How useful is the battery warranty, really?

Come now, if you were asked to design a new multi purpose transport vehicle that will use roads and be powered by batteries - what system would you come up with? Considering all the issues and situations that people live in and will use these vehicles for.

There are so many things to trip up the potential purchaser of an EV with the current implementations. Making them awkward to use on some journeys, making them impossible/ very difficult to own/ charge for others. And issues like loss of second hand value, defective cells and so on.

You'd almost certainly devise some sort of standardised battery swap system both at vehicle level and at forecourt level. Because that would neatly solve/ sidestep many of the issues.

We don't have this of course as manufacturers were allowed/ facilitated to go at it on an ad hoc basis. Devising their own designs to suit the models they want to design & sell.

About the only advantage of the current system as far as I can see is the ability (for some) to home charge at night at cheaper rates and/or to take advantage from solar panels on their properties etc. But that's far, far from the size of the market that the government has aspirations for to take up EVs. One suspects that if you live in the 'leafy suburbs' with capacity for night rate charging and a few subsidised solar panels on one's roof, then the current system is fine & dandy. But that's not a fit at all for the general populace.

I'm still chuckling at this notion. If somebody told me this was the way my battery was to be recharged on the road, I'd be buying another diesel car. 🤣

Reached out to Mercedes and they replied that a dead cell in my EQE HV battery would be covered under warranty up to 10 years or 250,000 Km provided it has a full Mercedes maintenance history

Cool, now you have to talk about battery swaps for the next day or two 😉😂

Having owned 2 x Nissan Almeras, 2 x Nissan Primeras and 2 x Nissan Maximas over the years I can say they have all been fault free and bullet proof, and I never once had problems in warranties when needed.

They seem a bit confused. How were their previous Nissan's fault free/bullet proof if they needed warranty claims.

The not enough power in the grid trope (whether night or day) is a myth. Electricity generation continues through the night and needs an outlet, we don't store our grid power. And as daytime usage increases, so does night time generation, so there's little chance of night time rates rising. As it stands there are huge variances between night time rates from the different providers, so there will always be competition.

Home charging is practical for many times the current number of EVs in the national fleet. Roughly two thirds of vehicle owners have off street parking - the national fleet is 2.5 million cars, the EV portion is around 60k. Nuts to be talking about "a cohort" with those pathetic numbers. You could multiply that by ten and still not hit the 'private parking' limit. The same stats would negate the grid capacity myth too.

Long story short, we could increase the EV fleet by a factor of ten and still not have a problem with home charging or grid capacity.

I've noticed recently that a lot more manufacturers are supporting 22kW AC charging. That suddenly makes living without a home charger a lot easier

3.5 hours would charge an ID.4 to 100%, so a half day on a work charger or in a shopping centre gives you a week's driving plus extra

Generally better for the grid as well, doesn't generate as big a power spike as a 500kW DC charger

The biggest barrier then is availability and price, there needs to be more AC chargers and it needs to be a lot cheaper relative to DC charging to work

As for the idea that everything is awesome when you don't own the battery, remember that's been tried before with Renault battery leases. So the theory went, if there was ever an issue you could just get a replacement for free, no questions asked

Well that worked out so well that Renault gave up on it years ago and almost all the owners bought out their battery leases

Very true, there doesn't seem to be much appetite for making public AC chargers viable

I believe the plan for Dublin is to focus on DC charging for now and maybe deploy AC chargers later

Contrast this with the UK where public AC seems to be becoming more and more popular. I think there's a much higher percentage of the population there without driveways so it's probably easier to justify financially

It's only ever going to be useful for public AC charging

I'm pretty sure the domestic 3 phase supply here starts at 24kVA, so 22kW charging is going to be a stretch

To give a recent example, I was in France recently using a 27kWh AC charger to top up my ID.4

It took 3 hours from 4pm to around 7pm

It probably would have been a bit nicer to be done sooner, meant I could have hit the wine earlier. I could also have gone earlier in the day so it's fair to say I was the master of my own circumstances

I wouldn't say it's essential, I certainly didn't feel anything more than very mildly inconvenienced by it

But if I was using public AC a lot then it'd be nice to have

I wasn't charging 0-100%

Sorry I probably didn't explain it properly

I drove 200km from the ferry to the campsite. Started around 95% and went down to something like 40% (honestly can't remember the exact numbers)

Charged up to 80% on the chargers which took just under 3 hours. Charging at 22kW would have halved that time

200km is probably more than a lot of urban drivers would cover in a week, the same folks who wouldn't have home charging

A 90 mins charge once a week is probably a lot more convenient than a 3 hour one. A weekly shop or gym trip would fit quite neatly into that time