Future Cars: Electric and Autonomous Vehicles

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Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby Anondson » May 24th, 2016, 11:17 pm

(Maybe not right thread, but this felt close)

While looking at selling my current beloved Jeep for a more fuel efficient small hatchback, I came across a few listings for used electric cars, generally under $11,500. What does one need to know about buying electric cars used? What should a cautious buyer look out for to keep from getting taken advantage of?

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby steve0257 » May 25th, 2016, 7:26 am

(Maybe not right thread, but this felt close)

While looking at selling my current beloved Jeep for a more fuel efficient small hatchback, I came across a few listings for used electric cars, generally under $11,500. What does one need to know about buying electric cars used? What should a cautious buyer look out for to keep from getting taken advantage of?
How much life is left in the battery pack? The batteries do wear out, and from what I understand they are very expensive to replace.

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby Anondson » May 25th, 2016, 7:29 am

How much life is left in the battery pack? The batteries do wear out, and from what I understand they are very expensive to replace.
Its a 2014, with under 8,000 miles. I can't think it's much wear yet... Would a dealer be able to disclose this? Or must I test it somehow?

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby David Greene » May 25th, 2016, 10:43 am

I'll re-state some of our conversation from last night for the benefit of others.

Batteries do degrade over time so your maximum range decreases. The exact characteristics of this vary widely among manufacturers. The Volt, for example, never reports the absolute max capacity of the battery when new so you're actually not using the battery to its full capability when you first buy the car. But the buyer also doesn't see degradation effects later on. The LEAF, on the other hand, gives you the full battery capacity so you see loss of range over time.

Even within a manufacturer, batteries can vary widely. The first LEAF battery had severe degradation problems in hot climates and the general rule for best life was never charge the battery beyond 80% and never deplete it below 20%. The more recent chemistry completely changes that so you want to fully charge every day.

I'm not sure mileage or age is a good proxy for battery life. Charge cycles are important too. If someone did a ton of L3/high voltage charges there's going to be more degradation than if someone did an L1 charge every time.

None of the manufacturers tell you this stuff. As a LEAF owner I've found mynissanleaf.com invaluable. There's a ton of information there. There's a sister site for the Focus Electric: http://www.myfocuselectric.com. Check the forum.

As for buying used, I doubt the dealer even knows what to tell you. Dealers are pretty clueless with electric cars. You have to do this stuff on your own. The LEAF has a 3rd party app LeafSpy that uses an OBDII interface to report battery capacity. It took a significant amount of reverse engineering for the developer to figure out exactly what the numbers mean and how to report it. People buying used LEAFs frequently bring an OBDII interface and their phone and plug it in to check the state of the battery.

A quick search didn't turn up a similar thing for the FFE, unfortunately. I would definitely ask the dealer if they warranty the battery life in any way. The FFE has battery thermal management, something the LEAF lacks so the battery may very well be just fine.

If the FFE reports it in its IVI system, you'll want to check the number of charge cycles that have been done on the car and what type (L1/L2/L3). The FFE forum may have a thread on how to interpret the numbers.

See if there's a used FFE thread on the forum. You can also post there asking for advice on how to evaluate the car. At least on the LEAF forum people are super friendly and helpful.

Overall I wouldn't worry a ton about it. With 8,000 miles there probably hasn't been a huge number of charge cycles and probably very few high-voltage charges.

One pleasant surprise we had with the LEAF is that L1/110v charging overnight works just fine for us. We still haven't installed an L2 charger though we plan to do that in the future. So you may very well not need an L2 charger right away. Spend some time with the car first to see what your usage patterns are.

HTH.

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby Anondson » May 25th, 2016, 8:37 pm

David, this was amazingly informative. Thanks so much for this info.

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby David Greene » May 25th, 2016, 8:55 pm

No prob.

It's likely the FFE has a gague that reports battery capacity. Not the current state of charge/estimated range but the max capacity. On the LEAF this is an *extremely* rough estimate, which is why LeafSpy was developed to get a finer-grained measure. You can ask on the FFE forum whether the gague on the Focus is useful at all. Maybe an app isn't necessary if the information is already there.

One other thing to be aware of: I don't know about the FFE but the range estimator on the LEAF is so bad it's affectionately known as the "Guess-O-Meter." This is because the car can't know the future, how many hills you'll encounter, etc. so it is often super-conservative. The newer LEAF (including ours) has a display of % charge remaining (State Of Charge) which is a much better indicator of range. To be safe, if I'm driving long distances I'll turn around and head home when the SOC reaches 50% or so. Then I know I have enough to get home. The only time that's ever happened though is when Julian falls asleep in the car and I'm just driving around aimlessly until he wakes up. :)

Another thing to be aware of is that range dramatically decreases in winter. The heater is a killer. On the LEAF there's a heat pump if the outside temperature is above freezing and a resistive heater (basically a toaster) below that. The resistive heater just kills the battery. The LEAF also has heated seats and steering wheel which actually really decreases the need to use the heater. The denser cold air also plays a factor. So expect to get 60%-70% of your summer range in the winter.

High speed also kills the LEAF battery and may do the same on the FFE. Go 70mph and you'll see the LEAFs charge fall quickly. So I try to keep it about 60mph if at all possible. It makes a gigantic difference. As a plus I can set the cruise to 55 on the I-94 commute to work and never have to hit the brake. :) The LEAF also has several different drive modes that change the regen braking and acceleration characteristics. I don't know what the FFE has in that department.

Range just hasn't been an issue for us at all. 107 miles (EPA estimate) is fine and we usually get much more than that. No, we don't take it to William O'Brien State Park but we do take it to Afton and Cottage Grove. We could in theory take it to Duluth because there's a QC (Quick Charge) port at about Forest Lake or so. Others have done it. I am not that brave though.

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby Anondson » July 2nd, 2016, 1:41 pm

Are electric cars are a fad that will fade?

http://www.newsweek.com/quora-question- ... sla-476122

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby DanPatchToget » July 2nd, 2016, 5:59 pm

And the first fatal accident in an autonomous car:
http://www.startribune.com/tesla-driver ... 385122501/

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby Mdcastle » July 2nd, 2016, 7:10 pm

While watching a Harry Potter movie in a car that wasn't meant to be fully autonomous.

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby VacantLuxuries » July 5th, 2016, 8:57 am

Are electric cars are a fad that will fade?

http://www.newsweek.com/quora-question- ... sla-476122

The 'electric cars are coal powered and therefore worse than gas' argument is always presented as a one sentence statement, two if they want to throw in a reference to how bad China is.

If they were forced to write a full article about that statement, they'd have to explore the carbon footprint of the dirty logistical system involved in the extraction, transportation, refining, and transportation again of gasoline before we can even burn it, versus a power grid of varying methods of generation sending power directly to the car through carbon free power lines.

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby Mdcastle » July 5th, 2016, 9:16 am

I keep hearing different opinions on whether battery technology will get good enough for an electric car to be an only car for the average person. Of course if the rental model of driverless cars comes to pass, and I'm not at all sure it will, that point would be moot because you could order up a gasoline car for weekend trips to Chicago.

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby dingo » July 5th, 2016, 9:21 am

Are electric cars are a fad that will fade?

http://www.newsweek.com/quora-question- ... sla-476122
My first reaction is this sounds alot like the articles and press releases put out by auto makers that killed the street cars.

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby Silophant » July 5th, 2016, 9:24 am

It's a prime example of why it's dangerous to assume that someone who's an expert in one area (cosmology and particle physics, according to his bio), is an authority in other unrelated areas.
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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby mattaudio » July 5th, 2016, 9:44 am

Electric motors are fuel agnostic. They don't care if the electricity powering them is generated by a bunch of tiny diesel generators, a coal plant, a renewable, or a yet-to-be-invented source of power. There's value in having that flexibility. Our current system of ICEs and thousands of fuel dispensaries around the country is not flexible in that regard.

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby Tiller » July 5th, 2016, 11:36 am

I like how his premise is that battery technology won't improve. Ha. Funny joke. Not even elaborated upon.

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby RailBaronYarr » July 5th, 2016, 12:59 pm

I keep hearing different opinions on whether battery technology will get good enough for an electric car to be an only car for the average person. Of course if the rental model of driverless cars comes to pass, and I'm not at all sure it will, that point would be moot because you could order up a gasoline car for weekend trips to Chicago.
I'd say the average person drives short enough distances and parks their car in a place (during the day and overnight) where charging infrastructure will be easy enough to install that batteries won't have to be too great to meet their daily needs. Doubly so if cars become driverless around the time they're electrified. Sure, your example of wanting to drive 400+ miles on a tank/charge is a requirement some people have some of the time right now. And people are notoriously bad at picking a vehicle for the extreme circumstances. I'll lump myself in that category - my family could easily have made due with a smaller crossover SUV that could hold our two dogs and one (expected) kid when we bought it back in fall of 2013, with room to spare for a second kid. But I knew that 4-6 times a year we drive down to Iowa City to visit my in-laws, we buy lumber and plywood and drywall from Home Depot maybe once a year, and might have a third kid during the lifetime of the car, so we got a minivan to handle all those random, infrequent events. Even though it cost more and got worse gas mileage.

I think, if both electric and self-driving vehicles come to be a thing, we won't need to rely on a daily rental model for most people. People will buy a smaller vehicle with 1-3 days worth of driving on a charge. And for the times they need a bigger car and/or with longer range, they can rent one for a week with 3x the batteries in it for longer distances. Heck, the subscription people will likely pay for in driverless cars (think OnStar, but required) may even come with that perk as an option on their service tiers. "Large vehicle rental 2x yearly, 1,000 maximum miles included" for the "Gold level" plan. I dunno. Or dealerships, or U-Haul businesses, or anyone else who currently hold on to expensive vehicles for rent, will shift their business model slightly.

Self-driving cars would also be uniquely good at determining where to fill up on gasoline if we imagine a world with fewer gas stations (because less demand consolidates them or at least replaces pumps with charging stations) that serve long-haul trips, including road-trip vehicles for rent (but also self-driving diesel big rigs)

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby Mdcastle » July 5th, 2016, 6:25 pm

Or else just rely on self-driving gasoline cars for long trips if battery technology doesn't get any better. The existing gasoline supply should last a long time if all the intra-city driving was converted to electric. I'm personally a skeptic on whether the rental model in general will come to pass, but I can see it being popular for people needing more specialized vehicles. Imagine one showing up at your door instead of having to make your way down to the airport and putting up with a high pressured sales tactics for all sorts of add-ons and insurance.

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby FISHMANPET » July 5th, 2016, 6:33 pm

Yes I'm sure that in a world where specialized vehicles are frequently rented by consumers, all vehicle rental agencies will still be at the airport.

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby mattaudio » July 6th, 2016, 9:09 am

I already know plenty of people who rent cars for long trips rather than use their own car. I also know plenty of people at work who rent cars to drive to other midwestern cities, and who rent a car rather than get mileage to drive their own car. I also know of and have used plenty of car rental places inside the city. I'm also fully capable of refusing not-really-high-pressured sales tactics.

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby RailBaronYarr » July 6th, 2016, 9:28 am

http://www.vox.com/2016/7/5/12077002/se ... ove-cities

A good overview of how cities need to proactively shape transportation infrastructure and regulations for SDCs.


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