Any GTAM'ers own an electric vehicle?

[PrivatePilot]

I don't want this thread to go too far off track, but if you grab two 120 legs on the same phase, a resistive load would see 0 volts (as both legs would rise and fall together)..

Ah yes, of course....I'm forgetting the part about phases - that the waveforms are opposite each other coming out of the transformer on the street. You are indeed correct. I guess in the end the "Y cord into 2 separate 120v plugs" thing (to make a 240v circuit) would indeed require you find 120v plugs that are on different phases in the house.

I met up with a dude in the A.M. after work to buy some wheels off him. He had a Volt too and had lightweight OZ's on them until he got a Gen 2 Volt and the Bolt pattern changed. He was saying he would regularly get over 80kms on EV. That's quite awesome.

Our Volt came with a set of Touren TR9's on it with proper LRR's...which I guess might have something to do with my followup below.

The best I've seen is 79 km on my car ... the lightweight wheels must be good for a few km's then.

So, we have the <2013 with the slightly smaller battery with the 10.3KWH usable capacity vs the 10.8KWH on the 2013's and up. Just for the record.

Today I drove the car for the first decent length drive. The car was not quite fully charged when we left for the second drive of the day (we had depleted it this morning going somewhere else and didn't have quite enough time to get a full charge), but I think it was at about 95% as the guessometer was showing 55KM and the charge display was estimating the charge would have been complete in about 15 more minutes.

We got on the 401 and away we went. I will preface things by saying that I got in behind a semi (at a reasonable and safe distance, but probably in the draft, you can see it off in the distance in the photo below actually), set the cruise, and got 67KM before it switched to ICE. I'm confident had I had a full charge I could have made 70KM. I was impressed - had the wife snap this photo just as it switched, hence still 0.0L gas consumed.

So, I reset the second trip odometer at this point so that I could get a decent readout on ICE fuel consumption alone, without the battery mixed in. I'm pretty impressed with the results (5.3L/100KM over basically 200KM of ICE only driving) which beat the (cough, cough) Civic Hybrid by 0.6L/100KM (So I saved about 1.2L in gas on this trip alone vs the Honda), the Accord Hybrid by 0.3L/100KM (so I would have saved 0.6L vs the Honda on this trip alone), and in the end I was firmly in Prius territory. This is just on gas alone, not taking into consideration the EV boost at the beginning of the trip...more on that below.

Now, mix in the EV miles with the trip (which totalled 265KM) and I achieved 3.9L/100KM which destroys every Hybrid option out there.

Overall (Photo below), here's the entire day - 362 total KM, 111.7 on electricity, and 244.5KM on gas. Total mixed consumption = 3.66L/100KM.

Hybrids can suck it.

 

[slowbird]

Good job PP. Looking good.

The best I've seen is 79 km on my car ... the lightweight wheels must be good for a few km's then.

Do you mean "seen" as in on the EV Range-o-meter?

Or actual real world seen.

I find I can do way better than what the range says

 

[SunnY S]

Not sure phases matter a lot, actually - the only reason on hot leg in a 240v circuit is on one phase, and the other leg is typically on a different phase is load sharing - most 220v loads are amp heavy (think dryer, 20-30A per hot leg) so putting both on the same phase could theoretically, along with other loads in the house sharing that same phase, overload only that one side of the phase, while leaving the other under, or basically almost unutilized.

In the end however, a 240V circuit is made up with 2 120V hot legs - phase probably doesn't matter much in the end.

Please, just STOP.


phase very much matters.

you need 110v from each phase of a panel to get your 220V....

Check out a sine wave some time for a better understanding on how electricity works.


For everyone else, please disregard the y connectors and feeding off your kitchen plugs and other nonsense. Are you guys serious? Do you have solid house insurance policy's because they sure as hell won't cover you if your house burns down from hack electrical work.


RUN A PROPER LINE TO A PROPER CHARGER FOR YOUR ELECTRIC CAR. HIRE A LICENSED ELECTRICIAN THAT KNOWS WHAT THEY ARE DOING.

 

[PrivatePilot]

I find I can do way better than what the range says

It's pretty easy unless you're on the 401 @ 120 it seems, at which point it seems to be about bang on.

Any sort of <100K speed limit road or mixed city/highway yields much more than what the guessometer suggests. I think it's calibrated for the "average driver" who makes zero effort to drive efficiently and/or drives aggressively, in which case it would probably be pretty accurate in the end.

 

[SunnY S]

Hybrids can suck it.

I'm loving how increasingly automakers are upping their Hybrid game. Hyundai just introduced their Ioniq Hybrid sedan.

it gets 4.0 l/100km (58mpg combined!!) Im sure if you hyper mile it, you can do even better. and battery has a LIFETIME warranty.

Not too shabby for not having to plug it in every night or at church, or at the mall, or at work.....

cheaper too. starts at $24grand cdn. Hyundai dealers are notorious for dropping their pants to make a sale, so no doubt you can get one much cheaper.

https://www.hyundaicanada.com/en/showroom/2017/ioniq-hybrid

 

[PrivatePilot]

it gets 4.0 l/100km (58mpg combined!!)

There you go posting those fairy tale EPA numbers again when in reality observed real-world figures on the Ioniq are around 45MPG, or 5.2L/100KM.

If we insist on continuing with fairytales around here despite me trying to post real world factual numbers from my own dashboard, I'm going to start quoting GM's 230MPG estimates for the Volt.

And I still find it hilarious that you're all up in arms about perceived unreliability of the Volt despite facts to the contrary, but are rushing to tout a Hyundai (of all things) with zero track record.

I won't even bother trying to explain that once again a Hybrid can never match an EV's cost per kilometer when running on electric, but lets take the Volt out of the equation (since you can't seem to understand it's benefits) and talk about a pure EV instead. Like perhaps, the Bolt.

I could have done our entire day's total (360+KM) on a single charge on the Bolt at a cost of roughly $5 in electricity.

Your beloved hybrids at a real-world average of between 4.5L/100KM (Prius) and 5.5L/100KM (most of the Honda offerings, so let's use an average of 5.0) would have burned 18L of gas. With gas at about $1.20L right now, that's $21.60 in gas.

So lets recap. I'll keep it simple.

360 Kilometer drive:

EV = $5.00
Hybrid = $21.60

Get it now?

It can't be made much simpler.

and battery has a LIFETIME warranty.

Intriguing, but limited only to "total failure" when you read the fine print, not range loss or other issues. Since "total failure" is rare (well, Honda had a rough time with that, but lets move on) it's not exactly a golden goose, but admittedly, is a nice "feel good" thing. I'll give Hyundai kudos for that, fair enough.

 

[Neil_V]

meh, battery cost have come way down; particularly with refurbs available.

 

[LBV]

Good job PP. Looking good.



Do you mean "seen" as in on the EV Range-o-meter?

Or actual real world seen.

I find I can do way better than what the range says

Seen on the EV range-o-meter when jumping into the car after an overnight full charge.

 

[fastar1]

meh, battery cost have come way down; particularly with refurbs available.

Looked it up, seems the Ioniq simply has a tiny battery: 1.5kW/h capacity. That's a little more than my fridge needs in a day, and a tenth of the Volt battery size.

Curious to find out more the strategy behind that powertrain. Seems it has two final drive ratios, a low gear (high ratio) final drive for 1st to 4th and a lower ratio for 5th, 6th and reverse gear. Weird. Have to ponder that a bit.

 

[Neil_V]

Looked it up, seems the Ioniq simply has a tiny battery: 1.5kW/h capacity. That's a little more than my fridge needs in a day, and a tenth of the Volt battery size.

Curious to find out more the strategy behind that powertrain. Seems it has two final drive ratios, a low gear (high ratio) final drive for 1st to 4th and a lower ratio for 5th, 6th and reverse gear. Weird. Have to ponder that a bit.

That's the non-plug in Hybrid battery. The plug in carries an 8.9kWh, which is still considerably smaller than the current Volt. Don't know anything about the trans layout other than a snippet I read about a Dual-clutch box over a CVT for accel performance. If I get really bored I may look into it lol

 

[fastar1]

That's the non-plug in Hybrid battery. The plug in carries an 8.9kWh, which is still considerably smaller than the current Volt. Don't know anything about the trans layout other than a snippet I read about a Dual-clutch box over a CVT for accel performance. If I get really bored I may look into it lol

Ah, I don't have any info on the plug-in hybrid. The standard hybrid is the one SunnY referred to as $24 grand and 4.0 l/100km combined (actually 4.1). The bigger battery one will obviously be more.

 

[PrivatePilot]

If it's only 9.8KW for the plug in there's no question Hyundai has set it up to deplete to 0%. That brings up the question of longevity to me then - the Volt's batteries has proven ultra reliable because of the fact it never draws the pack below a 40% state of charge - never truly depleting the battery which is what was proven was the most common reason for range loss.

It'll be interesting to see if the Hyundai setup suffers from rapid range decreases as they age....something that lifetime warranty won't cover.

 

[SunnY S]

If it's only 9.8KW for the plug in there's no question Hyundai has set it up to deplete to 0%. That brings up the question of longevity to me then - the Volt's batteries has proven ultra reliable because of the fact it never draws the pack below a 40% state of charge - never truly depleting the battery which is what was proven was the most common reason for range loss.

It'll be interesting to see if the Hyundai setup suffers from rapid range decreases as they age....something that lifetime warranty won't cover.

How do you know this for sure?


I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss Hyundai and the break neck speed of Koreans and their engineering and rapid development.

Many of the reviews I've red peg the Ioniq as "better" overall than the Prius and the Toyota has had +5 years of advanced development.

One canadian reviewer got a real world observation of over 900kms on a tank of gas!


It's also got some nifty technology and engineering. For example, it doesn't have a traditional 26 lbs 12v lead acid battery, but rather the battery is sandwiched with the main battery unit to save space and weight. If your aux battery dies, you can push a button to juice it up from the main battery.

Hyundai has a solid product and a solid effort and the way their development is moving, it will only get better and better real quick.

 

[PrivatePilot]

How do you know this for sure?

Unless they have somehow magically engineered a car that can only use 50% of the watts-per-kilometer of any other EV on the road today, the math makes it so.

The Volt has a ~16KWH battery, only of which roughly 10.5KWH is usable, yielding around 60KM. The remaining buffer was GM's engineered way of keeping the battery pack healthy, and clearly it's working as I'm routinely exceeding the cars published range by 25%, and Volts with 500,000+ KM are also still achieving factory ranges.

However, the Ioniq claims 50K on 8.9KW, so the math shows that the car is basically depleting the battery to a zero (or near zero) state of charge, something that is well known to be detrimental - even Tesla only lets batteries get to the 10-15% SOC level (and recommends not going that low) and gives audible and text warnings that the vehicle needs to be plugged in ASAP once at that level to avoid battery damage.

Only time will tell.

I've also read that the Ioniq plugin can be challenging to operate in pure electric mode - apparently pushing the accelerator more than about 50% ends up starting the engine for power assistance even when the battery is 100% so it's very difficult to achieve true zero-fuel driving.

If your aux battery dies, you can push a button to juice it up from the main battery

The Volt does this automatically. You can, for that matter, put a power inverter on the "house" battery in the trunk and power your essentials in a power outage and the Volt will just keep that battery charged from the main battery pack up until it's depleted, at which point the engine will cycle on and off as required to keep it charged up. In the end you end up with an awesome and silent home power system that can supply 2000w of 120V power for 5 hours, 1000W of 120V power for 10 hours, 500W of power for 20 hours (etc) silently.

 

[slowbird]

I'm all for Hyundai and Kia as my family is full of them and they seem to be doing alright. I'd love to see the Koreans steal the Hybrid market from the Japanese.

However, in regards to Sunnys continuous failed attempts at showing that Hybrids are superior in every way than ALL EV's especially the Volt, I read up on the Hyundai Ioniq Hybrid and I came back with these basic reasons why it ain't all that Sunny is making it out to be.

-It seems to regularly deliver (in the real world) below the 4.3L/100kms EPA rating. Closer to 5.5L/100kms. Meanwhile I'm averaging 1.5L/100kms and regularly seeing 0.0L/100kms.

-Like most other hybrids, I'm reading in the reviews that the Ioniq is gutless and struggles to goooo. The Prius isn't fun to drive at all. Atleast the Hyundai delivers an "estimated total" torque of 195 lb-ft when you mash the pedal and get both the electric and gas motors going ....though still quite flacid compared to the Volts 273 lb-ft.

-Apparently the Ioniqs drivetrain has still much to be desired. Far from smooth powertrain transitions from electric to gasoline. I also read you can compose a symphony in the time the car switches from drive to reverse. The Volt is seemless and smooth.
me thinks Hyundai needs to work on their DCT technology a bit more.

-The Ioniq Hybrid has sub-par regenerative braking capabilities compared to other hybrids.

-The Ioniq Hybrid has no electric heating and must start the gas engine to generate heat to the cabin.

-I found that one review where they got the Ioniq Hybrid to do 900kms to a tank. The Ioniq has more than 10L fuel capacity then the Volt. If I had that extra bit of gas I bet I could go 900kms too. Heck...give me an outlet and I can go even further

Reading all that makes me happier I got the Volt.

I think we should start calling Sunny Gloomy. It fits more.

 

[meester_jamie]

Ah yes, of course....I'm forgetting the part about phases - that the waveforms are opposite each other coming out of the transformer on the street. You are indeed correct. I guess in the end the "Y cord into 2 separate 120v plugs" thing (to make a 240v circuit) would indeed require you find 120v plugs that are on different phases in the house.

very easy to do in a modern house,, as the kitchen splits are good for 12amps on each half of the dulpex as they are on separate phases..

 

[meester_jamie]

For everyone else, please disregard the y connectors and feeding off your kitchen plugs and other nonsense. Are you guys serious? Do you have solid house insurance policy's because they sure as hell won't cover you if your house burns down from hack electrical work.

sorry, I might have missed the kitchen split reference ,, but where does a fire hazard enter ... if the charger draws more than 12a.. the breaker trips.. if there is a short circuit, the breaker trips...
I am just not seeing the hazard here..

 

[-D-]

very easy to do in a modern house,, as the kitchen splits are good for 12amps on each half of the dulpex as they are on separate phases..

ok, so my stupid question had merit
I was thinking that, plug each one into 2 different electrical runs/outlet that have their own breakers.

 

[PrivatePilot]

ok, so my stupid question had merit
I was thinking that, plug each one into 2 different electrical runs/outlet that have their own breakers.

Yes, except for the fact that 15a @ 240v (12a usable, given the full-time load standards) is still not adequate for EV charging - the minimum level 2 240v standard is 16a, so you need 20a circuits on each 120v leg.

 

[GateKeeper]

@PrivatePilot

Probably asked and probably answered, but I am lazy at the moment to go looking for the answer, and answer if you wish...

What does it cost in electricity to fill up the battery on the car ? 120 Volts or 220 Volts, and lets go with off peak charging times

How far can you go on battery alone ? not looking for the best best, but on the average what can you expect.

How much to fill up with gas - 31 Litre tank I think, so if I am right about 32-35 bucks to fill up based on current fluctuating gas prices

How far can you go on this tank of gas, if no battery power is used ? if that is even possible..

Thanks....

I am wanting the simplistic numbers to tell a friend that his wife who goes from Mississauga all the way to the Centenary Hospital about 50 Km one way, day in day out would be better off if she went with a vehicle like the Volt/Bolt.