turboSnail

The only good things about NMC cells is the energy density and the ability to pull a decent power during acceleration.

When it comes to temporaries, they are surprisingly picky. Too hot or cold, and they wear out quickly. If you push beyond that, you’ll lose range instantly. That’s why a heat pump is such a great thing to have.

Also, the state of charge matters to longevity. If you use the wrong percentages frequently, you’ll start losing capacity sooner or later. Even if you treat the battery perfectly, it’s still going to wear out like the tires do, but this thing costs as much as an engine.

I’m really looking forward to seeing all the other battery chemistries take their share of the market.

I guess an update is in order. I was thinking of a calculation that is already several years old. I can’t even find it any more, but it had three options: small gasoline powered ICE car, hybrid and a fully electric one. Can’t remember if the latter one was Tesla, Toyota, BMW or something. Anyway, at that time, TCO of a small gasoline powered car was a bit lower that that of a hybrid or a fully electric one.

The final tipping point will be when the demand for EVs exceeds the demand for other car types. When that happens, depreciation of gasoline cars will increase dramatically, giving EVs a lower TCO. At the moment, charging infrastructure seems to be the bottle neck for a many people, so that’s why we haven’t gone past the tipping point yet. The real bottle neck here is actually the electrical grid, and upgrading that will take many years, if not decades. We could install more charging stations, but that would break the whole grid, so that’s why we have to limit their number in specific parts of the grid.

The price of a new EV is obviously going to decrease in the future, as every step along the chain ramps up production. Alternative battery chemistries play a role as well, now that LFP cars have finally entered the market. I’m also looking forward to seeing how Na-ion batteries affect the prices, but that’s still going to take a many years. I expect that in about 5-10 years the prices of cheap EVs will be a lot lower than they are today.

The way I see it, rich people can buy new cars. Everyone else who needs one should consider buying a used one instead. After a few years, depreciation isn’t quite so rapid any more, which makes TCO less of a burden.

Maintenance expenses do increase as the car ages, but as long as it isn’t like 25 years old, it’s not completely absurd. Currently, I’m looking to buy something that is about 5 years old, and then sell it when it begins to require frequent maintenance. That way, I should be able to avoid the two expensive extremes.

However, there’s another nasty twist. Cold environment will murder the NMC cells in no time. Not too long ago, I had to leave my car in a cold parking lot for a long time, and when I got back it was about -30 °C. Fortunately, I don’t need to abuse the engine this way any more than maybe twice every year. Oh, boy did it sound unhappy with that cold start, but it managed it anyway. If I had an EV, I would probably need to leave it at home, and take a bus for horribly timed trips like that.

Let’s say, about 6 times a year, I’ll have badly timed trips, with temperatures hovering around +5…-15 °C: That isn’t a complete disaster for EVs, but it’s still very bad for the cells. Some cars have a built-in heating system for the battery, so I guess that feature would see frequent use. When I’m eventually buying a use EV, having a battery heating system is going to be a completely non-negotiable feature.

Depreciation is a massive slice of the pie in all cars, but EVs are hit even harder. Buying a used EV is probably my best bet in about 5-10 years from now.

Specific cost of ownership (as in €/m) is what actually matters in the end, but most people ignore it. Usually people just compare gasoline and electricity prices and draw their conclusions based on that. That sort of analysis is not going to give you a very reliable picture.

Regardless, if I had the money to drive a BMW, buying an EV would be a simple decision. Who cares about the purchase price, ongoing expenses or depreciation when you have that much money. Since I’m not in that market segment, EVs aren’t really a viable option for me just yet.

Here’s a financial argument. The initial purchase price is too high for me, and the depreciation of electric vehicles is also very high. Overall cost of ownership per distance driven is lower if I drive a small gasoline-powered car.

I really don’t want it to be that way, but that’s the reality I have to deal with. Cheaper EVs are coming, but they still aren’t in my price range.

What about GitLab? When Microsoft bought GitHub, people got angry, and migrated their code to GitLab. When that happened, GitLab was all over the headlines for a while, but I haven’t read much about it ever since.

Imagine having those explosions in the background during a meeting 😄

I just put that on in the background while I was cooking, cleaning etc. I actually watched the first 30 minutes like a normal video. During the rest, I was actively looking only about 10% of the time.

A still from that video really looks like something from a space telescope. Small glowing dots and a gas cloud in the background.

Apparently you saw that 400 battery video too.

Additional info on lockdown mode

Lockdown Mode is an optional, extreme protection that’s designed for the very few individuals who, because of who they are or what they do, might be personally targeted by some of the most sophisticated digital threats. Most people are never targeted by attacks of this nature.

If you’ve identified in your threat model that your phone could fall into the wrong hands, and someone might try to hack into it, using lockdown could save the day. Very least, the hackers are not going to have an easy day.

It’s very easy
Anyone can do this now
Even you and me

Same with industrial automation, power grid, production management, etc. Most people don’t even realise how much critical software is Windows-only.

Likewise, climate change isn’t really a technological problem. Governments don’t motivate companies stop destroying the planet, so they don’t. Obviously, there are some technological issues too, but for the most part, it’s a political issue.

If there’s a way around the legislation, they’ll definitely take it. If you know of an exploit in the system or if you’re best buddies with the local king, laws suddenly cease to matter.

Very interesting… I guess my calculations can be supercharged while still technically remaining in the realm of a spreadsheet.

Hopefully Python still runs with its usual consistency. VBA is a total nightmare in this regard. The code can randomly throw some useless error for no obvious reason. You can run the same code a few hours later and everything works perfectly even though you didn’t change anything. Can’t really use anything that unstable for anything serious.

Yep. Money steers the decision making process. Politics determines how money works, and companies just go with the flow.

I totally agree with you. Politics is the correct arena for this.

Those who work at the IT department of a company have some authority in this matter too, and they can convince the executives to channel the resources for the migration. If you’re in any other part of the organization tree, your words have less weight.

If laws are written first, and companies react after that, it’s not going to be a very smooth landing, but I still think this is the most likely outcome. Ideally, smart IT people in various companies would bring this up as a potential risk to daily operations. This way, companies would have more time to react before the laws are enforced.

My guess is, most executives won’t give any money to a migration project of this magnitude unless the future of the company depends on it. There needs to be some sort of impending doom in the horizon, before they start reacting. Maybe massive fines or a total collapse of the IT infrastructure would do it.

Can confirm! Calc is fine as long as you’re not trying to do anything too advanced. Then again, when you bump into those limits, you might want to consider switching to R or Python anyway. Excel just allows you to delay that inevitability a little bit longer.

Now there’s a business opportunity. When companies are that screwed, they’ll start the project immediately. That’s when system migration consults get rich.