Marc, on the contrary. Batteries only perform as good as the mantenance they receive. Many experiments of EVs in fleet service (USPS comes to mind) "failed" because the drivers did not like the EVs and apparently necessary maintenance was not performed, so the EVs soon sat unused, abused. My previous electric truck was converted for the City of Santa Rosa around 1995 with a DC motor and flooded lead-acid batteries, so it even got a tilt-bed to access the batteries under the bed. By 2011 it had accumulated a handful of running hours, since it apparently sat 15 years in the Santa Rosa city yard virtually unused. I bought it after a guy in Saratoga invested in restoring it, using Golf Cart batteries. So, every few months I found myself watering all 60 cells with distilled water, cleaning terminals from the accumulated crud and generally not enjoying the amount of ongoing maintenance that I had to do to this truck. When the pack started getting older after 4-5 years as daily driver, I sold that truck and found my current daily driver, a US Electricar S10. It too had sat many years with a (now dead) lead-acid pack. I ripped out the lead and installed 2 used Nissan Leaf packs in the two battery box halves. I have not needed to get into that battery box again, there is no maintenance needed, I just get in, drive it and plug in to charge. I have now put over 6,000 miles on it this last year, I have never driven an EV more than this one, because it is a joy to drive plus the absence of maintenance allows me to do things that I rather do than caring for my car's batteries.
I can give many examples of EVs that did not get a good acceptance or where people got burned by issues with the batteries, no matter whether it is lead or NiMH such as the Vectrix motorcycle (scooter actually) where the designers were pushed by sales to give it higher top speed, literally blowing up the NiMH cells and even the fuse. I have a very good idea why people like the no-maintenance-needed Leaf so much. Obviously, in some types of service with guaranteed dedicated maintenance staff, whether on Golf courses or Airport ground services or Warehouse operation, there are many well-performing Lead-acid battery EVs due to the high level and quality of maintenance that is embedded in these organisations. In cases where the maintenance is a nuisance, you see a quick move to Lithium Ion type batteries for a good reason. Regards, Cor. -----Original Message----- From: EV [mailto:ev-boun...@lists.evdl.org] On Behalf Of Marc de Piolenc via EV Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2018 2:32 PM To: ev@lists.evdl.org Cc: Marc de Piolenc Subject: [EVDL] Delivery truck Great article. And it points up a serious flaw in all the recent promotion of electric vehicles - they all neglect the one mission that an electric can perform without exotic batteries, ultra-lightweight construction and huge amounts of money. The British milk float (recently) and the many delivery vehicles (earlier on) are proof of this, using ordinary deep-cycle lead acid batteries. The early government support for EV development in the 1970s emphasized this mission, but these days I guess it just isn't "cool." Marc -- Archivale catalog: http://www.archivale.com/catalog Polymath weblog: http://www.archivale.com/weblog Translations (ProZ profile): http://www.proz.com/profile/639380 Translations (BeWords profile): http://www.bewords.com/Marc-dePiolenc Ducted fans: http://massflow.archivale.com/ _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org Please discuss EV drag racing at NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA) _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org Please discuss EV drag racing at NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
