More than average? Any idea why?

Hopefully Elon will stop playing with his new toy soon and get on with opening up the Tesla charging network. It must be really hard to make a reliable network because so far only Tesla has got it right probably because they've been doing it so long.

I have some general questions about Polestar. Why does the band exist instead of it simply being a Volvo? Is this Volvo hedging in case their EVs didn't sell? Are they trying to distance from the Volvo brand for some other reason? Is it a China thing people don't like Volvo's in China? (I'm under the impression they do)

I'm sure some will disagree but the $/performance for that package is excellent, trying to add that power to any car will ever likely cost way more if it can be done at all. Here's something for skeptics to consider especially people that call EV owners fanboys. Those owners are or were ICE fanboys, all of them. And likley still own ICE cars they love. For Toyota and Lexus specifically this has a Blackberry moment vibe for them I hear it all the time. "I love my Toyota but..."

Polestar has been much better with software updates compared to most (hello VW) props to them. I think Polestar is the tip of the spear to a much larger invasion of made in China cars coming to North America.

 

Dude, you've handed me a handful. Don't know what he's referring to, the stock or resale value so I'll let him answer. As far as Tesla opening their charging network to non Tesla's...huge. If you look on the Polestar forum, users are upset with Elon for not opening it yet. But Elon works in his own schedule. It will happen eventually.

Polestar is supposed to be a separate company from Volvo, and I think you will see those changes next year. But they will always have that Volvo influence. Volvo will be the luxury line and Polestar will be performance. I predict that Polestar will be Tesla's biggest competitor. Polestar is a serious EV company, and if you ask the average owner, they looked at the Model 3, but Polestar had what they wanted. Don't forget also that Polestar is opening a factory in South Carolina.

I still love ICE cars and always will. Many of us get lumped as haters which is unfortunate. It is what it is, can't do anything about that. But for me EV'S work out much better, and the newer 4 cylinder turbocharged or hybrids don't appeal to me. Simple as that.

The performance upgrade is worth every penny to me. For my former IS350 to achieve 455 HP requires $8000 in upgrades... and you lose reliability. Not worth it.

Polestar has a lot of work cut out for it in regards to software. Way behind Tesla is this regard. But glad they do OTA... most of the time the updates make improvements to the car

 

Problem I see is non Tesla owners are going to need two apps, one for example Polestar and the other the Tesla app. Tesla will know where your car is at any given time, they have to since Tesla very closely tracks what cars are being charged, what cars soon need to charge and of course what chargers are free.
I agree people tend to cross shop Polestar and Tesla easy to see why. Polestar looks so much like a Volvo they took some of the best styling cues.
Speaking of simple maybe it's because I'm a simple man, 4-cylinder does not belong in any upscale vehicle. No matter what.
That's why hardly anyone did it.
VW did nothing for almost 2 years and now every single car has to go to a dealer for a software update. Lucid has a pile of features that don't work at all they may never work. Some Lucid's have been shutting down completely, car is totally dead. GM's software is garbage IMO. Ford's is okay but the look reminds me of Windows 98 with a beauty pack.

There are a lot of good coders in China.

 

A friend of mine worked for Lucid. I saw him after 4 or 5 months over the Thanksgiving holiday and asked him if he still worked for Lucid, and he just gave me a grin and told me he now works for Rivian. Apparently there is an exodus from a sinking ship

 

Rivian basically cloned Tesla's OS at least in look n feel.

Here's some encouraging news, EVs are actually driving down electricity rates.
https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/f...2_update_0.pdf

 

I'm a PG&E customer, and although my electricity 'costs' have gone up, my rates have actually gone down...at least my non Peak rates (I only charge non peak hours). Previously they were maybe 0.26 cents a kWh and are now 0.14 cents a kWh

On the Rivian front, I'm actually seeing a lot of Rivians on the road, and I'm hearing that Amazon will be using electric vans in our area very soon, which I'm assuming are Rivians. I like the new Rivian R1S, but the thing I would be afraid of is lack of service centers. In California there are only 3 in Northern Cal and 3 in SoCal. I'm sure they are going to expand but Rivians are new tech, and new stuff tends to break

 

Performance upgrade is on it's way



Sticker is free BTW

 

This is pretty remarkable, and makes the claims of EV's somehow "overloading electrical grids" look even more silly.

 

My Ioniq and my Polestar probably consume less than 20 percent of my total energy. In about a month, both consumed 603 kWh, which is 20.1 kWh per day. My AC on the other hand consumes 30 kWh per day from June to almost October...and a lot of this use is during peak hours. The two cars are 100 percent charged during non peak hours.

AC and appliance use during the summer months, especially during heat waves is when the grid is being strained the most. The "Flex alerts" that get issued are usually between 3PM and 8PM when AC use is at it's highest, most people don't charge their cars until after 9PM

 

Until EV penetration increases by 10x or more from what it is today, the way people tend to charge them actually lessens overall stress on the grid. Adding more load at night smooths out the load curve over a 24h period. Providers can then safely increase the output of base plants, which are very efficient but difficult and expensive to adjust. This, in turn, lowers the amount of output peaking plants need to provide during the day. They can change their production rapidly in response to demand, but are expensive and inefficient to run.

 

Are you saying that we have to wait until 10x penetration for grid stress to lessen?, or are you saying grid stress will increase after 10x penetration? Sorry, I didn't fully follow

 

I'm saying that right now we're in a situation with each additional EV added that is charged overnight, the easier we make it for grid operators.

That paradigm will not scale forever, as eventually we could get to a point where overnight demand exceeds current daytime peak demand due to the sheer number of EVs that need to be charged. But that's quite a ways off, and even then, for a while we would just flip to using peaking plants to supplement overnight charging usage instead of mid-afternoon AC like we do today. Hopefully by the point that imbalance would get very large, we'll have a smart grid and cooperative scheduling can really smooth out demand by scaling vehicle charging up/down based on overall demand in real-time.

 

Oh yeah, I get what you're saying now. Makes total sense

 

Very great, informative posts, @geko29 !

 

There are two main concerns that I hear from people when it comes to EV adoption: 1) Mining for rare earth minerals 2) and Used batteries from EV's ending up in Landfills. Both are big, legitimate concerns and can't just be swept under the rug. Mining of mineral ore such as Lithium not only poses environmental dangers, but there are concerns about the labor used. On the subject of Lithium Ion batteries, what happens to these batteries when they reach end of life? Are they just going to fill up landfills? I'm not going to address the mining side in this post, but I will talk about the used batteries and what happens to them after their useful life is over, as this is a huge concern for me. I am concerned about the environment, and used batteries can have a devastating effect sitting in Landfills.

The answer is battery recycling. I'll be posting an article on this, but let me just give a little bit of an overview. Monro and Associates, a company that buys and dismantles EV's from different manufactures (to better understand the manufacturing process between each automaker) has a Youtube Channel, Monro Live. In one of their Youtube videos, they remove and dismantle a 4680 structural battery pack from a Model Y. They explain in the video how Tesla designed the battery pack to be easily recycled, one of the ways would be to drop it in liquid nitrogen and then crush it. Through a process, the rare earth minerals are extracted and reused. I don't remember the exact percentage, but I think it was around 95 percent can be recycled! EV batteries generally have a useful lifespan of 15 years, once enough of them start being retired, the materials can be reused in new batteries. This would cut down the need for rare earth minerals.

Anyway, for a more detailed explanation of battery recycling, please visit this link:

How Does EV Battery Recycling Work?

https://www.makeuseof.com/how-does-e...ecycling-work/