Comment by siffland | Hacker News Reader

Comment by siffland | Hacker News Reader

Working in Tech, I love a lot about electric cars. I just have a few issues I cannot seem to overcome (this is a personal ME thing about EV's and some new gas vehicles, your mileage may vary....pun intended).

All new cars spy on you (well most do), but EV's are completely software driven and seem to be more intrusive. I want a car I can connect to the internet when I want to for updates and that is it. I also want android auto and the apple one for my wife, I do not want a proprietary (Tesla) entertainment system.

I want right to repair. It is my car if I spend that much on it, I want to do to it whatever I want.

I want all the equipment in the car to work when i purchase it and no monthly fees (I get it for XM Radio, I am talking like seat heaters and such).

For some reason it also irritates me Tesla can increase mileage with a flip of a switch (Like they were going to do in Florida for a hurricane a while back). So you are telling me they could of been build with smaller batteries and save money and the environment, but they were not so you could have a software upgrade (or was that a monthly payment as well). Also the fact Tesla can remote disable my vehicle, and purchased upgrades do not transfer to the new owner.

I can probably go on and on with my whining, but that is why i still have 2 gas guzzlers and a motorcycle (newest vehicle is 2008, 2005 Honda van has 270,000 miles on it). They are paid for an yes a little maintenance here and there but that is not enough to make me spend $30k + on an electric vehicle.

> So you are telling me they could of been build with smaller batteries and save money and the environment, but they were not...

If you charge and discharge a lithium ion cell from 4.2V to 2.75V, you might get 250 full cycles. If you stop charging at 4V and call that 100%, and stop discharging at 3.2V, you might get 2000 cycles before capacity is reduced.

Phone and laptop manufacturers prefer to burn the battery out in 2 years, car manufacturers want to sell bigger packs and are afraid consumers will rebel if a BEV needs a replacement battery at 100k miles.

Neither, for reasons unclear to me, allow the owner to make that decision.

They know people will make horrible decisions and sue.

It would be trivial to implement a battery charge log.

“At this charge level, the battery will degrade to x kWh after y cycles”.

It's a bit more complex than that unfortunately. Depending on how long you stay at high charge level it will negatively impact the battery life. So someone charging at 100% all the time but discharging quickly might see a better cycling count that someone charging at 90% but staying there almost all the time.

I mean, you can set your charge limit in every EV I know about

> If you charge and discharge a lithium ion cell from 4.2V to 2.75V, you might get 250 full cycles. If you stop charging at 4V and call that 100%, and stop discharging at 3.2V, you might get 2000 cycles before capacity is reduced.

Is there literally an almost 10x difference in the number of full cycles? Where can I read more about this?

The top end charge voltage is particularly sensitive, this is the most chemically unstable state of the cell charge cycle.

I really wish cell phones and computers came with an adjustment to max cell voltage. Cutting even 10% capacity can double your cycle life. Some do, but it's a hodgepodge and not standard.

https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-808-how-to-prolong-...

Thanks for the link. It is not clear to me if the resource is geared towards cell phone batteries or if it also applies to EV batteries, but I wouldn't be surprised if the trends apply to larger batteries as well.

Having said that, this resource does not seem to support the magnitude of the numbers in LeifCarrotson's comment that I was replying to. First, I did not see a relationship between voltage and Depth of Discharge (seems unlikely to be linear, especially given table 4), which is what the page seems to mostly talk about. Second, comparing 4.2V to 4.0V in table 4 suggests a 4x difference in the number of cycles, not a ~10x difference. Figure 6 also seems relevant and suggests maybe a 2x difference.

Something to keep in mind is that all of the tables are only trying to measure one thing and lay out the effect of the one variable. But in reality these can be mixed and matched for the desired performance characteristics. 10x is indeed possible by doing multiple things to extend the life of the cell.

Pull 4x from one table and 2-3x from another and it would probably put you somewhere in the 10x range. Though I'm not sure it would be strictly multiplicative.

>Neither, for reasons unclear to me, allow the owner to make that decision.

On Macs you can get something called AlDente which I use. Works quite well, free version https://apphousekitchen.com/

> All new cars spy on you (well most do)

All of them per Mozilla's recent report:

https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/categor...

We seem to be inching more and more towards the dystopian future we always feared. The sad thing is we seem to be willingly and collectively marching towards it ourselves.

At least it's a democratic march.

The authoritarian march (China et all) doesn't seem to be any less...march-y.

> I also want android auto and the apple one for my wife, I do not want a proprietary (Tesla) entertainment system.

Having used Carplay recently after few months in Tesla I couldn't believe how crap it was. Can't pinch and zoom map, can't use maps on your phone while you navigate (how do I add additional stop without using screen), it wouldn't connect about 10% of drives. Overall UX is feels about a decade behind - a bit like OEM systems before Carplay.

Yeah I completely agree with you and I’ve never driven any Tesla. CarPlay is an extension of your phone and somewhere between an Apple Watch and an iPhone. There are so many situations I experience where if CarPlay had like 10% functionality it would feel like a must have game changer. Instead it just feels like a pretty good maps UI (regardless of which maps platform you use) with an ok but severely limited music UI.

BEVs are a dead end technology because they are far more expensive than the cars they are replacing. There is no way this market is going to survive once the subsidies and government support ends. People with brains are finally realizing that it is time to move on and towards some other technology.

I think we will end up pulling back towards PHEVs (or range extended EVs). You can have literally 1/4 of the battery and still never use fossil fuels for 90% of journeys. You don't get to have as much power, but EVs are more powerful than necessary anyway.

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