The 62kWh Battery Topic

Very true. Everyone is susceptible to confirmation bias.

GRA said:

jlsoaz said:

I thought this was a not bad summary of some of the issues of finding balanced discussion on certain recent EV topics.

My first real conversations about EVs and batteries were back in the late 90s, on the yahoo finance investment area pertaining to Energy Conversion Devices. This was a cult battery stock (NiMH for the EV1) before Tesla was a gleam in anyone's eye. It was kind of a lively place, and you could learn a lot and meet some good people. I got my first EV ride from one of the generous folks. I was explaining to someone the other day (when we were talking and realized that they also had been on that board around that time) that, in the end, I thought I had learned a lesson or two about how to deal with people who were intolerant and not interested in keeping the focus on congenial productive EV discussion, and I will still claim that, but it was not enough in the end to protect me from some of the nastier points I have run into when trying to discuss Tesla (both the good and the bad). I have to say that some of the worst have been one or two really committed Pro-Tesla Trolls. Such insufferability! I exaggerated when I first wrote this out, but in retrospect, I have really limited myself to one or two such experiences and then walked away. Still, I think it's kind of an interesting phenomenon and the person I was speaking with recognized it as well in their own way. I wonder if some of it is just what happens to (some) people when they get invested.

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Sure. When some men (it's almost always men) have invested a lot of money in a product, many also have invested a lot of their ego in it as well. Thus, any criticism of the product, no matter how objective, is seen as a criticism of their reasoning ability and financial probity, i.e. they made a poor choice that wasted lots of money, and are thus fools. Since they know that can't be right, anyone who does have criticisms must be attacked to show that it's they who are fools, or that they must have nefarious motives for their criticisms.

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I hadn't really thought through the gender angle, but good points made here, IMO.

Tesla culture feels very similar to the Apple culture. Once in, you stsrt justifying any experience or price to avoid admitting something else might be better.

Lets see what happens with Lucid, as its specs are pretty good, and prices more obtainable than Taycan.

I also noticed several parallels in Apple and Tesla culture. Remember how much people always talked about Steve Jobs (when he was still with us) I see the same kind of focus on Elon and the same weird kind of culture not accepting criticism. To be honest that also turns me away from the products. I have other reasons for both (Apple I have less control over the phone, Tesla too much on the touch screen no buttons, QA issues in my opinion, too expensive but getting better). I have problems with the LEAF too, mainly battery cooling which are being addressed by Ariya. I do not think we were so interested in Carlos or what he had for breakfast. If anything we complain a lot about the LEAF.

DougWantsALeaf said:

Tesla culture feels very similar to the Apple culture.

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My home is Tesla, LEAF, Macintosh, Chrome OS, and Android

Windoze people put up with an evil corporate, awful software, built-in obsolescence, non stop incompatibilities and malware up the wazoo in return for cheap(er) hardware and games. LEAF people put up with built-in obsolescence and an awful corporate in return for a lower monthly payment.

If there is any lessons to be drawn, I would say that LEAF/Windoze people are unable to see or take advantage of long term value. They buy cheaper, frequently and spend more over time but either do not know it or they enjoy the consumer rat race. And they try to convince themselves of their superiority along the way by congregating in echo chambers.

And they try to convince themselves of their superiority along the way by congregating in echo chambers.

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Hmmm. Personally I put up with the Leaf's shortcomings because I like the way the car drives. You'd have to literally pay me to keep a Model 3, because driving it would be an uncomfortable chore for me. That isn't fanboy stuff, it's the simple truth. I stopped adjusting my body to my car when I was 20 years younger.

One other big difference is that folks who own windows PC's don't seem to care about the choice of those who decide to go with Apple. Ditto for Leaf. You want a Tesla? Fine, why should I care? I've never been to a Tesla forum but I doubt there are lots of Leaf owners there stirring things up. Ditto for Windows/Apple.

LeftieBiker said:

Hmmm. Personally

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I know.

I figured that one stereotype deserves another

That's what bugs me. Bolt drivers don't try to take down Leaf drivers, and vice versa. Tesla forums try to trash everything to show separation. It's hard to have overtone dialogue, except in the forum about range loss. That is the one place where there is growing anger as the M3s (as they move to wider audiences) are disappointing in side numbers. Nothing outrageous, most complaining about 6-8% loss, but as rated miles is less that actual in many situations, it feels compounded in their eyes. Again, the tech and charging network are first rate. Everything else is just mediocre...or so it seems from a test drive and auto shows. But again, i also think my iPhone (forced to carry from work) is a bit of a turd, so likely i am not objective either.


I would like a side by side SR+ to Leaf S+ range test at 70mph to see who wins.

DougWantsALeaf said:

I would like a side by side SR+ to Leaf S+ range test at 70mph to see who wins.

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You would not like the results
https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=42278&id=42562

The Tesla battery is ~ 12% smaller, but the Tesla kills the LEAF on efficiency. Even at EPA highway test protocol speeds which are ~ 65 average mph the LEAF has to spend 36% more energy to make up the efficiency difference. At 70 mph the difference will be greater.

That isn't an S+. It's an SV+ or SL+.

taking sagebrush's link further the LEAF comes in last in efficiency compared to Tesla, Bolt, and Niro
https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=42278&id=42562&id=42191&id=42514

but based on the MSRP yes it is most likely an SV+ or possibly an SL+ depending on options.

The S+ does slightly better, maybe as good or better than a Niro?

I am disappointed in the continued lack of battery cooling in the LEAF but do not care for Tesla or the Bolt (I am impressed with the Bolt battery). I need to try the Niro. By the time I need to replace a car the options will be very different.

Yes Tesla "fans" seem to invade other groups on forums and facebook etc. I never see that with Kia or GM at least for EVs (I cannot speak for other segments like pickup trucks).

My wager is that Niro still beats S+ by a little. I dont know why nissan doesn't put standard tire pressure at 42-44 psi like Tesla to up their epa a bit. I get the feeling the Leaf takes a bit more skill than a Tesla to up your efficiency. The steady foot which doesn't regen on the highway helps a lot.


As an aside, this video (at 3:44) shows messages from Nissan saying the Plus has a fan on the battery. I don't believe it.

https://youtu.be/YFy4XrwDYl4

danrjones said:

SageBrush said:

DougWantsALeaf said:

I would also be curious to understand how often and for how long the car sits at or above 7 temperature bars.

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If the temperature bar calibration has stayed the same as the Gen1 LEAF, 6 bars starts at ~ 80F and ends somewhere after 95F -- 100F

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That sounds about right. Last check my 2018 40 was showing temp smack in the middle (that's 6 bars?) and my actual sensors were 91.6 to 88.4.
I know my vehicle has spent about half the time in 7 bar territory on average for July and Aug.

It lags the outside temp profile a bit, as you would expect. Most mornings it is 6 bars and same with lunch but by afternoon it is 7 bars and that carries well past sundown. If I was truly truly bored I would collect temp readings every hour for a 24 hour period or 48 hour period and chart it out. I'm not that bored though.

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Last week I did a 300 mile highway drive in my SV Plus with one 40 minute DCFC stop. I arrived home with what I believe was 8 bars on the battery temp gauge (2 bars past the halfway mark). It was late afternoon when I got home, ambient temps were in the low 90s, and the car was in partial shade which would turn into full shade about an hour later. Since the car was at 12% SOC, and since I was under the impression that L1 charging adds negligible heat to the battery, I immediately plugged in to a 110v outlet. The next morning, at around 11 AM, I unplugged the car at about 50% SOC. Ambient temps were in the high 80s, and the car had been in full sun for about 2 hours. I was very shocked to see that the battery temp gauge was still at 8 bars. I immediately moved the car it into our fully shaded car port, turned it off, then turned it on again. Weirdly, the battery temp gauge then read 7 bars after only a few seconds of shade. So maybe the gauge is finicky. But I'm definitely not going to L1 charge during the day time anymore in this weather (I'm in the NYC region, where it's been consistently in the high 80s to low 90s for the last month or so). Since I can't reach any 110v outlets from our car port, I guess I will have to move the car in the evening to an uncovered part of the driveway and only charge at night, and then move it back to the car port in the early mornings.

^^^
Forget the temp bars. Look instead at Leaf Spy temp sensor readings.

IIRC, the temp bars on gen 1 Leafs also had some black box adjustment based upon battery condition. They also were nowhere near granular enough. I like seeing things like my battery temps being like 75 F and if I park it outside overnight when it's cold them being at say 67 F.

Yeah, any charging does a reasonable job at keeping up battery temp. In the opposite example last fall late October I had about 500 miles to do in a day. My destination (about 230 miles with a little local driving) was at the far reach of the car on a charge. As the destination (Door County WI) had no DC charging, I did a top up on Chademo on the way up (rather than pull in on sub 10%), then level 2 and level 1 charging during the day while on site, then that evening on the way back a partial DC charge (1/2 hour) in Milwaukee to make the final leg to Chicago.

Ambient temps were in the low 50s for most of the day. The early DC charge in Milwaukee on the way up allowed me to get my battery temp into the low 70s and keep pretty good efficiency for the drive (arrived with 30% battery). The level 2 charge while on site maintained the battery temp pretty well, but the level 1 (car was outside) very slowly drifted down (about 5 hours of L2 and 4 hours of L1), but only by a few degrees. (Left with 80% battery) The final 30-40minutes of DC blast on the way home in Milwaukee put the temps back in the low 80s. Temps were flat to slightly lower for the final 80 miles on the highway given the 30 degree delta to ambient. Without that L1 charge for my final 4 hours at my second stop, i would have been driving a much colder battery back, needing a different charging solution for the return trip.


New battery drop post on tesla forum. This one is down 13% in 18 months. Again, it feels more and more like the battery dynamics are more similar than less similar with the gen of cars. I will admit to also suffering from some confirmation bias.

https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/master-thread-range-loss-over-time-what-can-be-expected-how-to-maintain-battery-health.166549/page-64

DougWantsALeaf said:

That's what bugs me. Bolt drivers don't try to take down Leaf drivers, and vice versa.
[....]

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Bolt drivers, and perhaps Leaf drivers, can get defensive and (I would say) in some cases irrational, particularly in a "versus Tesla" discussion. Sometimes it will boil down to their insistence that their personal preference (sure, they're your preferences, like what you like) should be taken, ipso facto, as
- representative of an undefined but major portion of the market, Might a major portion of the present or future market run in parallel to your personal preferences? Maybe. Is it that way because you emotionally feel it or want it or think that efficiency thinking trumps a lot of things? Nope.
- and that there are no real objective differences between the value of vehicles, it's all (in effect) personal preference (nope).

One point of frustration for me with Bolt drivers is that I see some of them absolutely loving their BEVs, but perhaps not realizing that some of them were more or less going to fall in love with any decent similar vehicle, but the market is so starved for competition in this area that some of them have exaggerated the values of the vehicle, IMO. Of course, yes, some of them see the vehicle accurately and love it and that's great.

There's a broader issue here for me that I can relate to the long-term-discussion story arc and to 62 kWh batteries:

I can't remember for sure if it's discussed in the documentary "Who KIlled The Electric Car?" but there was thinking, which I think played a role in some of Nissan's early decision-making, that the average commute is only so far, and so if you build a BEV to go x amount past that distance, then it should be good to fit y percent of the needs of z percent of the population. I don't remember how it might be framed to look at the early thinking around the Volt PHEV, but perhaps they were to some extent responding to this. I think Tesla's early BEV thinking was different - going after a much more expensive, elitist, lower-volume, longer-range, more-durable (spending money up-front to try to provide for longer battery life) and faster and more exciting (to some) portion of the market.

My point in the here-and-now is that Tesla was in some ways right to take the approach they took, and, whether one agrees or not (or to whatever extent one agrees) that we should be more willing to discuss this calmly, and mull it over, and learn what we can from the discussion. In what way do I think they were "right"? I think I mean this not only in a sense of defining their own competency and finding a profitable niche in a large $2 Trillion (at the time) global vehicle market, but also in terms of a long-term vision for how many BEV producers can find a business-sustainable way to disrupt the established hydrocarbon-burner vehicle market.

My own over-simplified point on this discussion overall is that I see manufacturers, back in 2010, and even now, pursuing the sub-compact and compact segments in the US market with $40k BEVs, whereas I think BEV sales volumes would be much higher and better if manufacturers would pursue other larger interior volume segments, and by-and-large with more luxury. Just because BEV helps with the environment doesn't mean that BEVs have to be designed and produced and sold as low-margin and/or geeky-looking and/or painfully-practical family "econocars". On the contrary, I think once the BEV powertrain is in place and performing well, it frees up car production, sales, ownership and operation to leaving behind much (but perhaps not all) of the econocar thinking and just kind of "getting on with it" as to the other considerations we all have when looking at vehicles.

jlsoaz said:

My point in the here-and-now is that Tesla was in some ways right to take the approach they took

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Tesla will reach production capacity of ~ ONE MILLION cars annually in the next few months, and that does not include the Austin Gigafactory. Nissan EV has degenerated into +/- a compliance car program

Only in this forum can a few people be found who even bother to act as if there is some reason to compare the two.

Top down is a tried and true approach. It lets you be moddstly profitable and you learn to scale and work your way down the economic ladder.

Leaf is more than a compliance car, and is one of the few EVs available generally globally now. It is a distant 3rd though compared to Tesla M3 and a but behind Zoe, in a now wide mix of cars.

https://insideevs.com/news/436920/global-plugin-car-sales-june-2020/

SageBrush said:

jlsoaz said:

My point in the here-and-now is that Tesla was in some ways right to take the approach they took

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Tesla will reach production capacity of ~ ONE MILLION cars annually in the next few months, and that does not include the Austin Gigafactory. Nissan EV has degenerated into +/- a compliance car program

Only in this forum can a few people be found who even bother to act as if there is some reason to compare the two.

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Part of the broader point though is to open the floor to a discussion that should have been had, but largely has not. It is not to get caught up in the momentary tit-for-tat of my car is better than your car. It is to re-examine and understand and learn from matters. To be sure, the attempt to discuss it in a forum that is dedicated, by name, to one vehicle (and arguably to an approach to the industry that was in some ways ill-conceived) is in itself not a completely promising idea, and I do try to discuss on more neutral-territory forums. And I can agree that it would be naive to expect too much from a breakout of this discussion. Still sometimes we take our discussion where we find it, or try to make it.

So, what is a broader principle or lesson to discuss here? One example might be somewhere in my recent attempt to discuss that, in my view, Nissan should have introduced a competitive long-range Infiniti BEV in the early 2010s. Ok, they didn't, but (more importantly to this discussion) my recollection from the time was that Nissan didn't even really seem to understand the importance of the question at the time. The Infiniti exec decision-making at the time (from the rare statements that seemed to come out) did not reflect (that I could see) an understanding of BEVs as potentially competitive long-range entry-level luxury vehicles. Yes, I'm sure it would have been a mountain to climb to go back to Nissan engineering and demand (way) better on the battery energy density front, but by then Tesla was out there showing what could be done, so that would have helped with that argument. And indeed, Nissan had been putting forth innovative lithium-ion (compliance) vehicles since the late 90s or early 2000s, so they should have had a good idea of what was possible.

Anyway, they were not-talk-to-able, and the usual mis-characterizations of the market and disagreements about demand probably got mixed in there (i.e.: the usual automaker implicit stance of "no there isn't sufficient demand, and we know better than you do). So, even though in theory Nissan was different at the time than the other automakers (giving more customers what they wanted) they never got to the point, in time, of giving the more demanding intercity-travel BEV customers what they wanted, until very recently (and even then, there is rapidgate and such).