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[–] 5 points 1 day ago (14 children)

Maybe it's regional but where I am, old Nissan Leafs from the mid 2010s can be had for a few thousand dollars.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 day ago (13 children)

    How're the batteries on those holding up?

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  • [–] 8 points 1 day ago (12 children)

    I don't own a car that old, but actually, you might be shocked by how well they hold up. People immediately think electric car batteries decay like cell phone batteries, but most electric car owners don't regularly abuse the battery in the same way that cell phone users do, largely because the batteries are expected to last for over a decade and not just be replaced in two years.

    These habits include:

    • Rarely charging the battery past 80%, except for newer batteries that use a lithium ferrophosphate chemistry
    • Not depleting the battery below 20% charge.
    • Charging the battery slowly. Most cell phone chargers will fully charge the phone in two hours. Typical electric cars are charged at a rate that would take 12 to 16 hours, but overnight is enough for most people since they're only charging from 20% to 80%.
    • Not exposing the battery to extreme cold or heat. The car will automatically apply A/C to the battery cells to keep them the optimal temperature.
    • Warming up the battery to 20 degrees before charging.

    The standard warranty length on an electric car's battery is eight years. If the battery loses more than 30% capacity in eight years, that's consider a defect, and they'll give you a new battery.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 hours ago* (1 child)

    Draining below 20 % is no problem at all, the lower you cycle the batteries the longer they last. Lower voltage = lower degradation. A really bad, supposedly knowledgeable website originally pushed that and other nonsense with cycling 20 to 80 % or what it was. It is now getting repeated everywhere. You can go down to 2 V (that is below 0 % SOC) and it will only damage the cell slightly faster over the next 100 cycles(!) of always(!) going down to 2 V. Going down to 3 V or 0 % SOC does nothing. Personal experience: All the batteries I ever had accidentally over-discharged recovered just fine, they were well below even 2 V. No increased leakage, no (measurable) capacity loss. Here an actual source instead of just me japping. Look at figure 7. Even down to 1.2 V and the cells still took 50 cycles until they were at 80 % remaining capacity, so around 10x faster degradation at EXTREMELY low voltages. 0 % SOC is often 3 V, for comparison.

    I assume that, since the voltage drops very rapidly at the end of discharge, that people actually ran their battery down into the ground, reverse biasing (negative voltage) the most depleted cell(s), and with that were doing the real damage in one single event in seconds. That is a very different thing and we have BMS monitoring individual cell voltages to prevent that.

    While writing this the evidence I provide still feels a bit too weak, like someone counters "see lower IS worse" when consumer products, let alone proper battery packs, can not be discharged nearly that far. So here more data with a clear "line go up", so more degradation with higher SOC all the way from 0 to 100 with no anomaly at the lower end and across 3 different cell chemistries (NCA, NMC and LFP).

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  • [–] 1 point 7 hours ago

    Your first link is temporarily not working, but you're arguing against the wrong point anyway. I accept everything you said to be true. Not depleting the battery below 20% is not because low states of charge are bad for the battery. You have already made a convincing argument that they are not. It is to keep the depth of discharge lower, which is known to be good for battery longevity, though I currently don't have a primary source for that right now because I'm not on my computer. You could get the same benefits by charging from 10% to 70% or 0% to 60%, and in those cases that might actually be better for the battery, but people like having a buffer rather than pulling up to the charger running on sparks, so that's why 20% is the recommendation.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 day ago (8 children)

    Yeah but they asked about first gen Nissan Leafs which, yeah, none of those batteries are holding any type of up unless you regularly drive less than 30 miles day.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 day ago (6 children)

    Last time I checked the majority of people travel under 5 miles for most car trips.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

    Commute alone is about triple each way on average. US census has the data published. It makes sense when you consider an average car owner in the US and how big it is and how many people don't regularly use cars in densely populated major cities.

    Between this comment and someone saying that tarantulas are as smart as a smart dog, I sometimes almost forget how completely out of touch with reality a lot of people here are.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

    Each trip or each day? Average commute is 30 miles a day.

    But no need to really debate it, the first gen Nissan Leaf design is notorious for being pretty harsh on the battery pack, compared to most other prominent electric models that tend to do better than expected. I think it should be fine to admit that some models might not have the staying power one would have hoped. Just like sometimes happens in gasoline models.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 hours ago* (1 child)

    Look, I'm not saying a first Gen leaf would not meet 95% of my needs and I'm not saying that I would not buy one if you could just convince my partner but I doubt the majority of Americans travel less than five miles for car trips.

    It's disingenuous to say "EV batteries actually hold up fine!" and then follow it up with "Well, you don't drive that much anyway," when presented with evidence otherwise. I know you're not the OP of the other comment, but c'mon, this is a linear chain of thought.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 hours ago

    Tbh I don't even drive, growing up I couldn't afford it. I don't even know anyone who drives more than 16km a day which is the same distance I cycle to work - I do know a couple who drive the same distance I cycle, I get there faster as I can go faster than traffic jams.

    Its probably somewhat location dependent, that stat is from the UK.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 day ago

    Yeah they didn’t have thermal management like the rest of the full sized EVs. Even the second gen leafs have iffy ranges and charging speeds. They kinda set EVs back a bit for a lot of early adopters I know.

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