[jmack123]

Originally Posted by tsbrown

As a mechanic engineer with decades of experience I’m calling BS on this. Maybe 60% or so but very definitely not 96%. Please cite your source.

My bad, 80-85% efficiency per Institution of Mechanical Engineers (note that they say even the MOST INEFFICIENT EVs are 80-85% efficient -“…considering that even the worst EV is roughly 80%-85% efficient, the limit could be far higher.”):
https://www.imeche.org/news/news-art...s-and-software

Motortrend pegs EVs at 87-91% with ICE at a whopping 16-25.
https://www.motortrend.com/news/evs-...stion-engines/



Better brush up on your engineering.

[tsbrown]

Originally Posted by jmack123

My bad, 80-85% efficiency per Institution of Mechanical Engineers (note that they say even the MOST INEFFICIENT EVs are 80-85% efficient -“…considering that even the worst EV is roughly 80%-85% efficient, the limit could be far higher.”):
https://www.imeche.org/news/news-art...s-and-software

Motortrend pegs EVs at 87-91% with ICE at a whopping 16-25.
https://www.motortrend.com/news/evs-...stion-engines/



Better brush up on your engineering.

Yeah and this isn’t considering the power plant efficiency that supplies the energy, dropping it into the 60 or 70% range. If anyone needs to brush up it’s not me.

[mecheng77]

Originally Posted by HP Autosport

You can do most of the EV maintenance yourself as well.

If you can sway an ICE engine and trans, you can swap a battery in an EV.

I’ve never had to swap an engine or trans, from Honda,Volvo and BMW I’ve taken them to 300,000km and they all still ran fine when I sold them.

I would need a lift to change the battery and how much would it cost.

[mecheng77]

Originally Posted by msej449

@mecheng77 You’re quoting another fossil fuel lobby propaganda scare story. What’s the evidence from the millions of EVs already on the road that a battery is going to fail as you describe?

While even on this forum there’s more than one thread describing engines that have been completely trashed when a failed turbo feed pipe has broken and ingested debris. But that doesn’t mean all petrol engines are unreliable.

I’m no EV Evangelist. I have a lovely M235i Convertible that I plan to run to at least 100K miles. I’m using it now on an Alpine touring holiday. But back home, it’s the EV that I use for 80% of my daily driving because it’s the better solution. I agree that EVs aren’t the solution to every driving need and for many people would be the wrong choice.

What I don’t understand is why people echo completely false propaganda about EV problems and costs, just to justify their choice of a petroleum-based drivetrain.

You have great taste in cars with your M235i , I love mine. It will easily last beyond 200k miles.

I am not against EVs but I don’t plan on being an early adopter. I don’t drive much so just with time the battery would be deteriorating. When the battery is dead how much will it cost 15-20$k… that will total the car. I think with time they will improve but gas is here to stay until they can solve range issues, charging avail and charging time.
North Americans love road trips.

[jmack123]

Originally Posted by tsbrown

Yeah and this isn’t considering the power plant efficiency that supplies the energy, dropping it into the 60 or 70% range. If anyone needs to brush up it’s not me.

Move the goal post much?

If we want to start talking efficiency of the underlying fuel source, try running the numbers on renewable fuel efficiency like solar and wind. Can ICE vehicles run on those? Can’t remember.

This is also neglecting the fact that coal powered plants are also key energy inputs into petroleum fuel delivery systems for ICE vehicles. Try factoring that into the efficiency of ICE vehicles for me as well while you’re at it.

[msej449]

I think we’ve conclusively answered the question of the thread title: a petroleum-based drivetrain is inherently more expensive to maintain than the equivalent electric system.

Beyond that, the thread is doing what these discussions always do, and has moved into related questions around affordability, total cost of ownership, environmentals etc. Plus some of the regular references to ‘issues’ about EVs that aren’t issues at all, but propaganda from the fossil fuel industry.

As an EV owner, my experience is that the genuine issues with EVs vs ICEVs aren’t the high-profile fictions like batteries catching fire, inordinate tyre wear, or car-park-crushing weight etc. They’re mundane stuff like software updates causing odd changes to the UI and poor integration of car, energy supplier and charge point software. And yes, for a segment of users, disappointing experience with fast charging on long trips away from home.

The other issue that crops up regularly on EV forums is with EV Sales: where sales people over-sell the benefits and are over-optimistic re the costs of home charge point installation and ease of charging away from home. Sales people’s job is to sell, not to educate but it’s easy to forget this (as with an ICEV sale).

There’s also clearly a ‘sweet spot’ in terms of optimal cost/capability. In the UK at least, that’s around the $35-$40,000 mark, in 5-door hatchback/sedan format. This will get you a solid 50Kw, smallish urban car with around 210 miles range. Following the 20-80% charge strategy (trying not to go below 20% or charge above 80%) that’s roughly a return trip radius of 75 miles in winter. If you want more range then it gets disproportionately expensive to add extra miles. If you want a really seamless software and charging infrastructure then you’d also go for a Tesla, which carries a big premium.

The first and biggest qualification is whether you can install a home charge station or not and ideally, garage the car if you are in a colder region. If you can, then it transforms the ownership experience, as you might expect. Again, dealers are guilty of glossing-over this when trying to close a sale. Of all the factors affecting whether you go for an EV I’d say that this is the biggest - and the first to check out before even looking at what car to get.

[note46]

Originally Posted by Luminor513

Not going to argue but simply based on your description of “inner edge” tire wear, it’s likely due to too much negative camber. Toe tends to be more of an issue on front wheels, and toe is almost always able to be adjusted to within spec with factory arms. Not all manufacturers allow for camber adjustment, and that is most commonly the culprit of premature tire wear. Especially if you aren’t having any feathering of the outer edge of the tread, it’s unlikely that toe is the cause of the tire wear unless the car is completely out of alignment.

When you say camber doesn’t kill tires, I’m sorry but I will respectfully disagree with you as would majority of knowledgeable car enthusiasts. Both toe and camber can significantly affect tire wear, and also if you are driving around with negative 3 degrees of camber, I can assure you that is most definitely causing premature Inner tire wear. But again, we can agree to disagree, and if you take your car to a professional tire shop that has a laser alignment machine, please feel free to share the printout. Also road force balancing is a must with EV’s, not just standard tire balancing, just as an additional detail if you want to get the most miles out of your rubber.

Yeah I'm not going to bother arguing either but I'll clarify some of the things I said. Between negative camber and toe, toe kills tires wayyy faster than camber. This is from my personal experience when I used to autox but YMMV.

My i4 is stock, nothing has been added or changed. It also has (as with all i4s in 2022) rear only air suspension that levels the car (even with added load). Thus it should (in theory) keep the toe and camber on it vs when not loaded. I measured the rear camber and it's -.9 and -.95 or so. That's no where enough to "kill" the tires. Finally, this is my commute car and I'm the only one in the car 95% of the time.

I don't have a way to measure toe so I don't know what the factory spec is, maybe someone who had an alignment done can post the info.

So after 9K miles I check the wear on all 4 tires and the front are hardly worn. Rears shows a much higher inner edge wear than the rest of the tread. If ~-.9 camber can cause this much difference I'll change the camber to be as close to 0 but I doubt this. I also want to make it clear this is specific to my i4 but I've read other EV owners that have seen this similar wear pattern.



Finally I would assume if the weight of the car is the cause or main contributor to the overall accelerated tire wear, should that be the case for front and rear?

On a sort of related side note, this inner edge tire wear issue reminds me of when the first two (maybe) three years of the NSX where it was eating through tires. Yes because it has so much toe in, it handled great (as Senna requested, so the legend goes) but most sets were only lasting 6-8K only.

[Bluenose-2er]

I was surprised by the amount of anti-EV perspective on this thread, considering this is an EV forum. But some good points to be gleaned by those perspectives, if you scrub out the bias.

Bottom line seems to me to be:
- suspension wear differences are likely a wash, or negligible
- tire wear differences may be real... and tire replacement costs are significant... but the incremental advantage of ICEV seems pretty small here. I would be interested in an actual comprehensive quantitative comparison
- the elephant in the room is how complex and maintenance intensive ICE is, relative to electric motors, especially later in their life. I think that was the origin of this question, but does not seem to really have been answered. I am guessing electric motors have the win on this one by a fair margin just due to their simplicity.

But let's not forget the main operating cost - fuel. I paid about a $3.5K premium for my EV over an equivalent ICEV model (no subsidies where I am). With electricity being about 1/8 the cost per mile, that is a ~3 year payback period. After that, this huge running cost skews heavily to EVs. But if you replace your EV every 3 years you don't realize this saving (unless you have subsidies or the premium disappears).

[zinner]

I really enjoy discussing topics like maintenance costs on an enthusiast forum. It's people rationalizing an appliance versus awesome driving experience. It's like a civic with a 1.6 that requires basic oil changes and a timing belt at 100k vs a high reving screaming s63 that requires more maintenance but returns a better experience. Can we talk about hyper mileing to get that extra 2mpg by pumping up the tires an extra 5psi too.

[vrooooom]

No one can argue about the fuel comparison and how clean they are especially if you’re charging via solar (would take a long time I’d presume). But like all things, there’s always something else to pay for, not monetary all the time.

Are the mining of heavy metals for the battery, which I realize is also on all our portable electronics, not significant? Even solar panels, I hear, has a graveyard full of it.

I’m not pro or against it however unless there’s a real study on the whole end-end process, there’s always going to be a never ending debate on the sustainability of the EV. For now it’s about how it’s marketed and who believes the claim to let their wallet speak.

[jmack123]

Originally Posted by zinner

I really enjoy discussing topics like maintenance costs on an enthusiast forum. It's people rationalizing an appliance versus awesome driving experience. It's like a civic with a 1.6 that requires basic oil changes and a timing belt at 100k vs a high reving screaming s63 that requires more maintenance but returns a better experience. Can we talk about hyper mileing to get that extra 2mpg by pumping up the tires an extra 5psi too.

Awesome is subjective. There really isn’t anything about an EV that prevents it from being an awesome driving experience. And please stop with the weight bs. The new M2 is damn near 4000 lbs and is a two door coupe. Sure, ICE vehicles have their virtues as drivers cars, especially on track currently. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t drivers EVs. And more are coming. The whole “EVs are just appliances” screams boomer nonsense. Hate to say it.

[HP Autosport]

Originally Posted by mecheng77

I’ve never had to swap an engine or trans, from Honda,Volvo and BMW I’ve taken them to 300,000km and they all still ran fine when I sold them.

I would need a lift to change the battery and how much would it cost.

Lift will make it easier, but I am sure it's doable on jack stands. We will find out in 5-10 years.

[unfoundnemo]

Originally Posted by Bluenose-2er

I was surprised by the amount of anti-EV perspective on this thread, considering this is an EV forum

It made front page, so it brought in quite a few from the rest of bimmerpost.

[omasou]

Originally Posted by msej449

‘The only reason people are buying EVs are b/c of the tax breaks that lower the price of the vehicle.’

In the UK there are no tax breaks.

Corrected my post to say US. I understand UK/EU fuel prices are out of hand.

[omasou]

Originally Posted by jmack123

Considering EVs are 96% efficient in terms of energy utilization compared to 20% with ICE, I’d say all in all it’s still a huge win.

and how efficient is the generation and delivery of that electricity to the EV.

[Bluenose-2er]

Originally Posted by omasou

and how efficient is the generation and delivery of that electricity to the EV.

Depending on the oil source, it can take a significant fraction of a barrel of oil to get each barrel out of the ground. Then there is transport and processing on top of that. It would be interesting to see the numbers matchup; but my gut feel is gasoline loses even more ground if you add up the (in)efficiencies of the whole production chain for both.

[techwhiz1]

Originally Posted by Bluenose-2er

Depending on the oil source, it can take a significant fraction of a barrel of oil to get each barrel out of the ground. Then there is transport and processing on top of that. It would be interesting to see the numbers matchup; but my gut feel is gasoline loses even more ground if you add up the (in)efficiencies of the whole production chain for both.

Electricity generation being green is location dependent.

Here in Ca, at least where I am, I can chose electricity from renewable sources.

But in general in California it's a mix of nuclear, solar, wind, natural gas and geothermal. I don't think California has that many coal or oil fired plants.

Natural gas is definitely cleaner than coal and oil in other regions.

But the loses from fixed generation will always be less than the inefficiency at the tailpipe. The powerplant is usually going to run in the most efficient region of operation. There will be better particulate filtering and will always feed unburned exhaust back into the mix.

[jmack123]

Originally Posted by omasou

and how efficient is the generation and delivery of that electricity to the EV.

Much more efficient than the delivery of petroleum to your ICE vehicle .

[JoB01]

Originally Posted by techwhiz1

Electricity generation being green is location dependent.

Here in Ca, at least where I am, I can chose electricity from renewable sources.

But in general in California it's a mix of nuclear, solar, wind, natural gas and geothermal. I don't think California has that many coal or oil fired plants.

Natural gas is definitely cleaner than coal and oil in other regions.

But the loses from fixed generation will always be less than the inefficiency at the tailpipe. The powerplant is usually going to run in the most efficient region of operation. There will be better particulate filtering and will always feed unburned exhaust back into the mix.

One of the bigger issues Ca has is its imported power. On the surface- California appears very green in its policy- and in many ways it is.., but the imported power and oil from other parts of the world is notable.

I live in California too.. I’m sensitive to this issue, as living in Arizona, and Oregon, the cost of power was roughly 4 times cheaper. Of course it was… because that same power has to be imported to California, which comes at a steep price.

At some point the solar, wind, geothermal will probably get to where they need to be to power the state, but until then, it’ll continue to be rolling blackouts (although this year was good!) and imported power from”other” less green sources.

https://www.newsdata.com/california_...dministration.

[msej449]

Re weight: Let's get this in perspective - the Peugeot 208 in ICEV form is around 1650 Kgs, while my like-for-like e208 EV version is 1920 Kgs, or +16% heavier. Interestingly, the e208 is the fastest 0-60 version in the 208 range at 8.1s versus the fastest petrol at 9.9s and slowest petrol at 14.9s. So while weighing an extra 16%, the EV version delivers 18% faster 0-60. That extra weight is getting me proportionately greater performance in a package with half the maintenance costs and fuel that is almost free, it's so cheap.

The next model in the range is the 308, which starts at 1950 Kgs. The full range comprises the 208, 308, 408 and 508. So basically, my having the e208 EV version merely puts me at a weight of the next model up - but it's not as if the electric option is turning it into an armoured personnel carrier category, which is what you'd think from some of the critics of EVs.

Re the undercurrent of criticism and scepticism re EVs: after six months of ownership of an EV alongside my ICEV, and being on various forums and reading all sorts of press articles, I can’t help but conclude that there is indeed a concerted programme of anti-EV propaganda. In the UK the political Right seems to see it as a useful wedge and culture war issue, with lots to indicate that the fossil fuel (FF) industry is spending a lot of money on undermining EV sales as much as possible.

Re high UK taxes on petrol and diesel - The debate in the UK around fuel tax is mainly that the revenues it generates doesn’t seem to be spent back on road maintenance and new roads. It gets diverted to other things. It’s a regular complaint from motorists, but the government answer usually is that OK, it could all go to roads, or be cancelled, but the money raised pays for stuff like free GP appointments, free child birth, free ER treatment and so on - so what do you want to do? Generally, people then accept that it’s best the leave fuel tax as it stands, even if they don’t like it. The big challenge for any government is that as more people switch to EVs, the less the revenues from fuel taxes, which seems a case of indirect tax chickens coming home to roost - arguably governments should simply tax directly for state services rather than indirectly and make, then win or lose the case for those taxes.

As a geologist, I’m not anti petroleum extraction. About 1/4 of extracted petroleum is refined into absolutely vital non-fuel products. But the FF companies must see EVs as a huge threat to the other 3/4 of their business that is fuel refining, transportation, distribution and retail. No corporation is going to sit back and welcome such a threat. BP’s gross profits (not revenues) for the 12 months to mid-2023 was $73 billion. I find it hard to believe that even a small proportion of that isn’t going to fund anti-EV PR given the threat to those profits.