You're not seeing it, are you? How about this: Tell me how many gallons of fuel I should reserve for a daytime/visual flight in a 1972 Cessna 172. Got any ideas? No? Not a pilot? Oh.GRA wrote:I've listed industry 'standards', and showed how they vary. Let's use 80%, allow 10% as an emergency reserve and another 10% for less than ideal conditions, which gets us right back to 60% as dependable capacity. I consider a 10% reserve and 10% for inclement conditions to be inadequate, but the companies will determine what their needs are and whether running the battery that low routinely is a good idea from a TCO perspective, once they've got the data.AndyH wrote:The industry standard point for battery end of life is 80%, not 70 or 60. You're free to set your personal goalposts where you wish, but I'll be sticking with established standards.GRA wrote: I'm not suggesting that everyone has to derate 40%, although as most companies consider 70% of initial capacity to be end of life, I allow 10% on top of that for everything else, which is pretty liberal. Obviously, not every company does so - the 2011-2012 LEAF's warranty was nominally 66.25%, the Smart's (if you leased it) 80%, and the Bolt's is 60%. Every trucking company will decide for themselves what economic end of life is, based on how much loss of operational capacity they can accept.
As to why you went to a PHEV you state exactly the point I was making - the Smart's range was too constraining for your needs, so you moved to a vehicle that didn't constrain you, which you could afford.
Sure - I can play BS numbers too. Let's put a 20Ah main drive battery in a 5 ton submarine. If we put a 10C load on it to get the sub moving on the surface, and de-rate it 10% for the times we need to use the searchlight and 40% for effects of next week's EMP, it can't go very far. Wow - that sucks! Who in their right mind would do that? Yeah, right: Nobody. That excursion through the rabbit hole is as valid as your suggestion that 60% is 'dependable capacity' from a ginormous truck battery.

Guy, the above is the sort of massive circle-jerk that occurs when someone without the background to understand and clearly without reading the rest of the posts tries to blame someone else for what they don't understand. Yes you are using some of my words - but out of context and twisted to fit your worldview.GRA wrote:Did your needs change, or just your willingness to put up with limitations? I'm just taking your own words. In the Outlander thread you wrote:AndyH wrote:You still don't understand why I chose the vehicles I did, but you still think you do. This has been a recurring theme that I'm still failing to get through to you that you're not reading it right. My vehicle choices are mission specific. The smart was the perfect vehicle for me at the time. And my current choice performs the functions I need long-term. (Did you detect a change in needs this time? Hopefully...)It doesn't appear you needed to change cars to continue making that trip. In another message in that thread, you wrote:[For a point of reference...in order to make it to my in-law's place in my smart (with her city car aerodynamics) I had no problem on the interstate, but had to keep my speed down to 55. Driving faster meant that I didn't have enough charge to make it to a charge location. As it was, I'd often drag in to Fredericksburg with 1-2% remaining and a max speed of 30. Being able to drive 63 on the highway is a nice upgrade.
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That doesn't read to me as if your mission changed, only your willingness to put up with the Smart's limitations due to limited range and lack of infrastructure. In short, inconvenient time sucks and preventing you from going a place you wanted to for a year, which is exactly what I said about why you upgraded. It's the same reason that I don't consider any BEV to meet my mission needs yet, because I simply can't get to many of the places I want to drive to in one, of if I can it involves great inconvenience in extra time or choice of routes.I took a 170 mile drive up I-35 to Cabela's** starting with about half a charge and 9 EV miles showing on the guess-o-meter. Speeds ranged from suburban 35/45 mph, to afternoon rush hour stop and start, to regular interstate driving. The only thing I did for economy was kept my speed below 65...most of the time.. . . **That's a drive I've been wanting to make for almost a year - I got a gift certificate for my birthday last year. My smart would have needed four charge stops to make the trip and it doesn't have fast charge capability. There isn't infrastructure in the right places to make the trip possible, even if I wanted to spend 15 hours getting L2 charges enroute.
I said I base my lease/purchase decisions on mission needs, and that my mission needs changed. I posted the details of how and why in the smart thread. I intended to rent a car for longer drives and did just that when necessary. The car was perfect for the grocery trips, doctor visits, and commutes to school. I did not choose to rent a car to go to Cabela's - that is NOT a limitation with the smart. It's no different than saying I couldn't use the car to get plywood from the lumber yard. I did the same thing with the smart that I did with my VWs - I used Home Depot's flat-bed.
Also - as I've also stated a number of times: My drives to the in-law's place were well beyond max range of the smart. If I drove up at 55 MPH, I could make it to the charge point closer to the destination and charge for 1 hour. I didn't 'have' to do that - I chose to do that - because driving 55 rather than 60 or 65 cut a charge stop - the overall trip was faster if I drove a bit slower. Since I didn't have cruise control on the car, I simply tucked-in behind a semi.

As I've said a number of times on this forum since it launched: I see 'mission planning' an EV trip much the same way I fly missions in small airplanes: For the local 1-hour afternoon flights to the lake and back, RPM and mixture management isn't important because the airplane can fly for 4 hours at wide-open throttle and I'm only going to be in the air for an hour. This feels exactly the same to me as getting into the smart (70 miles of range) and driving to two grocery stores and the pet shop, because the entire journey is about 7 miles. One has to pay attention to fuel stops and other factors when approaching or exceeding max range - and this is exactly the same if one is flying a small airplane, driving an EV, or driving a '96 VW Passat TDI to New England. Beyond max range is beyond max range regardless if the number is 4 hours, 70 miles, or 1100 miles. There were times I slowed down in each of the example vehicles as conditions changed. That's a 'vehicle thing' and not just a 'bev thing'.
Word salad from hell.GRA wrote:Good, we agree that they haven't yet tested it to those protocols, but they are certainly making multiple claims about range and TCO. Let's also not pretend the test protocols used for passenger cars have any bearing on those for commercial trucks, as their usage cycles are completely different. And it's not just lateness at Tesla, but also QC issues (and high cycle degradation data) that will be critical for determining TCO, unless you think multiple drivetrain replacements per vehicle, or multiple trips to repair issues, as has been the case with more than a few Model S/X and RAV4s, would be acceptable for a business. There's no question that BEV trucks will have a place once they can show that they have acceptable TCO, but they've just started to enter service (panel trucks), so it's all just hot air and hand waving at the moment.AndyH wrote:Still adding info to other people's definitions. At least it's not just me.GRA wrote: Yes, I read them, and they are truck protocols (for diesels) , so let's not compare them to EPA car cycles for PEVs and assume they cross over. When Tesla submits to such tests for trucks, we'll have some useful independent info to compare.No, Guy, those aren't "diesel test protocols" - they're class 8 truck protocols - and (kicking the podium here) - they are the metrics that will be used to rate the subject tractor. You don't have to like it, but you can't hand-wave that away.
Tesla isn't 'claiming' anything at this point - and they're certainly not pointing to an ass and claiming it's an elephant. They are simply stating the design bounds. As has been previously noted, they tend to hit the goals that aren't tied to Musk Time Dilation(tm).

No, I don't agree that they haven't tested to the EPA protocols - I have zero information to confirm or deny. If I was them, I'd be putting the truck on a dyno and running the tests. How else does a company know if they'll hit targets unless they TEST?! EV race bike teams do the math, and then they run the prototypes on the track. GM ran the Volt all over lower Michigan, from road to test track as well as running dyno tests. That's the norm. I'd bet money that they've run at least one of the prototype tractors through the 'treadmill' tests.
I'm not saying anything about TCO - that seems to be your thing. Since it's got nothing to do with EPA test cycles or range, I'm going to ignore it.
You're the only one saying anything about car tests - of COURSE nobody in their right mind is going to evaluate trucks against LA06. (Do we really have to keep saying this?!)
Quick charging is becoming well known. It doesn't do much damage to a LEAF battery, and it does less to a water-cooled battery. Charging to 80% in 30 minutes is a less than 2C charge rate. Modern lithium cells are happy at 6-10C rates. Additionally, I'm thinking nobody on the planet is in a better position to estimate the effect of high rates of DC charging on a liquid-cooled battery than Tesla. So yeah, I'm ok giving them the benefit of the doubt here.
RAV4s and Model S/X? Panel trucks? Those have what to do with Class 8 tractors?
