Lotus Emira Production Life vs. EU Ban on Gas Engines

[GetawayDriving]

Thanks for your insight. Can you sight the US Federal Warranty Regs on EV batteries, specifically the Degradation Limit of 70%. I've founds lots of info on the "8 years / 100K miles", yet that seems to only be for complete battery failure, and does not state any degradation limit. I would like to be more informed when I discuss this stuff with my Telsa neighbor, as his experience has him selling his cars after a few years. Maybe he has some type of warranty claim with Telsa? Or is this Federal requirement something new for 2023 models?

Thanks!! 👍

The way I understand it, 15 U.S. Code § 2301 (emissions law) covers these components, but I haven't seen the exact language everyone quotes for 8 years / 100k. CARB also has warranty rules in place, and are currently pushing for 10 year 150k miles. I do not believe there is language that guarantees the amount of performance retained, but almost all manufacturers have settled on 70% as that number. Nissan is the only weird one with wording like "displaying less than 9 bars out of 12 on the battery indicator". Tesla's battery warranty is 70% for 8/100k on Model 3 & Model Y, and 8/150k on Model S and X. https://www.tesla.com/support/vehicle-warranty

Maybe your neighbor should have kept the old cars around for a while, prior to 2015 Tesla had an unlimited-mileage warranty on the battery and drive units.

 

[Stiffarm]

Chemical energy density is more than an order of magnitude greater than what's possible with batteries today, and the difference in fueling time is like 50:1. Batteries will probably get there but it will require some pretty incredible technical breakthroughs that haven't happened yet.

The other problem with a full transition to battery vehicles is the shocking lack of public policy to address class inequity in access. Battery vehicles with current technology only make functional sense if owners are able to charge them overnight, which is nice and possible for single family homeowners flush with disposable income, but that's not possible if you live in multifamily housing or rent a home without charging infrastructure. Landlords aren't going to spend money to build charging infrastructure for some tenant's car, it's not going to happen. So without massive regulatory intervention, the whole battery car scenario will remain closed and inaccessible to 90+% of non-homeowners.

And what about the elderly on fixed income? We're just going to require them to install entirely new service infrastructure to their home to electrically fuel a car they rarely drive? Who pays for that?

I don't get why so many smart people don't seem to consider this stuff in context. I guess the Silicon Valley types who dream up and then market these utopian product scenarios just can't see very far past their own narrow experience. But hey, as long as it gooses a stock price for long enough for them to get a nice fat exit, then mission accomplished, eh?

Agree 100%, but the elephant in the room is that electric generation capacity and infrastructure is nowhere near robust enough for charging the number of electric vehicles proposed by these inane regulations. The US will need many more coal fired generation plants and a multiple of total output (to say nothing of massive increase in charging stations) to keep up with the demand for charging without unavailability andsbrown outs. The climate change crazies have corrupted the legislation without any practical consideration of the supply and logistics problem.

 

[Porter]

Agree 100%, but the elephant in the room is that electric generation capacity and infrastructure is nowhere near robust enough for charging the number of electric vehicles proposed by these inane regulations. The US will need many more coal fired generation plants and a multiple of total output (to say nothing of massive increase in charging stations) to keep up with the demand for charging without unavailability andsbrown outs. The climate change crazies have corrupted the legislation without any practical consideration of the supply and logistics problem.

The only climate-neutral current-tech solution to that problem is nuclear power.

 

[FlyNavy01]

The majority of EV owners charge overnight off peak load times, which requires zero additional electrical infrastructure. Many utilities even incentivize this with much lower rates during this time. The "grid can't handle it" is a concern in some areas, but not nearly as bad as it's sensationalized to be.

Many gas stations (Buc-ee's, etc.) are already adding chargers to supplement their fuel pumps, which is much less expensive/intrusive than constructing a separate site for EV's. New chargers can be expanded at the same rate as EV adoption without issue, it's just the profit hungry gas/oil companies getting on board, in addition to the inefficient government bureaucracy that's trying to push it one way or the other depending on who's currently in the seat.

The biggest struggle for EV adoption outside of battery tech is the challenge of ownership without a home to charge it, as previously mentioned. That is a significant hurdle.