Originally Posted by torfin

I have a neighbor that went with an extensive solar roof install with battery backup. He drives a Rivian. He's happy living off the grid. Recently, we had one of those typical summer storms that knocked out the neighborhood electrical grid overnight. The Appalachians are covered with trees and you can't run wires under rock, so outages here happen often and can be long. I went down to the local convenience store to get a coffee and use their WiFi to check in with work. I wound up standing behind my neighbor in the line for the register. I said "What brings you here? Aren't you full solar?" He said "Well, the power went down after dark. The Rivian drained my house batteries charging back up. At least I had the power to get down here for coffee..."
New tech, new problems!

Originally Posted by Petza914

For example, I put UPS systems in my house for all my TVs that have hard drive storage systems and on all my computers because the on/off/on/off that would occur right before a power outage, which fried 2 of my Tivo hard drive storage devices on 2 separate occasions. Giving them continuous power until I could shut them down properly prevented the failures, and it was great for a couple years. However, it wasn't long before the reserve capacity from these devises that used to show 118-120 minutes of run time on the display when they were automatically enabled during a power outage , dropped to a much lower number, and now all 4 of them have failed to the point that they would immediately turn off as soon as the power went out. One of them now won't even turn on when the power is on to it.

Originally Posted by torfin

I don't know what my neighbor has for a battery backup. Next time I see him, I'll ask. We are pretty remote here, and that does create some issues. I have a UPS that I use to power my cell phone booster long enough to potentially call the power company, but that's it. My UPS is a Tripp Lite, and like Petza mentioned, has battery tech that is decades old. I replace the battery about once every two years. That's cheaper than buying a new sexy lithium driven unit. My laptops don't need it. We normally get cell access from a Verizon supplied extender (we are not on the coverage map), but the internet usually dies when neighborhood power does, so no phone from WiFi then. The Starlink coverage app tells me I'm out of luck with them unless I cut down a lot of mature trees, and I won't do that. Same for solar at my house, My solar/Rivian neighbor has more open sky.

I'm willing to bet my neighbor already has a fix for the Rivian drain issue, likely involving dropping that circuit if the house batteries are low. He has an ICE vehicle too, so keeping a full charge on his truck is not a priority. It was just a surprise.

Originally Posted by UKenGB

Well, just as an example to put things in perspective, an ICE powered Jaguar F-Pace of similar performance to an I-Pace EV is approx. 75kg lighter, which in cars of over 2 tons is basically FA.

There are also conversions of some cars that have turned out lighter than the original with ICE power.

I'm not trying to suggest current EVs are lighter than ICE. In general there is some additional weight currently, but with battery energy density on the rise, this will come down. The problem in the meantime is the disinformation being promulgated on the 'Net and in the media that EVs are SO much heavier. Any comparisons made are always between dissimilar cars and conveniently ignore that larger cars always weigh more and that newer cars are all getting heavier and more complicated, even ICE powered ones.

The cars I chose for comparison above are as close as I can think of. Although actually different bodies, they are extremely similar looking and of very similar size, but one is fully EV and the other pure ICE. Add 100L of petrol and the the weight will be almost the same.

This is not to say I don't understand the lure of the ICE I have grown up with and indeed still have several V8 versions of those.

All I'm saying is that an EV doesn't have to be massively heavier than an ICE equivalent and any current disparity will in a few years start to invert as battery technology moves from the current approx. 250Wh/kg to 500 and even 700 Wh/kg - both having been demonstrated in the lab and I seem to recall CATL saying 500 Wh/kg in production within the year. The whole industry will not of course switch to these newer better batteries overnight as they will be more expensive initially, but that will change over time.

So there's a very good chance that in the future there will be EVs that are not only quicker than any ICE equivalent, but also no heavier and with enough range to satisfy all.

Originally Posted by 928 GT R

Higher power density ='s lower overall weight!

Originally Posted by Zirconocene

@hacker-pschorr : slightly off topic but I got to hoon around a little bit recently at the Porsche Experience Center in LA and one of the cars I drove was the Cayman GTS 4.0. I still can't get the sound of that engine (and the things the PDK let the engine do) out of my head. Driving that car was immensely great and the sounds it made were a HUGE part of it.