Electric vehicles (EVs), their emissions, and future viability

2015vwgolfdiesel · Nov 29, 2017

Credit to Tesla

.... for trying to eliminate side view mirrors.

aja8888 · Nov 29, 2017

Just curious

I'm not up on the entire business model for Tesla and don't know how they address defects and repairs in the field after the cars are sold. Is it done by a 3rd party contract shop?

What about wear items like brakes? Can any brake shop get parts?

GoFaster · Nov 29, 2017

aja8888 said:
I'm not up on the entire business model for Tesla and don't know how they address defects and repairs in the field after the cars are sold. Is it done by a 3rd party contract shop?
What about wear items like brakes? Can any brake shop get parts?

Nope. Anything you want to touch on a Tesla outside of standardized items (tires) means the car has to go to a Tesla service center. You can not get ANY new parts that are specific to the car from ANY aftermarket channels. (You can get used parts from wrecking yards; those are beyond Tesla's reach) Only Tesla authorized service centers have access to repair procedures. Even collision repairs ... Tesla authorized service center only.

This is one of my beefs with the way the company operates.

aja8888 · Nov 29, 2017

GoFaster said:
Nope. Anything you want to touch on a Tesla outside of standardized items (tires) means the car has to go to a Tesla service center. You can not get ANY new parts that are specific to the car from ANY aftermarket channels. (You can get used parts from wrecking yards; those are beyond Tesla's reach) Only Tesla authorized service centers have access to repair procedures. Even collision repairs ... Tesla authorized service center only.
This is one of my beefs with the way the company operates.

Oh my! Thanks.

turbobrick240 · Nov 29, 2017

Google found me a huge selection of model S brake pads in less than a minute. I assume rotors are readily available too. From what I've seen on YouTube videos, they change out just like any other car.

VeeDubTDI · Nov 29, 2017

oilhammer said:
Heh, I cross shopped the Swift (the Suzuki version of the Metro, but with a 4th cyl) before I bought my Jetta. Our dealer was also a Suzuki store. They are VERY cheap, as are all the Suzukis at the time.
Nothing wrong with wanting a shiny new toy. Just being man enough to admit that it is something you want, and not need. And that it may not somehow make the world a better place if you have one, but just your little corner of it.
I am thinking about buying a friend's '71 Dodge Dart Not new (and not very shiny either, to be honest), but it just needs a clutch!

Wants and needs. I certainly don’t need anything more than my dirt cheap 500e, as it gets me to work, gets me to all of my errands and everywhere else that I need to go. If we’re really distilling needs, I suppose my Metro (commuter bus and train) fare card would be sufficient.

But I want a Tesla. I want to support the company and I want to support their mission. I want to power it as cleanly as I can. If we owned our house, I would want solar panels on it. We don’t, so I can’t. I do the next best thing by buying “green energy” from our power company because I want to do the right thing even if that means spending a little more to do it.

Is that man enough for you?

GoFaster · Nov 29, 2017

turbobrick240 said:
Google found me a huge selection of model S brake pads in less than a minute. I assume rotors are readily available too. From what I've seen on YouTube videos, they change out just like any other car.

The "car stuff" is indeed just like any other car, and there are enough of those cars out there for some common repair parts to be reverse-engineered. Tesla won't sell their own parts with their own part numbers except through their service centers, but they can't stop them from being copied. The other thing is that a lot of the smaller parts are actually originally designed for some other car (e.g. some of the interior switchgear is Mercedes, brake calipers appear to be Brembo), and they can only keep that secret for so long ...

Oilerlord · Nov 29, 2017

migbro said:
Defects included "doors not closing, material trim, missing parts, all kinds of stuff. Loose objects, water leaks, you name it," another former supervisor said. "We've been building a Model S since 2012. How do we still have water leaks?"

This stuff will catch up with Tesla sooner or later.

Quality control would probably be an issue with any automaker with only 10 years of experience building cars. I say that not in defense, or to give Tesla a free pass on QC, only that objectively - it makes sense QC challenges exist within the NDA insider culture of Tesla.

Tesla has proven they can sell, service, and support a relative small fleet of cars but QC issues & cost overruns HAVE to be an issue. I believe that if they sell 10x more cars - the issue becomes up to 10x worse. Tesla will need to pour even more investor capital into operations as they sell more units. It's reality. Again, the trend is right there in their 10Q releases.

This is why I wouldn't be long TSLA at this point. All the "good" news is already baked into the stock.

bhtooefr · Nov 29, 2017

Also worth noting that due to Massachusetts law, Tesla is forced to make service information and parts available in that state only.

In other news...

Fraunhofer, KIT study finds CO2 mitigation potential of higher-range PHEVs greater than expected

migbro · Nov 29, 2017

bhtooefr said:
Also worth noting that due to Massachusetts law, Tesla is forced to make service information and parts available in that state only.

In other news...

Fraunhofer, KIT study finds CO2 mitigation potential of higher-range PHEVs greater than expected

In other, other news.

Tesla car battery production releases as much CO2 as 8 years of gasoline driving

turbobrick240 · Nov 29, 2017

migbro said:
In other, other news.

Tesla car battery production releases as much CO2 as 8 years of gasoline driving

Now that is a much more interesting article. One key metric listed in the Swedish study is the average miles driven per annum- 1224. So for someone driving say 12,240 miles per year, the break even point would be .8 years rather than 8 years for a large Tesla battery.

migbro · Nov 29, 2017

turbobrick240 said:
Now that is a much more interesting article. One key metric listed in the Swedish study is the average miles driven per annum- 1224. So for someone driving say 12,240 miles per year, the break even point would be .8 years rather than 8 years for a large Tesla battery.

Despite what it says I don't think that average mileage is credible even in tolerant Sweden and is not supported by other ways of analyzing the equivalence.

Producing one 100kWh Tesla Model S battery pack causes the emission of 17.5 metric tonnes of CO2. An average ICE car emits approximately 5 tons of CO2 per annum. So the Model S is 3 to 4 years in the hole as it rolls off the assembly line.

I don't really care either way as I think these calculations are basically nonsensical but it does show it's not all rainbows in unicorn-land.

turbobrick240 · Nov 29, 2017

This article has some good commentary on the ny teknik article from above. There seems to be a discrepancy in the average miles the Swedes rack up in the two pieces *edit: the actual avg yearly mileage in Sweden is 12,240 km. The figure must have got mangled in translation*- but some good points are made:
https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/no-tesla-batteries-are-not-a-global-warming-disaster#gs.d_Ylzbs

kjclow · Nov 30, 2017

GoFaster said:
And how would they do that?

TSLA is a publicly traded company. The only way the other manufacturers could "force" Tesla to disappear is if they came up with competitive products that beat Tesla at their own game ... and I wouldn't exclude this possibility although it looks like it would be at least a few years down the road. You can't "force" a publicly traded company to "be acquired" ... someone has to be willing to buy a majority the outstanding shares (at a premium that is high enough for current shareholders to accept the deal). At current valuations TSLA is extremely expensive, and even if there were companies that "could" buy them out, why "should" they buy them at a premium to today's inflated valuations of TSLA despite fairly obvious trouble on the horizon? It doesn't make any sense.

Of course, if TSLA runs into trouble such that the share price crashes, then that's quite another matter, and I wouldn't exclude this possibility from happening, either ...

One of the things Tesla has done right has been recognizing that the cars and the charging infrastructure go hand in hand. The other manufacturers have been seemingly doing their best to make the charging infrastructure someone else's problem ... and until this changes, Tesla has an ace in the hole. If the other manufacturers gang up and get serious about installing SAE Combo quick-charging stations *everywhere* ... including across the street from every single Tesla Supercharger! ... and come up with good products, Tesla probably won't be able to keep up. The Model S is 6 model years old with no sign of a next generation, or even a makeover, on the horizon.

How did they force Tucker or Studebaker out of business? I know it's a different era but competition is still competition. Ok, maybe Tucker was more of a flake than businessman, but Studebaker had been in business for over 100 years.

wxman · Nov 30, 2017

According to the latest version of GREET (GREET_2017), GHG emissions from manufacturing the LI-ion battery for EV is 1,331,000 grams GHG when using the current U.S. electricity grid mix per EIA. Using solar PV to manufacture the battery would produce 1,039,000 grams GHG.

Can't find the actual capacity of the default battery used in GREET other than the battery weight is assumed to be 445 pounds for a "mid-sized" car.

Manufacturing the entire vehicle results in 6,668,000 grams GHG for the default EV, and 6,131,000 grams GHG for the default ICEV.

RabbitGTI · Nov 30, 2017

Re this: "One of the things Tesla has done right has been recognizing that the cars and the charging infrastructure go hand in hand. The other manufacturers have been seemingly doing their best to make the charging infrastructure someone else's problem ... and until this changes, Tesla has an ace in the hole. If the other manufacturers gang up and get serious about installing SAE Combo quick-charging stations *everywhere* ... including across the street from every single Tesla Supercharger! ... and come up with good products, Tesla probably won't be able to keep up. The Model S is 6 model years old with no sign of a next generation, or even a makeover, on the horizon."

Porsche, Ford and others are cooperating on a quick charging standard and network. I don't have the link. TSLA is not among the participants. When the other marques start selling many EV models, I wonder it TSLA will try to go proprietary or have to license charging network access? Lots of unknowns. Sorry I don't have links to this.

turbobrick240 · Nov 30, 2017

Thanks wxman- that last figure puts the carbon emissions from vehicle manufacture in good perspective. I agree that it would be nice to know what vehicles those default values correlate with. I assume model S production has quite a bit more carbon emitted than a Leaf. Likewise a Suburban quite a bit more than a Spark.

bhtooefr · Nov 30, 2017

At that battery weight, and knowing what the UCS reports use for similar assumptions, the LEAF is almost certainly the model midsize EV.

Oilerlord · Nov 30, 2017

wxman said:
Manufacturing the entire vehicle results in 6,668,000 grams GHG for the default EV, and 6,131,000 grams GHG for the default ICEV.

^^This is an important point.

An EV will, over it's lifecycle, reduce the total amount of CO2 as compared with it's gasoline counterpart. While it's also true that if EV's become widely adopted, and the world's fleet of cars would thus emit less overall quantities of CO2, the biggest point that's being missed is that net CO2 keeps rising because we're putting more cars on the road.

Mother nature doesn't care if your individual car pollutes less than the next one, it's the rising number of cars being built every year that's pissing her off. With inflated residuals, and crazy low payments; EV's are lease machines because the are artificially affordable. Some think that if they put a brand new, two ton hunk of steel, glass, petrochemicals, and lithium ion battery on the road every three years - they are making a noble contribution to reducing global CO2. I think that's a dubious claim. It's always been about the number of cars on the road that matters. Take a look at this picture:

There are hundreds of thousands of VW's parked across the USA awaiting their fate. Regardless of dieselgate, and which side of the debate you're on - the result was that EVEN MORE cars were required to be built to replace them, releasing over 6,000 metric tons of GHG's per unit. Environmentalists cheer this as a win, but was it?

Once upon a time, cars were considered "durable goods". I miss those days.

GoFaster · Nov 30, 2017

RabbitGTI said:
Porsche, Ford and others are cooperating on a quick charging standard and network. I don't have the link. TSLA is not among the participants. When the other marques start selling many EV models, I wonder it TSLA will try to go proprietary or have to license charging network access? Lots of unknowns. Sorry I don't have links to this.

They are indeed. The problem is making it happen. Tesla IS making it happen. They're not participating in the other quick charging standard because they already have their own and they ARE making it happen (they have already made a lot of it happen).

I'm not buying an EV until every OnRoute (motorway service center) in Ontario has compatible Level 3 quick-charging equipment installed and operational, because that's how I can get to Windsor and back, and that's how I could get to Montreal and back. Crickets ... Plenty of talk but no action.

I could do it in a Tesla, they already have supercharger stations in useable locations, but their current vehicles are beyond my budget and the one that I could fit in my budget is beyond reasonable time horizon ...

GoFaster · Nov 30, 2017

kjclow said:
How did they force Tucker or Studebaker out of business? I know it's a different era but competition is still competition. Ok, maybe Tucker was more of a flake than businessman, but Studebaker had been in business for over 100 years.

Tucker was the Elio of his day and was never a serious factor in the market. Studebaker was, but they went out of business because the mainstream competitors had better products and they didn't have the resources to keep up. Hudson and Nash joined and formed American Motors, still not enough, they got bought out by Chrysler because the mainstream competitors had better products and they didn't have the resources to keep up (and you could almost say the same about Chrysler in turn being bought out by Fiat. I have two FiatChrysler products in the driveway but they're mostly Fiat and only a bit of Chrysler ... A Jeep Cherokee is mostly a Fiat ...)

The same thing could very well happen to Tesla and if it does, their stock price will crash, and only THEN will it be financially possible or reasonable for someone to buy them up. Right now it would be financial suicide.

In the other post there was discussion about the "mainstream" quick-charging network. If the mainstream competitors want to beat Tesla then they need to stop talking and MAKE THIS HAPPEN. There needs to be a SAE Combo (or whatever they come up with) quick-charging station pretty much across the street from every Tesla supercharger and then some. Tesla has a BIG head start (Years!) in this particular aspect of EV ownership ...

SilverGhost · Nov 30, 2017

oilhammer said:
Yep, everything you said there is why I don't like them.
No need for heated seats, and if I did, I would certainly not want them on all the time.
I HATE automatic headlights. That is the reason why so many idiots drive around in the rain and fog with no lights on. They depend on an imperfect technology... so they are hard to see. And it is easy to tell, as these are almost always the fancier cars that you know would have that crap. I can flip a switch, thanks.
No need for a bzillion song/itunes/carplay/blah blah.
No real need for navigation for 99% of everywhere I ever go.
No need for a phone, I am driving, not talking.
Hate power seats, always have. I know where I need my seat, and it can stay there. I do not need to have it move back and forth every time I get in and out of the car.
Do not like the video game gear selector (and this goes for anything that has them). I will concede that an EV + a manual gearbox is sort of a fat chick in a bikini thing, but I still would not like to have to watch some little indicator to tell me what gear I am in.
Push button start is fine, but it is a nuisance when the car needs service for a variety of reasons, dead battery, key carried off in the customer's pocket (this happens almost daily here), or a lost key (ask me about the Sienna we had here when I see you in January ).
You have to remember though, Tesla or not, I am not a fan of super fancy gadget laden cars, period. Maybe I have just had the wind knocked out of me from dealing with so much of that gingerbread stuff for so long that I just find it tiresome.
Sometimes a key, 3 pedals, a steering wheel, and a gearshifter with a dial speedometer in front is all I want. I actual enjoy DRIVING.

Now the idea of a Tesla driveline in a classic car would be pretty cool. I'd love an old splitty Bus like that. And there are folks that do stuff like that.

Someone has. Here is a link to story.

Oilerlord · Nov 30, 2017

I'd love these guys to do up a '65 bug for me:

http://www.zelectricmotors.com/

RabbitGTI · Nov 30, 2017

oilhammer, amen to the joy of driving and simplicity. After reading all this stuff, it seems to me that if cradle to grave environmental impact is considered, an ICE/hybrid is the best solution for many people. That assumes the car has a battery just big enough for the bulk of short hop daily stuff. I think we'll end up with full electrics, ICE/hybrids and who knows what other power trains. Along these lines, I think VW just recently added this to their website http://www.vw.com/electric-concepts. 369 HP bus sounds cool

VeeDubTDI · Nov 30, 2017

Oilerlord said:
^^This is an important point.

An EV will, over it's lifecycle, reduce the total amount of CO2 as compared with it's gasoline counterpart. While it's also true that if EV's become widely adopted, and the world's fleet of cars would thus emit less overall quantities of CO2, the biggest point that's being missed is that net CO2 keeps rising because we're putting more cars on the road.

Mother nature doesn't care if your individual car pollutes less than the next one, it's the rising number of cars being built every year that's pissing her off. With inflated residuals, and crazy low payments; EV's are lease machines because the are artificially affordable. Some think that if they put a brand new, two ton hunk of steel, glass, petrochemicals, and lithium ion battery on the road every three years - they are making a noble contribution to reducing global CO2. I think that's a dubious claim. It's always been about the number of cars on the road that matters. Take a look at this picture:

There are hundreds of thousands of VW's parked across the USA awaiting their fate. Regardless of dieselgate, and which side of the debate you're on - the result was that EVEN MORE cars were required to be built to replace them, releasing over 6,000 metric tons of GHG's per unit. Environmentalists cheer this as a win, but was it?

Once upon a time, cars were considered "durable goods". I miss those days.

A couple of points.

1.) End of lease EVs get sold on the used market, likely replacing older ICE vehicles. Many of those vehicles also get sold on used markets or get recycled if they’ve reached the ends of their lives. Off lease EVs aren’t sitting in a parking lot or getting scrapped. If they were, you would have a good point. You and I are both second owners of EVs and the manufacturing emissions continue to get amortized beyond the initial 3-year lease period.

2.) That picture shows vehicles that were involved in the diesel scandal. The additional manufacturing emissions from replacing these short-lived vehicles is on VW. Many owners bought the vehicles thinking they were cleaner and more efficient... come to find out one of those things was not the case. Trying to apply the responsibility for these additional manufacturing emissions to the consumer is inappropriate. Regardless, Dieselgate is off topic for this thread, so let’s just leave that alone.

oilhammer · Nov 30, 2017

Oilerlord said:
An EV will, over it's lifecycle, reduce the total amount of CO2 as compared with it's gasoline counterpart. While it's also true that if EV's become widely adopted, and the world's fleet of cars would thus emit less overall quantities of CO2, the biggest point that's being missed is that net CO2 keeps rising because we're putting more cars on the road.

Mother nature doesn't care if your individual car pollutes less than the next one, it's the rising number of cars being built every year that's pissing her off. With inflated residuals, and crazy low payments; EV's are lease machines because the are artificially affordable. Some think that if they put a brand new, two ton hunk of steel, glass, petrochemicals, and lithium ion battery on the road every three years - they are making a noble contribution to reducing global CO2. I think that's a dubious claim. It's always been about the number of cars on the road that matters.

There are hundreds of thousands of VW's parked across the USA awaiting their fate. Regardless of dieselgate, and which side of the debate you're on - the result was that EVEN MORE cars were required to be built to replace them, releasing over 6,000 metric tons of GHG's per unit. Environmentalists cheer this as a win, but was it?

Once upon a time, cars were considered "durable goods". I miss those days.

Excellent post again. Also, the driving force behind all these new cars is all these new humans. All of it ties right back into the global population that has by some estimates already blown past a reasonable expectation of tolerable limits. Harmony is regional.

I always felt Dieselgate, and the drive to remove these "gross polluters" from the road was not in the best interest of clean air. Because the vast majority of the cars that get removed will just be replaced with another car.

migbro · Nov 30, 2017

turbobrick240 said:
This article has some good commentary on the ny teknik article from above. There seems to be a discrepancy in the average miles the Swedes rack up in the two pieces *edit: the actual avg yearly mileage in Sweden is 12,240 km. The figure must have got mangled in translation*- but some good points are made:
https://www.greentechmedia.com/arti...-are-not-a-global-warming-disaster#gs.d_Ylzbs

That sick feeling when your virtue suddenly evaporates.

i.e. they dropped a zero and it's km not miles.

So...are you going to update your comment on your evil, CO2-generating monster of a battery pack?

Just imagine how much CO2 was generated to build Tesla's South Australia mega-battery. Hoo boy.

Oilerlord · Nov 30, 2017

VeeDubTDI said:
A couple of points.

1.) End of lease EVs get sold on the used market, likely replacing older ICE vehicles. Many of those vehicles also get sold on used markets or get recycled if they’ve reached the ends of their lives. Off lease EVs aren’t sitting in a parking lot or getting scrapped. If they were, you would have a good point. You and I are both second owners of EVs and the manufacturing emissions continue to get amortized beyond the initial 3-year lease period.

2.) That picture shows vehicles that were involved in the diesel scandal. The additional manufacturing emissions from replacing these short-lived vehicles is on VW. Many owners bought the vehicles thinking they were cleaner and more efficient... come to find out one of those things was not the case. Trying to apply the responsibility for these additional manufacturing emissions to the consumer is inappropriate. Regardless, Dieselgate is off topic for this thread, so let’s just leave that alone.

I addressed these points.

1.) The fact that cars get handed down to others isn't relevant to, or change the cumulative effect that manufacturing GHG emissions has. More cars being built = more manufacturing GHG emissions. It's a pretty simple point, but one that people can't seem to wrap their head around. It's just more fun to lease a new EV or ICEV, and not think about the consequences.

2.) I'm not at all applying blame to consumers; only using the example in terms of manufacturing emissions as "the other" environmental tragedy that people don't seem to care about and/or choose to ignore.

No, we don't live in Cuba with the requirement to drive cars from the 50's and I'm not trying to convince anyone that a 1989 Geo Metro is all we "need". What we can do however is slow down the production of new cars (and their associated manufacturing emissions) by driving the ones we have for a lot longer than we do.

turbobrick240 · Nov 30, 2017

migbro said:
That sick feeling when your virtue suddenly evaporates.

i.e. they dropped a zero and it's km not miles.

So...are you going to update your comment on your evil, CO2-generating monster of a battery pack?

Just imagine how much CO2 was generated to build Tesla's South Australia mega-battery. Hoo boy.

I honestly have no idea what you're talking about. The article you linked had an error. I said as much when I discovered the error. Big deal.

VeeDubTDI · Nov 30, 2017

Oilerlord said:
I addressed these points.

No, we don't live in Cuba with the requirement to drive cars from the 50's and I'm not trying to convince anyone that a 1989 Geo Metro is all we "need". What we can do however is slow down the production of new cars (and their associated manufacturing emissions) by driving the ones we have for a lot longer than we do.

I agree. The same should also be said about other areas of our lives like buying disposable products from lands far away. Civilized nations are getting far too deep into the disposable lifestyle. That includes technology, toys, clothes, cars, packaging, and just about every other aspect of our lives. I think a part of that is because most people alive today haven't lived through a great depression. Our grandparents did and told stories of cherishing what they had and doing things that seem crazy today like washing and reusing aluminum foil and plastic bags.

There is a lot of low hanging fruit out there, but it's difficult to convince people to give up a little bit of convenience for the greater good, especially if it costs a little bit more money at the same time.

Electric vehicles (EVs), their emissions, and future viability

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