Tesla in China is no secret.

Late last year they shipped thousands of models from their Shanghai factory to Europe.
The reason they gave was because CATL's batteries are cheaper, more advanced and don't require Cobalt. Both factory capacities are around 500,000 a year, so it's not a full commitment to it's partnership with Panansonic
Not a great thumps up from themselves really, if they are stating their "own" Panasonic partnership batteries aren't as good.

So who have we got in the EV stakes these days?
Tesla with partnership Panasonic and CATL.
VW with Northvolt.
MG with CATL
Nio with CATL
Fiat's 500e with Bosch
PSA in partnership with Total
Renault, GM, Ford, Volvo with LG Chem
BMW Mini with E-One Moli
Hyundai/Kia with SK and LG Chem
Jaguar with JMBS (Axeon)
Xpeng with CATL

No one is rushing out on with their own are they.
The only car manufacturer I know of that designs and makes their own is BYD, though they were a batteries manufacturer before they ever made a vehicle.
 
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Still not sure what relevance any of this is.

Most electric cars use the same sized 18650 cells in there thousands bundled together and shoved into a pack. But it’s the manufacturers who design the car and therefore the pack, that decided what shape and size the battery pack is.

Also just because Tesla partner with a battery manufacturer to make those cells it doesn’t mean they are not using there own technology. Tesla have there new 4680 cell which has a much higher battery density than other manufactures manage. You can witter on as much as you want about who’s making the batteries but what Ford are not doing is going out and buying a Nissan Leaf battery to fit there car, they are buying basic cells and then making them into there own pack.

You want to argue about standardisation well the basic cells are largely all the same but it’s the packs and battery swapping that’s not happening. Ford make there own ‘batteries’ PSA make there own ‘batteries’ they all make there own ‘batteries’ even if they are all using the same cells and cells made by different companies may on the face of things all look measure or weight the same. The technology in those cell may vary depending who is paying the bill
 
I’m in the camp of not seeing myself in any electric car shape or form. Obviously they will eventually make headway and be the norm’ At my age I think I will dodge the “leccy”motors. Personally I think it’s going to be longer than anticipated before any kind of a change, especially so for the likes of up here. Rural areas have there own issues to content with.

I’m certainly in no hurry at all to be behind the wheel of a silent volt mobile...:D
Aye, I'm also in a rural area and have found very little appeal in electric vehicles.

But... I have a feeling lockdown restrictions might have changed things for us. We've (thank heavens) been able to work entirely from home, we use bicycles (and now electric bicycles- sooo much easier!) to get around locally.

I don't miss having to drive at all, and suspect we probably won't go back to our old ways when the restrictions are lifted.

We're only using the car every 10 days or so now for short runs for supplies between a few shops. Which is the kind of treatment a fossil fuel car really doesn't like. The battery's dying as a result (maybe ironically), and she never really gets up to temperature so probably sooting up as well as worse emissions.

Like you jimboy I also have an older 'toy' for pleasure trips & touring holidays. I can't imagine parting ways with that car, but for the kind of 'mule' treatment my Panda's getting, particularly being dragged around our nearest town, I'm starting to think maybe an EV might be better.
 
I'll never be able to afford any EV car

Why not? They depreciate like any other vehicle.

I also worry about the cost to maintain and probably replace the batteries of a secondhand older EV.

I wouldn't. It's needless worry.

Same. Batteries won’t last for long

Have you any citation to back up this claim, or is it the usual regurgitated fake news from other parts of the internet? (n)

It'll take a while to catch on internationally, but I like Nio's approach to the battery problem.

Of course you can charge at home or at a charging point, but you can also pull in to a "power swap station" and they'll swap the battery out for a fully charged one.

I'm willing to put money on it not happening. Tesla have ditched the idea. Renault tried it with the Fluence and it was a Flop.

Very few EV drivers even like / want the idea (been discussed many times on EV groups I'm in). Why would I want to pay for a service that isn't required? If people aren't wanting to use and pay for said service then it won't be sustainable.

I wonder how all those with "on street " parking are supposed to charge their car.

Work place or supermarket charging.

Why is it not mandatory that all new build houses have a charging point?

Legislation is in the process of being passed to make it a legal requirement. You can also request its a planning requirement when public planning consultation takes place on any new buildings / developments should you wish ;)

I can see it happening.

You're one of only a few.

To expand on this, you'd essentially be required to have to rent / lease the battery pack.

Renault and Nissan done this for a while on the Leaf and Zoe, to reduce the purchase price of their vehicles, and essentially give a lifetime warranty for the battery.

Guess what. Nissan now no longer offer this, and Renault are starting to back track and stop this also, as no one wants it or an additional monthly cost, especially on a used car.
 
I'm willing to put money on it not happening. Tesla have ditched the idea. Renault tried it with the Fluence and it was a Flop.

I'm willing to put money on it happening already, today, now.

Some people might not like it as a concept and some companies might have failed with it in the past, but it is certainly happening.

It's not just Nio either, though they have performed over 2 million battery swaps from around 80,000 Nios sold so far in China.
That's 25 swaps per car in 26 months, a fairly popular service and happening service.

Another large EV battery maker SK Innovation have bought into Blue Park Smart Energy who also have a string of swap stations as have Geely.

Ample took over Better Place and have targeted mainly Uber and Taxi drivers in San Francisco and are expanding to other cities.

All these companies have places that you can drive your electric vehicle to today and swap out a discharged battery for a charged one within a few minutes, so it's happening alright.
 
I'm willing to put money on it happening already, today, now.

Some people might not like it as a concept and some companies might have failed with it in the past, but it is certainly happening.

It's not just Nio either, though they have performed over 2 million battery swaps from around 80,000 Nios sold so far in China.
That's 25 swaps per car in 26 months, a fairly popular service and happening service.

Another large EV battery maker SK Innovation have bought into Blue Park Smart Energy who also have a string of swap stations as have Geely.

Ample took over Better Place and have targeted mainly Uber and Taxi drivers in San Francisco and are expanding to other cities.

All these companies have places that you can drive your electric vehicle to today and swap out a discharged battery for a charged one within a few minutes, so it's happening alright.

Okay, I’ll clarify my statement. I’m willing to put money on it not happening in Europe.

China and its market demographic, urban housing setup and general way of life is extremely different to Europe. Your claim of 25 swaps per car is also assuming all vehicles are enrolled in the service. I’ve not looked into it but suspect it’ll be a service option that has to be decided when the vehicle is purchased, as you won’t be doing it with privately owned battery’s. Either that or the whole premise is on the basis of a monthly battery lease, which as I’ve previously mentioned as a whole hasn’t worked and is pushed back upon by European users.
 
Here they come.
https://powerswap.se/
http://battswap.com/


Perhaps look at this from a different angle.

There are over 32.9 million cars in the UK alone and that figure has been growing by around 350,000 to 400,000 each year.

Average UK mileage is around 8000 miles, though if it's cheaper than fossil fuels, it could end up anywhere.

Eventually most of those miles will be covered in EV's, either through ICE being banned from sale or being forced off the road by clean air schemes, though I guess they'll still be a few millions "toys" kept roadworthy.

What is the average mileage per charge, currently less the 200 miles so lets be generous and say 250 miles.

So 8000 miles/250 miles = 32 charges a year x 30,000,000 = 96,000,000 charges a year.

That's a hell of a lot of plugging in cables in places like Tesco's car park or on the street.

Currently the 34,000 or so public chargers are impacting parking in busy areas like cities already and they are only servicing 240,000 or so EV's, plus you have to admit, many early adopters will already have home chargers, something many future owners won't have access to.
So this 14% public charger to car ratio will also have to expand massively to have any chance of meeting a demand of over 30,000,000 vehicles, it's not hard to work out it's going to take other solutions like swapping batteries even if you increase range and shorten charge times.

Price to charge a 100kwh battery is currently around £30 on a public charger, what it will be in future is anyones guess, though I can't remember anything getting progressively cheaper when there was no/less competition.

I know those figures are rough and there are various factors that could influrence them, but they go to show it'll be an eye watering turnover. £28800000000 a year on just a back of a fag packet calculation.

In fact, it's a hell of a lot of business manufacturers and battery supplier won't want to miss out on or oil companies come to that and it can only be good for the owner/user. More flexibility to keep us moving and more competition to drive the prices down.
 
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You'd expect hundreds of people all to charge at work or a super market?
Especially in old coal mining/industrial areas with huge amounts of terrace housing
 
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That's a hell of a lot of plugging in cables in places like Tesco's car park or on the street.

It’s not as the majority will be done at home.

I’ve not the exact figure to hand but circa 70% of the UK population will be able to charge at home when last quoted elsewhere, out of the other 30%, other means will be available such as work place charging etc.

Suddenly that figure is nearer <28,000,000.

Your £ calculates cost of charging only, how much will the battery change service and associated lease be on top of this?

I’ll revert to my original question that you’ve failed to take into account.

When 70% can charge at home for £5-10 with a 100kwh battery pack (tariff dependant) then why will they be wanting to pay for a service they don’t require, which will involve higher energy costs of circa £30-40 a charge (domestic electricity is cheaper than commercial typically), plus a battery lease which people have already shied away from in Europe.

As I say it’s all well and good something working in China, but it doesn’t mean it will elsewhere.
 
The main problem that people make with looking at this technology is to assume that what we have now is what we will have in a year or even 2 years.

5 years ago you’d barley see a Tesla on the road and now they are everywhere.
So 5 more years from now added the mass of new electric cars on the market people will be buying electric cars on mass and if people are buying them then companies will be catering for them.

Currently there might be a 2-3 year old electric car charger down the road from you that takes 12 hours to charge a current car, but look further afield and you’ll find that.

New chargers are coming out with the ability to charge at very high rates, we keep talking about 100kw batteries but that’s the top end of the market, something like a Tesla model 3 or a VW iD3 have around 75KW battery the iD3 can charge to a 224 mile range in 36 minutes. So a quick stop at the supermarket once a week is going to be enough for most people to fill there car, much like many people will visit the filling station on the way out out of the car park.

Many more can charge at home, 11kw home chargers will easily charge a car again over night once a week.
Other people might charge at work or while in public car park while at work.

There are honestly so many opportunities for people to charge there cars, why will people want the battery ripped out every other week
 
So potentially we'll end up with two classes, those that can home charge( "cheaply" ) and those, with on street parking that'll be stung with high charging costs in order to charge at the supermarket or work? I'm away in July for a few days, if I had a EV I'd have to, probably plan a possible charging stop if we had an electric car?
In the Beast from the east, my wife was stranded on the west coast, no issues keeping warm for the ten plus hours, until I found her a hotel.
 
I’d not be surprised if supermarkets did deals, “spend over £50, get .....kw” of free electricity.

You pay for parking, you pay for petrol, the only difference is that the oil companies set the price you pay.
With electricity the market is open for more competition, and you can add yourself to that mix if you fill your roof with solar panels. So yes some people could be sitting at home charging there cars for free..... some other may have to pay more per unit, but then again one petrol station in the north might have a lot lower price per litre of petrol than a BP garage on the london north circular. So honestly EVs are really not that dissimilar to the pricing on other fuels/energy

As for the beast for the east, an electric car still has heaters, the heaters can can be run without having to run the engine so as a result they can be very efficient, they also usually have heated seats and steering wheels generally a lot more luxurious and better heated than many ice cars.

At the moment no one is going to be doing tests on how long the car can sit with just the heater on so that question can’t be answered without the main motor running theoretically the heaters can run for a very very long time. 75kw battery 2.5kw in something like a home fan heater maybe as much as 30hours on the battery? Certainly long enough to find a hotel.
 
At the moment no one is going to be doing tests on how long the car can sit with just the heater on so that question can’t be answered without the main motor running theoretically the heaters can run for a very very long time. 75kw battery 2.5kw in something like a home fan heater maybe as much as 30hours on the battery? Certainly long enough to find a hotel.

Oh I can answer this one. In beast from the east temp at tick-over (cabin up to temp) with 23.5C selected on the climate control it’s around 800w for my Kia with air source heat pump.

So with my relatively small 27kwh pack that’s over a day solid on a full charge.

Most current EVs have 50-64kwh packs, so 2 days plus solid running.

So on par with a lot of ICE cars burning about 1L of fuel an hour at idle to run the cabin heating :)
 
Oh I can answer this one. In beast from the east temp at tick-over (cabin up to temp) with 23.5C selected on the climate control it’s around 800w for my Kia with air source heat pump.

So with my relatively small 27kwh pack that’s over a day solid on a full charge.

Most current EVs have 50-64kwh packs, so 2 days plus solid running.

So on par with a lot of ICE cars burning about 1L of fuel an hour at idle to run the cabin heating :)

That's a good answer, but my point is she had already driven 150 miles so there could be a greater risk of being in a even greater pickle?
I'm not against EV'S even the tester in the paper last weekend suffered range anxiety when testing a Mini, also I didn't know there 4 different types of socket so you may not have the correct cable(he reported)
 
That's a good answer, but my point is she had already driven 150 miles so there could be a greater risk of being in a even greater pickle?

Why is there a greater risk of being in an even greater pickle?

Just keep the battery topped up like you would a fuel tank if you’ve concerns you might become stranded.

the tester in the paper last weekend suffered range anxiety when testing a Mini

This day and age you can discount 90% of tabloid reviewed as its predominately BS written but utter morons from experience. Luckily there are FB groups and forums like this to obtain factual real world experiences from people.

also I didn't know there 4 different types of socket so you may not have the correct cable(he reported)

There isn’t. This is a prime example of the utter BS they report, and unfortunately the general public who know no better take it in good faith and then have a badly set misunderstanding and stigma.

Got public destination charging you’ll have your own lead in the vehicle. These plug into a type 2 socket.

For public rapid charging all rapid chargers have a tethered lead so you don’t even need your charging lead with you. You can see here the tethered leads on this rapid charge unit I used yesterday - these are the sorts you find at motorway service stations etc.

2B64A296-22EC-4CB0-8953-1EB529B4ACA2.jpegEA7F4DEF-9F04-477A-8DF7-29B6209F494E.jpeg
 
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