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posted by martyb on Friday September 28 2018, @04:28PM   Printer-friendly
from the EVs-are-making-a-charge-on-ICEs dept.

Roadshow:

The BMW i3 has been on sale since 2014, and in that time, BMW has seen fit to expand its battery size and, by proxy, its range. For the 2019 model year, it's getting yet another battery upgrade, and it's a big one.

The 2019 BMW i3 will come with a 42.2-kWh battery (120 amp-hours), which should permit for up to 153 miles of all-electric driving. This is a roughly 30 percent improvement over the previous 94-Ah battery, which allowed for 115 miles of range. The i3's first battery was just 60 Ah, offering a range of just 81 miles. Oh, how far we've come.

BMW will offer the battery in both variants of the i3. The standard i3 uses a 170-horsepower electric motor, powerful enough to get the little EV to 60 mph in just 7.2 seconds. The i3s, on the other hand, is the sportier trim, offering a 181-hp electric motor and a 6.8-second sprint to 60.

Will EVs (electric vehicles) like this succeed in replacing ICEs (internal combustion engines) as commuter cars?


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  • (Score: 2) by NewNic on Saturday September 29 2018, @05:37AM (2 children)

    by NewNic (6420) on Saturday September 29 2018, @05:37AM (#741720) Journal

    2,000 cycles is probably about 20 years of use (charging every 3.5 days), after which time an ICE would have been scrapped. The battery of an EV should be fully depreciated after 20 years, so any residual value in the car at that time is a bonus.

    Your "$11.25 for the battery" cost of a hypothetical trip is double-counting the depreciation.

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    lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 29 2018, @01:36PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 29 2018, @01:36PM (#741785)

    Suburban drivers with commutes aren't gonna be charging every 3.5 days. They are the people that EV's need to market to. People in cities don't need to drive in the first place, rural areas are too far from anything for them to be practical without massive range increases. Suburbanites with a 30-60 mile daily round-trip + kids-to-school + grocery + etc are your target. They will charge at minimum every other day, most likely every day because you can't just get a jump or walk to the gas station when your EV runs dies. These batteries will see a lot more wear than your use-case of people who don't practically need a car anyway.

    • (Score: 2) by NewNic on Saturday September 29 2018, @02:18PM

      by NewNic (6420) on Saturday September 29 2018, @02:18PM (#741795) Journal

      It doesn't really matter how many times you charge the battery.

      With Lithium Ion batteries, as long as you are not charging past 80% state of charge, you can charge more frequently without affecting the lifetime. 2 or 3 short charge cycles are equivalent to one longer charge cycle in terms of how they affect the life of the battery.

      --
      lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory