A Polite Discussion; Large Scale Use of Electric Cars and How it Effects GRM types.

OK since my first post resulted in a locked thread, my apologies but I do want to discuss this. Mods if you need to delete or lock this I understand.

Only two ground rules for this "polite" discussion: no politics & no posts questioning anyone's technical background. Silly fanciful questions are perfectly acceptable.

Because I'm a purchasing analyst I have a pathological need to look at all sides of every issue and so I am interested in how this would play out.

The one hurdle I see to the widespread use of electric cars is the very large infrastructure hurdles.  If we have a huge number of cars plugged in every evening it's obviously going to stress the grid in some places. Question is how much power does it take to charge a car..........more than an alarm clock but less than your AC?  Will some clever person invent a solar powered home charging station that charges up a power pack that would then be used to charge the car etc so that it's a moot point?

My initial thought is electric cars will be limited to short distance commuter duty whereas road trips will still be done in gas cars as a sort of transitional period until cross country trips become more viable with electric cars. Another thought is will cross country road trips by car lose their appeal to a younger non car generation so this may be moot point.

As for how it effects GRMers:

I've made mention that for autocross if my F500 could be electric I'd be totally OK with that, assuming the performance is the same of course. The current issue (besides classing) is that doing this cheaply on a grassroots level isn't possible. If the current motor in the car goes blamo I can buy a  replacement snowmobile engine for $600. If the electric car becomes more available perhaps  we'll have access to junkyard motors/power units along the lines of the beloved LS swap. Granted that may take until 2045 before that's a reality.

Next; currently electric cars are built with commuting in mind and there are few performance applications at the moment. One of the issues I know is that on track these cars get hot quickly, will we see a switch 5 lap heat races as solution.

Looping back to infrastructure..............if you have 100 electric races cars at a local track what does that mean to there infrastructure? Could be simple as every racer no needs to have a generator to charge up their cars between runs.

One thing I do now for sure.............some guys will figure out how to build "cheater" motors in the first ten minutes.

Well, electrical grid infrastructure improvements have been being worked on fairly steadily, I see acceleration in that in the next decade, so I dont think its as bad of a hangup as you might think.  There's time. The power demand depends on how fast you want to charge how big of a battery...  It depends...   I can see credits for slow charging vs fast charging at home.  The other thing is that I have seen some stuff on how the batteries can be used to support the grid weaknesses. You have a lot of storage plugged in, if you know you wont be using the car for x amount of time, a controller can allow the grid to draw from it as needed to use it as storage, or your house in place of a backup generator for some things. 

You know the old travel center plaza's on the freeways?   Those will make a comeback with entertainment/etc stuff there to keep you entertained while it charges.  Hey, if they pop a budget movie theatre there?  (also, infastructure for power can follow major transmission lines for these).  If we build the cars, they will come. 

The track problems?  Well, swappable battery packs are something thats been explored. Big tracks might get infrastructure for on-site charging. Hey, they have on site gas stations. But, the more rural tracks will have to do something like generators. 

I see car competition going the same way horse racing has, you trailer them.  Many of us are alredy there, so little impact other than exactly what you may be able to tow with long term. 

Paul_VR6 (Forum Supporter) said:

I see car competition going the same way horse racing has, you trailer them.  Many of us are alredy there, so little impact other than exactly what you may be able to tow with long term. 

I have been kind of thinking that there will be a rise in purpose built racing vehicles coming. Looks like the focus is a bit more on vintage for now, but I kind of see it shifting at some point. 

People will race anything , so Prius cup will happen a Lotus Prius Super seven kit etc , 

The problem I see with the tech we have now ( and will change over 15 years) is there are no hybrids allowed in the California plan , so you are set at 300-400 mile range before a long stop to recharge ( shorter with Tesla supercharger)

Stops the Banzai run to Texas to look at a car !      ( yes I have done that 3 times from SoCal )

But rules will change , batteries will get lighter , cheaper and charge quicker.....

And in the long run this is bad news for Old Car collectors , Gasoline will be made expensive to push you into buying an EV ,  and old cars will be Anti social to many people !

Long live the gas guzzlers !

It seems like the tradeoffs in performance are going to be a bit simpler.  You have battery size / capacity, motor power, and whatever software that is in there (traction control etc). 

I am suspicious the software part will the most fluid part, but will also be the most likely to be heavily restricted by the manufacturer.  

What will be interesting / fun is when there are "crate" motors, batteries and control software that can be customized.  I cannot imagine there would be a reason to restrict mods on such things (e.g. no emissions issues).

Hey, I love "oil and grease" cars, but it will be nice not to have to deal with as much grease.  Of course, having dealt with computers a lot.... a bit of grease might not be such a bad thing either.

My family and I have 7 years of EV ownership experience here in the greater Atlanta area.

Georgia Power offers a plan where night-time rates (11pm-6am) are very cheap due to extra capacity/lack of demand at those times.  After using our EVs for daily commuting and running errands then charging overnight our monthly power bills tended to be 5-10% higher due to charging.  The extra power bill expense was more than offset by the savings from no longer filling a vehicle up at the pump.

I've not done the math but I would guess that Georgia has sufficient capacity for overnight charging for a fair percentage of the passenger cars on the road to convert to EV.  I don't have any idea about flee vehicles and heavy trucks though.

As a GRM enthusiast, I'd be totally cool with an electric dirt bike or racing kart (and lawn mower, string trimmer, and the other small-engine applications).  I'd be totally cool with another EV as a family hauler, once EV minivans finally hit the market.  I'd even be interested in a classic/vintage car project updated with a plug-and-play EV setup.

...All that said, I don't find EVs to be as enjoyable as ICEs for spirited driving.  The sound and feel of banging through the gears as an engine climbs toward redline and back really adds to the driving experience.  Our Model 3 Performance is silly quick, but it's our much slower Boxster which makes me want to drive it up into the mountains.

If you want to see what electric racing might look like, check out RC cars. They've made the switch from ICE to EV. Some of the infrastructure problems are sidestepped when you're just not dealing with all that much power, but I think the parallels are pretty strong based on my minimal understanding of the sport. Battery performance and discharge rate becomes a factor, charge levels become factors, controller setup becomes a factor. Sure, it's a different level of skill than trying to tune a little tiny two stroke but it's still racing.

Especially the comment about cheater motors :) I was given a slightly obsolete RC10 car by a customer and it came with both an extremely complex controller (ABS!) and a few cheater motors.

Charging a car doesn't take any more current than your air conditioning, and not for nearly as long. Generally you charge at night and air condition during the day. I honestly don't think that there will be much of a difference to the grids.

I drove that Sienna to work today to get pictures. I had a rental Tuscon, Sentra and Camry, when the bodyshop was messing about, and each time I'm thinking "gosh so much fuss about nothing. So much noise and shuddering. I want the Bolt back". I would enjoy those things in an Elise or a 911, but just for getting back and forth to work, I am 100% ready for that to be the normal.

I don't think things like this ought to be mandated, but states have their own rights to do so. This is not a political statement.

People will still need access to cars which can drive longer distances, and EVs don't really work for towing at all, so there are some definite holes. But again, just for going to work and back, doing errands, I am ready for EVs right now.

If we have a huge number of cars plugged in every evening it's obviously going to stress the grid in some places. Question is how much power does it take to charge a car..........more than an alarm clock but less than your AC?  Will some clever person invent a solar powered home charging station that charges up a power pack that would then be used to charge the car etc so that it's a moot point?

Funny enough, that "home charging station" is the major purpose of the Tesla power wall; de stress the grid as much as possible, and have the car/home/grid communicate as to what is best for all 3. Fully Charged on Youtube has done some videos showing in real time the application swapping between charging his personal S directly from panel to powerwall as clouds pass overhead. Mitsubishi is getting into that game too.

The question of "how much" comes down to a ton of factors that include both need/necessity, but also what you have it plugged into. Jacking a Tesla into your standard 120V outlet sips only 12 amps, which is about as much as a really efficient dishwasher- and as the battery fills to "full" (or whatever you have set to full, just ask Kieth) charge speed slows due to heat and internal resistance. Per a German study (I'm having trouble finding it, I'm sorry), it would take more than 25% of the nations fleet to be electric and charging at the same time before stressing the grid. Not being able to move it far enough due to physical grid problems really hurts tho.

I've made mention that for autocross if my F500 could be electric I'd be totally OK with that, assuming the performance is the same of course. The current issue (besides classing) is that doing this cheaply on a grassroots level isn't possible. If the current motor in the car goes blamo I can buy a  replacement snowmobile engine for $600. If the electric car becomes more available perhaps  we'll have access to junkyard motors/power units along the lines of the beloved LS swap. Granted that may take until 2045 before that's a reality.

What's sadder is most electric motors in hybrids are parts of the transmission casings and connect straight to the flywheel- you could yank the stators out to get some cheap rare-earth magnets, but re-using the whole thing to power something would be kind of a waste of time. I'm not sure of a single EV that has the motor attached to the rear end in a manor that makes swapping easy, except for maybe the rear end of the new RAV4s from toyota where it's literally bolted to the pumpkin.

Cooling is also a big factor too- Chevy Bolt batteries are used heavily in the EV Swap world because they have higher discharge rates than Tesla cells, but also because they have very clear coolant pipes and connections (Thank you GM!). Tesla's uses a square proprietary connector and uses silicone based coolants instead of metal salts like typical antifreeze. In this pic, its all the black hoses to the orange bits. There are some sites where you can buy used batteries that have been tested, but I think you're right in that it'll easily be another 5-10 years before used batteries will be easily sourced from a "yard". But the cooling problems mount, because...

Next; currently electric cars are built with commuting in mind and there are few performance applications at the moment. One of the issues I know is that on track these cars get hot quickly, will we see a switch 5 lap heat races as solution.

 Batteries will soon require far, FAR more than simple water-based cooling to fast charge at the levels consumers want. This report details that they'll need refridgeration, not simply cooling. Naturally, that also depends on batteries not making jumps in dropping internal resistance (The new Tesla cell, the 4680 shown yesterday, is a "Breakthrough" in that it's internaly resistance is MUCH lower meaning less heat during charging/discharging) but temperature control is a BIG damn deal.

Another note- this applies to Lithium Ion cells, but not so much for Lithium Iron Phosphates. LiFEPO4 big selling point- and why China went with them over Lithium Ion- is because they take temperature and voltage variations MUCH better in exchange for lower cell density; they can handle temps as low as -40F and I think their high point is nearly 200F before they have problems.

Looping back to infrastructure..............if you have 100 electric races cars at a local track what does that mean to there infrastructure? Could be simple as every racer no needs to have a generator to charge up their cars between runs.

It genuinely could. I know there's already trailers that have folding panels and their own batteries (there was one until recently in Cali that did this, until it was found to be something akin to a pyramid scheme) and they were prepared to do that for Randy Probst on his mountain run a few weeks ago.

One thing I do now for sure.............some guys will figure out how to build "cheater" motors in the first ten minutes.

Hello Rich Rebuilds! Hello to the 'Ghost' motor reflash!  I think EVWest has also found some S motors handle 700+ HP without much problem so long as the cooling system is up to snuff, but i'll have to check. Inverter is the real problem, that and how the Model S moved coolant around (i.e. NOT VERY SMART AT ALL).

I don't see racing with ICE going to the wayside anytime soon. I wouldn't worry about that. 

Battery tech has come along way. Swappable battery tech and super fast charging trickling there way down to grassroots level racing series will take a few generations of hoomans IMO. Audi and Peugeot were running super high tech diesel race cars at Le Mans 10 years ago then came the Hybrid generation - I don't see any of that tech in the club racing scene yet.... 

As others have mentioned grid/infrastructure would need an overhaul as would tracks. There aren't even power hook-ups in the paddock of a lot of race tracks (club paddock at Road Atlanta and PBIR are two that come to mind) - are these facilities willing to make an investment into that for future racing ops? Do they see the potential in that happening? 

States like California have these grandeur ideas to eventually ban the sale of ICE. The infrastructure here can't even handle people turning their A/C on in the summer without causing rolling brownouts. Their long term power grid plans don't add up with the plan to move to electric cars. Then theres problem is the rape of the planet to produce new cars/batteries is another issue completely and it seems like a lot of people don't want to educated themselves on that topic. Not throwing shade at anyone here - that's just a broad sweeping generalization. There's also the battery disposal issue. Not trying to start E36 M3 here, just the large scope and magnitude of things like this don't add up in my mind. 

Most of the brownouts were at lower solar output and high demand. Generally you would set to charge EV when solar is set to curtail anyway (noonish) and demand isn't as high, OR at night if you have nice, cheap baseload power (nuke, hydro).  Talking to the utilities they are more worried about having to charge things during peak load if the vehicles aren't designed right. Think of a bus fleet if they can't make it all day on a charge and some have to do it near dinnertime. There are ways around that however, using storage, but that's still in the early days from a commerical standpoint.

DirtyBird222 said:

I don't see racing with ICE going to the wayside anytime soon. I wouldn't worry about that. 

Battery tech has come along way. Swappable battery tech and super fast charging trickling there way down to grassroots level racing series will take a few generations of hoomans IMO. Audi and Peugeot were running super high tech diesel race cars at Le Mans 10 years ago then came the Hybrid generation - I don't see any of that tech in the club racing scene yet.... 

As others have mentioned grid/infrastructure would need an overhaul as would tracks. There aren't even power hook-ups in the paddock of a lot of race tracks (club paddock at Road Atlanta and PBIR are two that come to mind) - are these facilities willing to make an investment into that for future racing ops? Do they see the potential in that happening? 

States like California have these grandeur ideas to eventually ban the sale of ICE. The infrastructure here can't even handle people turning their A/C on in the summer without causing rolling brownouts. Their long term power grid plans don't add up with the plan to move to electric cars. Then theres problem is the rape of the planet to produce new cars/batteries is another issue completely and it seems like a lot of people don't want to educated themselves on that topic. Not throwing shade at anyone here - that's just a broad sweeping generalization. There's also the battery disposal issue. Not trying to start E36 M3 here, just the large scope and magnitude of things like this don't add up in my mind. 

Yeah if we still race horses we'll still race ICEs.

The CA issue is not due to load being too high, it is due to the state shutting down power plants without replacing them.  They need more generation, and this will just add to that. 

Battery mining/disposal concerns are important, but they of course will replace oil exploration and production, which is also "rape of the planet" that people "don't want to educated" on that topic.....

Guess it will solve the decibel rating problem at the tracks

Speaking of sound, I'm fine with the lack of it in sports I'm participating in but taking it away from pro-level racing lessens my enjoyment of the spectacle.  Half the fun of spectating in person at a race is the noise.  Imagine a drag race or monster truck jam without it.  Ditto for Indy and NASCAR.  Even vintage racing would be half as fun to watch without the roar.

We didn't have the technology to go to the moon when Kennedy made his speech. 

We didn't have the war machine necessary beat the Axis powers when Pearl Harbour was bombed. 

Hell, I don't think we had a standing army when the declaration of independence was signed. 

I have a lot of faith that we'll get the technology figured out. We're out of other options and the alternative is too expensive and horrifying.

Lightness, suspension, brakes and cooling. We won't be left wanting for power, but there will still be a lot of performance driven systems to develop and modify. 

I enjoy driving. I enjoy shifting gears and running through them from a stop. I like downshifting for a corner.  I love listening to the engine run through its rpm range.  Even in my daily driver Honda Fit, I enjoy the experience. 

Electric cars give me none of that enjoyment. They are soulless and sterile and I dont care if they outperform my gas powered cars in every way. I am not interested in owning one. 

For what it's worth, most EVs currently get maximum efficiency 4 miles per kwh of charge. That efficiency decreases with lots of HVAC use, high speeds, cold ambient temps, etc. Average miles driven per day is around 25-30 miles in the US. So an average user will consume something around 7.5kwh of electricity per day. So lets call it 3 miles per kwh (10kwh of electricity) per day as a realistic average considering high speeds, HVAC use, cold temps, etc. That electricity can be replaced nightly in small amounts, or the battery can be drained more fully and the vehicle can be driven several days without charging.

Compare that to an electric clothes dryer that uses about 3.5kwh for a 45 minute load.

So charging the EV might be in the ball park of doing 2-3 loads of laundry per night.

In reply to STM317 :

Good math, but it's both better and worse than that.

The Bolt has a monitor. Since I have oodles of range to spare, I use HVAC and go as fast as I please and I -average- 4.1 miles per kwh.

Now I believe that monitor is measuring charge of battery. THus there are some losses between charging and charge in the battery. I don't know what those losses are, but I suspect that the actual number (and that's based on today's Bolt. Future EVs will undoubtedly be better) will be closer to 4 mi/kwh than 3.

Keith Tanner said:

If you want to see what electric racing might look like, check out RC cars. They've made the switch from ICE to EV.

Cooooooool.  I'm so far behind RC-wise that I'm thinking "they switched to ICE at some point?"

There were a couple ICE kits when I was into RC, but they were expensive.  Everything was powered by six or seven C-sized NiCads of around 1200mAh capacity.

As far as cars go.  I'm unconcerned.  The giant amount of infrastructure to support gasoline engines, from drilling to refineries to gas stations and all of the intermediate steps and processes and companies, did not grow overnight.  If you told someone 100 years ago how many millions of vehicle miles were driven every day, they'd look at you like you were nuts!

CrustyRedXpress (Forum Supporter) said:

We didn't have the technology to go to the moon when Kennedy made his speech. 

We didn't have the war machine necessary beat the Axis powers when Pearl Harbour was bombed. 

Hell, I don't think we had a standing army when the declaration of independence was signed. 

 

I have a lot of faith that we'll get the technology figured out. We're out of other options and the alternative is too expensive and horrifying.

I agree 100% with this.  When one person starts talking about "infrastructure challenges" another one starts talking about "economic opportunities" and "business plans".  Think about the amount of infrastructure that had to be built to supply gasoline to the whole world, and the socioeconomic consequences.  That happened in 60-70 years; less than one human lifetime.  The hard reality is that the world's population explosion will demand that we move to more sustainable practices in a lot of areas, it's unavoidable.  The U.S. has a proud history of leading the world in technical innovation, and I personally would like to see that continue.  When big infrastructure changes are needed there will definitely be winners and losers, and I'd like us to be a winner.  But to do so means that as a country we will have to seize these changes as what they really are: opportunities.

I don't think ICE's will ever be illegal, and people that claim otherwise are alarmist.  I think there will always be a segment of the population that's interested in collecting them, racing them, even daily driving them.  If you've been in an electric car lately you will probably notice that they are amazing appliances.  That's what the majority of people want.  There will always be nuts like us who will pay for "driving emotion" in money and time.  I know people in the guitar world who pay big $$ for spruce that was harvested under the light of a full moon, or mahogany that's been sitting in the bottom of a river for 200 years.  We are those people, just with cars.

I also think new forms of motorsports will arise around electric technologies, and they don't necessarily need to resemble the ones we do now.  There will be less opportunity to tinker with electric cars, but there will also be less opportunity to buy speed.  It's telling that you need to invest $30-50k to be nationally competitive in "Spec" Miata or "Spec" E30 when the whole reason for "Spec" racing is to make it affordable, and the original cars cost $20k new.  It could be that EV's welcome a whole new wave of cost-conscious consumers into motorsports.  Some people just want to drive fast and compete without lighting giant piles of money on fire, or learning how to replace a whole drivetrain or suspension to make a passenger car into an acceptable track car. 

Sooner or later someone will realize there's a market for purpose-built EV sports cars.  Picture an EV Radical that's less than $10k, weighs 1200 lbs, has maybe 20 total components that are easy to source and replace, is much safer than ICE race cars, and is dead reliable.  Think about what the availability of such a machine would do for motorsports.  That strikes me as the most Grassroots thing ever.  (if anyone wants to steal my idea and start building $10k electric Radicals, feel free.  I'll be your first customer).

Interesting discussion.

Like dirty bird, Im concerned about the impact of all the mining and increased drain on the grid. Does that outweigh the benefits of less ICEs? I’m not sure, from an environment perspective. From my research, Power production is a greater producer of carbon emissions than cars as it stands, so increasing that seems counterproductive.

As for driving, I don’t mind EVs at all. The torque is addictive and I have raced ICE karts and EV carts, and I liked the EV more.

jimbob_racing said:

I enjoy driving. I enjoy shifting gears and running through them from a stop. I like downshifting for a corner.  I love listening to the engine run through its rpm range.  Even in my daily driver Honda Fit, I enjoy the experience. 

Electric cars give me none of that enjoyment. They are soulless and sterile and I dont care if they outperform my gas powered cars in every way. I am not interested in owning one. 

I'm with Jim Bob.  I'm going to miss rowing through the gears and the audible response of the engine in return.

Keith Tanner said:F

If you want to see what electric racing might look like, check out RC cars. They've made the switch from ICE to EV.

First of all, I was one of the guys who took the earlier thread political. I apologize and should know better. 

What really stands out to me is how quickly EVs performance has gone into the stratosphere. With RC cars at a certain point I'd think that more power is practically useless, as grip and the driver's reflexes become the limiting factors along with safety. Imagine going to Watkins Glen and production class vehicles look like shifter Karts at the local go-Kart track. As this happens, power will have to be limited, or AI will have to do more of the heavy lifting. Modern fighter jets also come to mind. A human cannot approach the limits of the plane without big brother running co-pilot. 

On a personal level, I love the fact that I can build a truly formidable track car along the lines of a Lotus 7 for under 10 grand. It's going to be a while before anyone but the geekiest and most resourceful among us will be able to reach that level of performance with electricity. There's a strong likelihood that I won't be part of the party when it happens, partly because of age-induced limitations to my ability to change, and also because EVs kinda scare me. I can see a gas spill on the floor and act appropriately. I can't see or smell that big jolt of electricity that's waiting to grab me and stop my ticker.