Great question for those that believe electric vehicles are a great idea.

[spencer60]

Maybe it's just me, and I know this is quite a stretch and could probably never happen, but I've always wondered about the slight chance of a mega traffic jam, say maybe around Atlanta somewhere, say maybe when it's real cold and maybe it's snowing or maybe an ice storm hits at rush hour and all those electric cars are sitting stopped on 285 for several hours, with the heat and the radio and the lights on and their phones plugged in charging . Now say maybe you've got several thousand cars logjammed in the road with the batteries dead and the folks freezing cause they left home unprepared for being stranded on the road in winter with no heat in their dead cars and not enough clothes.
Considering you can get by all the dead cars, do you bring in those nasty polluting diesel rollbacks and tow trucks to clear this mess up while the snow continues to fall or do you pull a diesel generator with 50 charging ports out there and start charging cars up so they can go on their merry way in 4 or 5 hours? Just sayin.

I don't really see that much difference in the above versus what we saw with gas cars during the Snowpocalypse... Gas or electric if it gets that bad and your stuck you will run out of fuel. Most of the cars that ran out were towed away anyways because their owners abandoned them.

Battery swap stations is where the technology is going....NIO already doing it.


https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/nio...4000-battery-swap-stations-by-2025-2021-07-12

Actually, EV makers are going just the opposite route. Tesla is integrating the battery as part of the sub-frame in their newer designs. It'll basically be the floorboard and belly pan with the battery material sandwiched in between.

These 'structural batteries' are what EV companies are moving towards because of the weight savings. If you have to have a heavy battery pack and a heavy structural element, you can cut the weight down a lot by having the battery pack serve both roles.

I know there was a lot of talk about battery swapping back in the early EV days, but that was before these fast DC chargers came out and battery technology got to the point where you could go from 20% charge to 80% in 20 minutes or less.

Also, batteries are the main way EV makers differentiate themselves. Trying to get the whole industry to settle on the lowest common denominator battery so they could be used interchangeably probably wouldn't be something any of them would be interested in.

 

[aFarewellToKings]

I don't really see that much difference in the above versus what we saw with gas cars during the Snowpocalypse... Gas or electric if it gets that bad and your stuck you will run out of fuel. Most of the cars that ran out were towed away anyways because their owners abandoned them.



Actually, EV makers are going just the opposite route. Tesla is integrating the battery as part of the sub-frame in their newer designs. It'll basically be the floorboard and belly pan with the battery material sandwiched in between.

These 'structural batteries' are what EV companies are moving towards because of the weight savings. If you have to have a heavy battery pack and a heavy structural element, you can cut the weight down a lot by having the battery pack serve both roles.

I know there was a lot of talk about battery swapping back in the early EV days, but that was before these fast DC chargers came out and battery technology got to the point where you could go from 20% charge to 80% in 20 minutes or less.

Also, batteries are the main way EV makers differentiate themselves. Trying to get the whole industry to settle on the lowest common denominator battery so they could be used interchangeably probably wouldn't be something any of them would be interested in.

Which makes the car completely worthless on the used market. Even the best batteries have a lifetime. Once those are dead, car is useless.

 

[Sowega86]

View attachment 3355190

Or nuclear-powered electric vehicles if you are part of the Southern Company network

 

[basstracker89]

Problem is that anything that comes down the pike is a money pit. They don't make anything to last anymore. As soon as you buy it, it's obsolete. That's how they keep their money train going