Interesting. From Nissan:
"The recommended service interval of the factory-fill coolant is 200 000km (125 000 miles) or 15 years, whichever comes first. Subsequent replacement ... should occur every 80 000km (48 000 miles) or 4 years, whichever comes first."
The best lie from the fossil fuel industry is putting the burden of responsibility on the individual, and not the corporations.
The idea of a "carbon footprint" was created by the fossil fuel industry to convince people and governing bodies that individual people are the problem (and solution), and to distract from the pollution caused by industries.
There is so much completely unnecessary waste in industries that individuals couldn't possibly compete with. Most people aren't even aware of how much is wasted before the products even reach them.
The best way to fight climate change is to hold companies accountable.
It's a Nissan Leaf, generally known for it's battery overheating issues.
I also have the refreshed model of the Leaf. It has a higher density battery pack with more tightly spaced cells and still no battery cooling. It will overheat if driven more than 600km (400mi) in one day. When hot, the rapid charging speed drops to about 20kW.
Interesting. I guess my 2011 Nissan Leaf would be an outlier then. It's lost some range, but I think it will keep working for me for at least another 10 years.
Historically, electric cars have caught fire much less often than petrol cars (even accounting for the lower number of EV's on the road). Most of these have been from a single battery manufacturing line and caused by a single misaligned robot that placed the battery terminals too close together. These batteries have all been recalled under warranty.
There are battery types that are better for grid storage than hydrogen. One of the main drawbacks of hydrogen storage is its low round trip efficiency of around 30%.
Redox flow batteries are easily scalable, liquid metal batteries have very low maintenance costs and long lifespans, and sodium ion batteries are much cheaper than lithium ion batteries. It will be interesting to see if any of these options make mass market.
Car batteries last more than 10 years in cars, have a second life as static storage for likely much more than 10 years, and we currently have the ability to recycle over 95% of battery materials into new batteries.
Hydrogen used in fuel cells has a round trip efficiency of around 30% (compared to 90%+ for batteries). If the hydrogen was generated from solar power, we would need 3 times as many solar panels to drive hydrogen cars vs battery cars.
Most (98%+) of all hydrogen is currently made using fossil fuels. The most common method is methane steam reformation. The methane (natural gas) is combined with high pressure, high temperature steam. The methane reacts with the steam to produce hydrogen and carbon dioxide.
The carbon dioxide is usually vented to the atmosphere (some places capture the CO2, and use it to pump oil out of the ground where the CO2 is also released into the atmosphere).
The hydrogen also contains less energy than the methane that was used to make it.
If every car was instantly converted to electric, the grid would struggle but not collapse. There is a lot of extra (but more expensive) production capability on the grid, and EV's are being added gradually, not instantly.
The grid is currently being upgraded to support air conditioners and heat pumps. EV charging can be scheduled for times when the grid is under less load, so EV's will have a relatively small impact on the grid.
Large trucks (semi-truck, big-rig, 18-wheeler, etc.) cause around 200,000 times the damage to roads per distance driven than cars.
Even accounting for the lower number of trucks than cars, in Australia trucks cause around 50,000 times more damage to roads per year than cars.
In Australia, commercial trucks pay less fuel excise per litre than cars.
It's worth noting that while NMC batteries shouldn't be charged over 100% for daily use, LFP batteries should be charged to 100% at least weekly.
LFP batteries are not damaged by being at 100%, and due to the flat discharge curve, the controller only knows how charged the battery is when it's near 100%. Most of the time it's calculating the charge left based on how much energy is being used.
Over time, that guess is going to get less accurate. Charging it to full will reset the guess, and keep it accurate.
Only charging to 80% can cause the guess to be off by more than 50% (after quite a long time), leading to the battery running out when the car thinks it has at least 50% left.
If you don't know what battery your car has (and don't have access to the manual), assuming LFP is safest. Any EV sold after 2022 is likely to use LFP (unless it's a high performance car), and EV's sold before 2020 are probably NMC.
New battery chemistries are coming on the market every year, so don't rely too much on this comment.
In Australia, roads are paid for out of the general tax pool, and from a proportion of the registration cost. Fuel excise goes into the general tax pool and doesn't directly fund roads.
This hasn't stopped states from trying to implement a distance based tax on electric and low emission vehicles.
Victoria introduced one under the guise of needing extra money to pay for roads. It was a state-collected tax. The federal government collects fuel excise, so the state wasn't losing funding from electric car owners. The new tax collected didn't even go toward roads.
There were numerous other critical issues with this tax, but it's still running.
I have an electric car from 2011. The battery has had no maintenance, and hasn't been replaced.
So far the car has had 2-3 new 12V batteries, at least one new set of tires, windscreen wipers replaced once, and the air conditioner filter replaced a few times. I'm not aware of any other maintenance done to the car.
I suspect the car could have driven up to 150km (95mi) when new, and is now down to 80km (50mi) range. It gets driven no more than 10km in a day, so I suspect it will still be useful to me for another 10 years.
It has saved me a huge amount in fuel, and has barely cost me anything to run.
My computer takes longer to get through POST than to boot Linux. It's a little frustrating.