Chev also gas a EV with a pretty good range I think it is the Bolt. But I am not sure what batteries they have.

1 hour ago, seant said:

Chev also gas a EV with a pretty good range I think it is the Bolt. But I am not sure what batteries they have.

Yup, they have the Volt and the Bolt. They pulled the plug on the Volt. Cause GM.

23 hours ago, The Terrible Triplett said:

Get some Pylontech banks - they last decades - 6000 cycles. 😆

We shall see, right?

Perhaps closer to possibl than the million cycle ultra-capacitors.

On ‎09‎/‎05‎/‎2019 at 7:12 PM, Elbow said:

This one has 27000kms and 17.7kWh available on the battery - down from the 18.8 new capacity.

That is probably "normal", but I have to admit it scares me to imagine the battery capacity shrinking over the years and the utility decreasing.

does the 94Ah battery have a better lifespan?  You’ve looked after yours better?

 

At 47000km our 94Ah cars battery still has a max capacity in excess of the BMW factory guaranteed maximum for a new car. BMW has a superb thermally controlled battery. There are ones in the USA with over 200000 miles and are still well within spec. There is a 60Ah in Jhb that has just clocked 200000km and also well within spec. Battery issues are the last thing to worry about with BMW's. Not the case with the poor thermal control of the Leaf's.

Edited May 11, 20197 yr by Gerald_db

On 2019/05/09 at 8:00 PM, The Terrible Triplett said:

Get some Pylontech banks - they last decades - 6000 cycles. 😆

I think a supercap will last longer? 

1 hour ago, SilverNodashi said:

I think a supercap will last longer? 

I think he's referring to the faux supercap batteries.

On 2019/05/01 at 9:52 AM, plonkster said:

Yup. I have pretty much drawn a line in the sand around 350k. Once a new EV sells for under that price... or a good second hand one sells for under 250k... then we can start talking. Until then... Diesel remains my poison of choice.

Plonky I thought this might interest you : https://www.autotrader.co.za/car-for-sale/bmw/i3/rex/25142313

2016 model 38K KM for R360K, pretty much the cheapest i3 I have seen.

Hi there. Be careful here. That advert is wrong. Per the picture that is not a Rex (range extender) version - no front fuel flap over the front right wheel and per the centre display is a low spec small battery 60Ah model. Range here a max of 90 to 120km with no petrol backup range extender. Dealerships should not falsely advertise. 

55 minutes ago, PJJ said:

Plonky I thought this might interest you : https://www.autotrader.co.za/car-for-sale/bmw/i3/rex/25142313

2016 model 38K KM for R360K, pretty much the cheapest i3 I have seen.

Too late. I bought a RAV4 🙂 One of the last Diesel ones, because the world seems to be abandoning Diesel. The 2019 RAV4 doesn't even come in Diesel anymore, which is a real shame.

I got the one with the boring 2AD-FTV engine (which I know inside out). And it has no D-CAT! So I get to postpone the electric revolution at least another few years, the next time I need to buy a car will be some time between 2025 ad 2030, and by then I'm sure things will have changed enough that it will be a no-brainer.

The price on the RAV4 was 315k, so price-wise it compares well with that i3, and I think for my applications the old diesel will still have a lower TCO.

47 minutes ago, plonkster said:

Too late. I bought a RAV4 🙂

The first Toyota I bought was a RAV4 many years ago. In all the years I drove it the only problem I had was a few tyre puntures and to change the battery. I was so impressed with it that I have only bought Toyota since....and never looked back.

26 minutes ago, GVC said:

In all the years I drove it the only problem I had was a few tire punctures and to change the battery.

Man that is bad!!! 🤣

Isuzu 280TD ... blerrie alternator and water pump went after 19/20 years.  They don't make them like they used to! 😜
Luckily for me no tire punctures, just a batt or two as their had been a tendency to leave the lights on a few times too many.
And once you've done that, 280's need a lot of juice to turn that engine. A smallish car - as it is always friends with smallish cars that can help - will take an 40-60 minutes revving to get that blerrie engine to turn over, once it turns it starts immediately and no, every time I did it, I could not push it either. To avert that fiasco going forward I now have a buzzer installed to tell me the lights are on.

So I have a buzzer, a battery, a radio AND electric windows! So I'm not that far off from a electric car see. 🙂 

34 minutes ago, GVC said:

I was so impressed with it that I have only bought Toyota since

Pretty similar story, with more of a running start 🙂 Grew up on a Farm and my father switched from Ford to Toyota in 1987, and after that it was pretty much the same: Only Toyotas were bought. Then I went to university, but I had a trick to get home cheaply, I had contacts. These guys would use students to drive dealer cars from Stellenbosch to Windhoek. Student gets home for free, dealer gets a dozen cars there for the cost of the fuel only. So as a student that gave me exposure to the long-distance capability of a few vehicles, one of which was a boring late-90s Toyota Corolla... and you might think it is silly, but I was so impressed with that thing that I ended up buying the exact same one just out of university, and except for a brief dip in the BMW pool (which lasted only a year and was a very expensive mistake), I have driven Toyotas ever since.

 

1 hour ago, Gerald_db said:

Hi there. Be careful here. That advert is wrong. Per the picture that is not a Rex (range extender) version - no front fuel flap over the front right wheel and per the centre display is a low spec small battery 60Ah model. Range here a max of 90 to 120km with no petrol backup range extender. Dealerships should not falsely advertise. 

Thanks for the heads up, well, one could use it as haggling power, for my daily comute 90-120KM worth of range is more than sufficient, and we still have my wifes ICE car for long journeys, so if you put in a cheeky lowball offer of say R280K (seeing as its non-Rex) and just cross your fingers you might actually score a very decent car at a good price.

1 hour ago, The Terrible Triplett said:

So I have a buzzer, a battery, a radio AND electric windows! So I'm not that far off from a electric car see. 🙂 

Except for the whole lot of carbon monoxide-CO, hydrocarbons-HC, particulate matter-PM and nitrogen oxides-NOX it produces for our children to inhale!

1 minute ago, Gerald_db said:

Except for the whole lot of carbon monoxide-CO, hydrocarbons-HC, particulate matter-PM and nitrogen oxides-NOX it produces for our children to inhale!

In your case, you have a large PV-array to offset it, so the rest of what I am about to say does not apply, BUT... in South Africa we make our electricity using coal. An electric car is not necessarily cleaner (at least not immediately, it might take 10 years to become neutral), see here for example around the 5 minute mark. That will hopefully change as our mix changes.

4 minutes ago, Gerald_db said:

Except for the whole lot of carbon monoxide-CO, hydrocarbons-HC, particulate matter-PM and nitrogen oxides-NOX it produces for our children to inhale!

Nothing beats diesel fumes and coffee for breakfast!!! 🤣

Sometime I wonder what cause more environmental damage:
1) A old car kept in tip top shape for decades, economical to repair and nearly completely recyclable as it is plain and simple. 
2) Or the latest new tech cars, replaced every few years, having a manufacturing footprint, not economical to repair and being more difficult to safely recycle.

And electric cars in SA, using mostly Eskom to recharge?

A Nissan Xtrail I know of:
Plastic bumpers to save costs and weight. Cost to repair a small section of the bumper: R25k.
Isuzu ... not a dent. Rubbed off the paint of the Nissan's bumper. 

And then we have the plastic pollution on top of which plastic filaments are coming down with the rains in the Rockies and has been found in Antartica recently.

Just now, The Terrible Triplett said:

Sometime I wonder what cause more environmental damage:
1) A old car kept in tip top shape for decades, economical to repair and nearly completely recyclable as it is plain and simple. 
2) Or the latest new tech cars, replaced every few years, having a manufacturing footprint, not economical to repair and being more difficult to safely recycle.

Also covered in the video I linked. Over the lifetime of a vehicle, the vast majority of the emissions is from driving it (not manufacturing it or recycling it), so replacing old cars with new electric cars does cause less enviro-damage. My argument is that there is a claw-back time, and that varies from anything between 18 months to 18 years depending on your energy mix and the battery size. Gerald's i3 is probaby closer to the 2-year mark, but for the rest of us it would be closer to the 10 year mark (thumb suck). So if you buy an electric car and either charge it with PV (only or mostly), or keep it longer than ten years: then you can say that you did the environment a favour.

But over 20 years, electric cars always win.

2 minutes ago, plonkster said:

... closer to the 10 year mark (thumb suck). So if you buy an electric car and either charge it with PV (only or mostly), or keep it longer than ten years: then you can say that you did the environment a favour.

But over 20 years, electric cars always win.

Keep in mind that - depending on the distances driven:
1) The batteries, will they last 10 years or need replacement?
2) And if car and batts lasted 10 years, then you buy another new electric car, cheaper than maybe a battery replacement, so again reset and add another 10 years to get to my 20 years with same car.
3) And in SA you still need that ICE for long distances.

No?

Versus 20 year old car - after 20 years not even 290 000 on the clock?

I wonder. Trucks in the USA have to add this stuff to the tank when they fill up. Mitigates the diesel fumes. Wonder if my car can take some additive to make it more environmental friendly.

One time I drove for months on 100% biodiesel made from restaurant vegetable oils ... now try and beat that with a electrical car! 🙂 
That was until the used oil guys figured they can capitalize on their used oil. So the price went up so bad it was not worth the effort anymore.

But let me be clear:
Electric cars in cities should be a goal to drive for - even better if the re-charging can be done via renewables.

I have the two buttons. 🙂 

1 minute ago, The Terrible Triplett said:

1) The batteries, will they last 10 years or need replacement?

He adds that in. For places with green energy, that puts the clawback at 5 years, and for places without green energy and a large battery, he got a result of 17 years (West Virginia, primarily coal-generated).

That is why I thumbsuck that with our energy mix, and a small battery and possibly one battery replacement, an electric car might do the claw-back in 10 years. Might.

3 minutes ago, The Terrible Triplett said:

3) And in SA you still need that ICE for long distances.

Which is the main reason I didn't do it. I mean how would that work... drive from here to Piketberg, wait a few hours to recharge... drive to Springbok... recharge... drive to Noordoewer.... recharge... drive to Grunau... recharge since I can't make Keetmanshoop on a single charge... drive to Keetmans... recharge... drive to Mariental... recharge.... drive to Windhoek (even though that's the long way round, cause I can't reach the farm on a single charge), recharge... and then the same thing in reverse.

41 minutes ago, The Terrible Triplett said:

And electric cars in SA, using mostly Eskom to recharge?

It is true that using coal generated power there is a carbon footprint however as ev is approx 90% efficient and a diesel barely 30% efficient the carbon foot print is a lot less for the same distance driven with diesel or petrol.

Currently the 120Ah i3 is available and Samsung have just revealed new cell densities for the i3 batteries that will take it to 150Ah. That translates to 400km range.

We have covered 54000km over the last 32 months that we would have driven in our Prado. The VW ID.3 has been launched and we are looking at that as our next ev. Its Golf sized and at approx the price of the top of range Golf. It will have a minimum of 400km range and with 100kw DC charging will be full if on the road in less than 45 minutes from empty.

The BMW i3 simply needs no maintenance and current research is showing the battery good for 500k miles! Our one still has more than its new rated battery capacity available after nearly 3 years. In contrast the Nissan Leaf battery is a disaster especially in warm climates.

In Africa we will always need ICE vehicles - my Prado tows our caravan anywhere.

Edited August 20, 20196 yr by Gerald_db

44 minutes ago, SolarNoob said:

Ahhh.... the price of doing the best you can to have a smaller impact on the planet...

PRICELESS!!   

Those few months I drove on 100% biodiesel ... I nearly saved the planet man! 🤣

There is nothing like an original Isuzu diesel engine idling - you don't hear nothing. Not the wife, not the kids ... the dogs ... just the bliss of a finely tuned engine in your ears.

@Gerald_db I have no problem whatsover with electric cars, they are the future and it will make the air we breathe cleaner. At one stage I researched converting my Zusie to a electric vehicle or even have it electrically assisted. It was fun, the research, but in the end the cost reached quite far into the price of a new EV. Unless you are a super cool DIY'er.

At least till I chose to go EV, I'm not doing 38.9 - 41l per 100km like trucks do. 🙂 

The absolute truth, our move to an ev in KZN has been a journey of cutting/bleeding edge fun and sheer frustration. Until a few months ago there was no charge points still working in KZN. BMW SA have let all theirs break and stay broken. One clever way not to let us charge for free as per sale agreement. Everything changed with the advent of the Gridcars/Jaguar SA Powerway DC CCS rapid chargers of which we now have 3! A 94Ah charges to 85% from say 35% within 15 minutes. The negative is we pay a premium of R5.88/kwh - really steep. For our i3 that equates to around 90c/km. Not an issue as 80% of our charging is at home on mains or solar.

BMW SA really has no commitment to ev sales however Jaguar and hopefully VW have upped the game massively. 

1 hour ago, Gerald_db said:

BMW SA really has no commitment to ev sales however Jaguar and hopefully VW have upped the game massively. 

A story I heard was that another EV manufacturer had problems with installing charging stations all over for they refused to "pay" any "fees".

Maybe BMW had similar "meddling" by "someone" resulting in the broken charge points on purpose?
Or maybe they where broken on purpose.

For I cannot see why BMW would incur the cost and then just leave it.