David’s $2,000 Nissan Leaf is the gift that keeps on giving. This is an electric car with a battery so degraded that I bet charging a phone would cut his already terrible range in half. This is an electric car that now has a capacity worse than many of the electric motorcycles I write about. Pair that with an iffy EV charging network, and our poor hero got stuck.
Amazingly, you lovely readers are still commenting on that article, and the proposed solutions to David’s problems are ratcheting up in hilarity.
First, we have a serious comment from Dalton:
The fact that ev chargers dont have a credit card reader as standard is such peak StartUp tech bro culture bullshit. Out of touch people designing things they will never use very poorly.
Seriously, card readers are universal on modern gas pumps. You’d think a company building EV chargers would try to make the process as seamless as getting gas. Nobody wants to add more apps to their phone for who knows how many different charging providers. At the very least, with so many of the world’s automakers switching to Tesla’s NACS, hopefully, relief is on the way.
Alright, let’s get to the funny stuff. Parsko wants David to buy a new battery:
Can you please just buy a new battery!!!
Ben spices this idea up with:
…from Alibaba to make things more interesting
John S goes even further:
“So I stole the battery from Jason’s Changli for my Leaf and it caught fire twice in 10 minutes”.
This is so silly that it would totally be on brand for us. “I Converted My Nissan Leaf To Lead-Acid” is a headline I could totally see.
JBlues suggests a small gas generator:
Somebody needs to invent a small briefcase sized gas generator that can charge an EV to 10% or so in an emergency.
David adds another comment he found from Angry Bob:
I have an idea. What if we made cars that use some kind of fuel – maybe something liquid – that you could just dispense into an onboard container. It would be almost like using a charger but it would be done in just a couple of minutes.
I don’t know why, but this hits the funny bone just right. The sarcasm is just perfect. Have a great evening, everyone!
Doesn’t the changli need a new battery? Let’s swap this dead leaf battery in there!
There are companies that rebuild EV batteries for reasonable money – that would at least make the Leaf both usable and sellable later.
Only for a cool $15k!
I’d love to find a source for a reman/rebuilt Leaf battery at reasonable cost.
Honda did it in 1965 with full anticipation of this sorta problem. The E300 is exactly what DT needs https://global.honda/en/heritage/episodes/1965thee300.html
At 300W output it would take over 3 hours to put a single kWh back in the battery. This is why range extended EVs use car engines, not generator engines.
Not if it was a direct DC to DC transfer. the real issue with charging in general is the conversion from AC to DC and all the time and efficiency lost between this transfer via an inverter.
I made a COTD. My work here is done.
Seriously, though, if we’d been driving electric cars all this time and somebody just now discovered gasoline, everyone would think it was the best thing ever.
Are you kidding? A carcinogenic flammable liquid that selectively evaporates if you leave it sitting too long and has a finite supply to be pumped out of the ground? Your car can no longer be filled up at home but now requires a special “filling station” that will be a biohazard for decades after it closes down? Gas cars will never be practical.
“The fact that ev chargers dont have a credit card reader as standard is such peak StartUp tech bro culture bullshit. Out of touch people designing things they will never use very poorly.”
Oh please…the value proposition isn’t in delivering electrons, it’s the data mine and subscription revenue.
ding, ding, ding
I’d suggest an RV towplate on the front and a towbar in the trunk. 50% of the stuff on the roads these days is half ton or larger pickups, almost all with trailer hitches. Now all we need is a universal hand signal similar to “hitching a ride” to flag down a good Samaritan.
Not only that but a lot of EVs will charge the battery while it’s being flat towed!
It’s not just EV chargers which need credit card readers. It seems like every city uses a different parking app. I feel like I spend more time entering my info into the app then actually parked.
I feel ya, but at least (in the Twin Cities) there’s usually a kiosk within line-of-sight that has a card reader. I really don’t want to have to walk to the kiosk to pay for parking, but last I checked, Minneapolis and Saint Paul use different parking apps, AND there are some on-street parking spots in Mpls that fall under the Park & Rec Board which uses an entirely different app. It can be maddening, no doubt.
Is Angry Bob referring to hydrogen? Because that’s a great idea!
I was on the Toyota website and was surprised to see they sell a hydrogen electric car. We have a couple of hydrogen stations in my town, but can’t remember seeing them anywhere else. Anyone know someone who owns one?
Not personally, but Motor Trend did a long-term test of a Mirai for over a year, which was fun to follow-along with. (Bottom line: It ran fine and they liked it as a car, but the availability and reliability of hydrogen stations was a serious problem. Hmm, sounds familiar…)
My dad owned a CNG-powered Honda Civic for several years, which was interesting. He purchased it used for commuting purposes, because it came with a coveted HOV sticker, and there just happened to be a CNG filling station near his home.
I saw one of those on the highway the other day (first one in fifteen years, at least). Can they also run on gas or is it CNG only?
It was CNG only, which is why 90% of them probably went to fleets. My dad just happened to come across one at a Honda dealer, and he saw a cheap way of getting that HOV sticker. (Well, cheaper than a Tesla, which was the only mass-market EV at the time.)
Hydrogen? Boooooring.
Time to make a fuel out of dioxygen difluoride!
I’ll also suggest chlorine trifluoride as another potential fuel.
Yes, just fill up the vehicle with it!
Oh, me? I’m going to just go about 3 miles away.
You beat me to it! For the uninitiated, I’ll quote from Ignition, by John D. Clark:
Chlorine trifluoride, ClF3, or “CTF” as the engineers insist on calling it, is a colorless gas, a greenish liquid, or a white solid. It boils at 12° (so that a trivial pressure will keep it liquid at room temperature) and freezes at a convenient –76°. It also has a nice fat density, about 1.81 at room temperature. It is also quite probably the most vigorous fluorinating agent in existence—much more vigorous than fluorine itself. Gaseous fluorine, of course, is much more dilute than the liquid ClF3, and liquid fluorine is so cold that its activity is very much reduced. All this sounds fairly academic and innocuous, but when it is translated into the problem of handling the stuff, the results are horrendous. It is, of course, extremely toxic, but that’s the least of the problem. It is hypergolic with every known fuel, and so rapidly hypergolic that no ignition delay has ever been measured. It is also hypergolic with such things as cloth, wood, and test engineers, not to mention asbestos, sand, and water—with which it reacts explosively. It can be kept in some of the ordinary structural metals—steel, copper, aluminum, etc.—because of the formation of a thin film of insoluble metal fluoride which protects the bulk of the metal, just as the invisible coat of oxide on aluminum keeps it from burning up in the atmosphere. If, however, this coat is melted or scrubbed off, and has no chance to reform, the operator is confronted with the problem of coping with a metal–fluorine fire. For dealing with this situation, I have always recommended a good pair of running shoes.
“Can’t you use sand to put it out?”
Nope. The sand will just catch on fire!
There’s a report of a one ton spill of the stuff. Went through the foot-thick concrete floor and then proceeded to burn through over a METER of gravel and sand underneath.
You don’t want to stick around for that either. The pockets of hot hydrofluoric acid as it burns would not be fun!
Sounds like fun stuff to play with. I’ll add some to my Amazon order of thermite ingredients.
I am waiting for Mr Fusion. I would probably eat a lot more banana’s if I could get to work on the peal and some stale skunky Miller High life, I would be golden.
“Is Angry Bob referring to hydrogen? Because that’s a great idea!”
Oh you think so do you?
Nice try, Mr Optimistic, nice try…