Yea that's the thing right, the battery is so very much of the weight that optimizing the other parts are "meh" at this point. What is cool is that the 600Wh/kg solid state batteries seems like they are really finally here soon :) i.e removing 200-300kg from a car in one go will be a game changer.
No wonder electrics don't sell well in the US. People weigh more, you're basically saying that leaving grandma at home, is a "game changer".
>> removing 200-300kg from a car in one go will be a game changer
> No wonder electrics don't sell well in the US. People weigh more, you're basically saying that leaving grandma at home, is a "game changer".
Even in the US, your average grandma weighs less than 2-300kg :D
[This post to prevent ulterior posting of "yo mama" jokes]
Range being worse with a fully loaded car than with a lightly loaded car isn't exactly news, and not exactly limited to electric cars. I can clearly feel my old diesel struggling more when I'm driving 3 friends and with loads of heavy stuff in the back than when I'm alone. That makes the gas bill more expensive.
You probably know already, but ICE cars only convert about 20–30% of fuel energy into motion, while EVs are often +90% efficient. So when an EV has to work harder (extra battery weight or colder weather), you notice the drop in range more.
In an ICE, the same load is less visible because most energy gets wasted as heat. This is also why cold weather seems to affect EV range more.
> You probably know already, but ICE cars only convert about 20–30% of fuel energy into motion, while EVs are often +90% efficient. So when an EV has to work harder (extra battery weight or colder weather), you notice the drop in range more.
There's a kernel of truth here in that Otto engines suffer lower efficiency at part load, however I suspect the real reason is that gas car range is "good enough" and refilling is fast, so one doesn't tend to obsess about remaining range.
> This is also why cold weather seems to affect EV range more.
That's because a) some batteries suffer degraded performance at low temperature, and b) ICE cars use the plentiful waste heat for cabin heating whereas an EV needs a heat pump or even resistive heating of the cabin air.
> That's because a) some batteries suffer degraded performance at low temperature, and b) ICE cars use the plentiful waste heat for cabin heating whereas an EV needs a heat pump or even resistive heating of the cabin air.
You are making my point here actually. Combustion engines suffer from the exact same, but because they waste so much energy as heat already, less “extra” energy needs to be spent on that.
I don't think there's a contradiction here. Electric cars suffer degraded range when it's cold (in part) because they're so much more efficient that they don't produce enough waste heat to heat the cabin. And batteries are so much less energy dense than diesel and gasoline that the extra power draw reduces their range to a meaningful degree.
Part of your point is right, part is wrong.
Yes heating impacts range in an EV, but it's not really an efficiency thing, it's because you can't get it "free". If an ICE didn't let you harness the heat, you'd see a similar percent drop in range.
And for extra weight, it's just not true. Making a motor work 10% harder at 90% efficiency, compared to making an engine work 10% harder at 20% efficiency, both of these are going to reduce your range by 9%.
The unexpected benefit which I've noticed when switching from a small, light car to a heavier, medium EV car is that the latter doesn't drive/feel any worse when fully loaded. Makes the trips that much more pleasant.
That's true only if your very large "grandma" must at all cost sit on your batteries at all times.
If we could indeed leave "grandma" home, that would make things better.
And they don't sell well in the US because of oil lobbying and think tanks whose sole goal is to make you buy more oil.
Well, the world's most popular electric car brand (BYD) is also virtually banned in the US. That doesn't help with adoption.
True! If only grandma wouldn't insist on bringing 250kg of weapons and ammunition with her everywhere I'd get much better range in my EV, but alas this is the USA.
250kg grandma = ~20 small dogs
250kg weapons = ~20 small dogs
Instead of technological advancements of EV motors, we can immediately use existing pharmaceutical tech (Ozempic, GLP-1) to immediately deliver weight reduction to cars. However, this will be immediately offset by the increase in weight of weapons carried, thanks to Jevons Paradox.
Quite frankly I would like to hang out with that grandma. Load it up, I’ll take the range hit.
Manufacturers may just keep the battery size and market the improved range instead? Smaller cars in urban and suburban environments have always had lots of benefits, but since many of them are collective in nature, it has largely fallen on tragedy of the commons, and we got larger cars with larger hoods instead.
They might, but so far they don't. Manufacturers are largely switching to LFP (although to be fair they tend to offer a long-range option which ships NMC instead) and the main benefit of LFP is cost. The range of electric cars on the market is largely capped at 500KM/300miles. They could offer more, but they don't.
Why not both? For a two-car family, having a good road-tripper and a light sporty car can work out pretty nicely.
Not true. Tesla themselves said the way they got the Model 3 to be so efficient was by optimising every single part exhaustively. It’s expensive at design stage but results in the most efficiency gains across the fleet - so worth it (especially something like the motors)