Industry-leading DCFC charge rate and battery warranty

[SpaceEVDriver]

Scout has the opportunity to learn from its predecessors in the EV space and to leave them behind with a vastly improved battery warranty and charge rate

The past two decades of EV battery performance has disproven the anti-EV nonsense and FUD about battery longevity and reliability. With the right thermal management, the batteries will easily outlast the rest of the vehicle.

Scout could beat the mandated minimum 8 year/100k mile battery warranty and warranty its batteries for 12 years / 150k miles with minimal risk. They could sell an extended warranty to 16 years/200k miles (I don't buy extended warranties, but I know some people do). Or even a lifetime/unlimited mile warranty (non-transferable).

At the same time, Scout could dominate the large battery charge rate. Mainly it would be done by improving the average charge rate. If Scout pushed its average charge rate up to ~200-250 kW (while on capable chargers like EA's 350 kW hyperchargers), they would leave the competition behind. The GMC, Ford, and Rivian charge rates are down in the 140 kW realm.

 

[Logan]

I'm slightly concerned by those figures as well, especially at the lower end of 120 kWh. I believe the Ford F-150 Lightning Lariat with a 131 kWh battery has an EPA range of 320 miles. I'm not sure how they will get 350 miles with that battery size, certainly not with the 35" tires. I still think they should be aiming for a 150 kWh battery size to get the 350 miles range.

A 120 kWh battery would need to do 2.92 miles per kWh which seems very efficient for the type of vehicle they are. If they did 150 kWh it would be 2.33 miles per kWh which seems more reasonable to me.

100000% agree here.

Thats the exact mental math I've been doing. I really suspect 2-2.4miles/KWh will be more real-world, just based on the size/tires we're dealing with.

Thats sort of what happened to the Cybertruck TBH. Announced range wasn't achieved, and the price was way off. I think they took the battery too small to try to reach the price point they wanted, but it impacted range negatively.

I figure Scout has to hit at least one of their initial "numbers" for consumer sentiment to be where they want it.

And honestly, we need an EPA range figure that reflects city, and highway driving separately. The issue with range, is that the only time it really matters, is when you're on the highway. And EPA range figures are biased towards city driving. But then you get a mismatch between the range the customer was expecting to get, vs what they got on the road trip to grandmas, and you get grumpy people. And thats dangerous.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

The reason I use average charge rate (0%-80%) is to do away with the issue of charge curve, peak charge rate bs, etc. Yes, they sometimes matter, but not for when road tripping where there aren’t a lot of close stations. If you only need 50-100 miles, then the charge curve matters. If you need 200+ miles, the average charge rate matters more.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

I can get 2.5 miles/kWh (328 miles) on the freeway with my Lightning if I drive sensibly. But that’s not a typical result. A more realistic value is 1.8-2.2 from what I’ve seen people achieving.

 

[bakdraft8231]

does anyone else have no fckin idea what is being discussed here??? asking for a friend..

 

[Logan]

The reason I use average charge rate (0%-80%) is to do away with the issue of charge curve, peak charge rate bs, etc. Yes, they sometimes matter, but not for when road tripping where there aren’t a lot of close stations. If you only need 50-100 miles, then the charge curve matters. If you need 200+ miles, the average charge rate matters more.

That was my assumption (having not actually DCFC'd yet). That is why I included the avg charge rate from 10-80% for mine, as thats likely the most relevant.

But even then, I hope that the Scout more closely follows the new Audi's avg charging rates than the Ioniqs (despite both being 800v architectures, the Audi almost 100KW higher in its avg rate from 10-80%).

Audi:

Hyundai Ioniq9

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

That was my assumption (having not actually DCFC'd yet). That is why I included the avg charge rate from 10-80% for mine, as thats likely the most relevant.

But even then, I hope that the Scout more closely follows the new Audi's avg charging rates than the Ioniqs (despite both being 800v architectures, the Audi almost 100KW higher in its avg rate from 10-80%).

Audi:

View attachment 10957

Hyundai Ioniq9

View attachment 10958

I hope Scout uses the knowledge that DCFC charging isn’t what’s aging batteries and decides to do better than even Audi. I wasn’t ambitious enough in my original post.

 

[Logan]

does anyone else have no fckin idea what is being discussed here??? asking for a friend..

Sorry!

EV's just have different math than gas cars. This is really not much different than talking about MPG, tank size, and driving range in a gas car. It just uses different units.

Oh, and, uh, the "filling the car back up" part doesn't happen at a fixed rate. Conceptually all we're saying, is that EV's recharge slower, the closer they are to full. Like imagine a fuel pump at a gas station, slowed down as it got closer to being full. Same thing here.

Except its the car that decides when/how much to slow down, rather than the pump.

And we want a car that "fills up" quickly.

 

[J Alynn]

does anyone else have no fckin idea what is being discussed here??? asking for a friend..

I’ll climb in your clown car with you but I call back middle Hump

 

[J Alynn]

I hope Scout uses the knowledge that DCFC charging isn’t what’s aging batteries and decides to do better than even Audi. I wasn’t ambitious enough in my original post.

I plan to DCFC the $hit out of my Scout. Back to the back of the clown car

 

[J Alynn]

 

[J Alynn]

Sorry!

EV's just have different math than gas cars. This is really not much different than talking about MPG, tank size, and driving range in a gas car. It just uses different units.

Oh, and, uh, the "filling the car back up" part doesn't happen at a fixed rate. Conceptually all we're saying, is that EV's recharge slower, the closer they are to full. Like imagine a fuel pump at a gas station, slowed down as it got closer to being full. Same thing here.

Except its the car that decides when/how much to slow down, rather than the pump.

And we want a car that "fills up" quickly.

At the reveal-and I give Jamie credit-even though he’ll admit someone told him he gave us an analogy and this is my take. Imagine the battery pack is an empty concert hall. When you enter you don’t know your seats, so there are ushers (20%) that guide you to your seat which gets everyone moving quickly. When theater is empty the seats start filling quickly (electrons-or whatever-@spaceEV will correct me ) as seats start to fill you start sliding by people and seat filling slows down 60-70%. Then you are crawling over to the middle of people to get the center empty seat 80%. Then lights go down and ushers walk you in the dark with a flash light 80-100% which takes much longer to fill the few remaining spaces. So if this helps it’s my version I modified from stealing from Jamie. He used a sports stadium which also works

 

[cyure]

At the reveal-and I give Jamie credit-even though he’ll admit someone told him he gave us an analogy and this is my take. Imagine the battery pack is an empty concert hall. When you enter you don’t know your seats, so there are ushers (20%) that guide yide you to your seat which gets everyone moving quickly. When theater is empty the seats start filling quickly (electrons-or whatever-@spaceEV will correct me ) as seats start to fill you start sliding by people and seat filling slows down 60-70%. Then you are crawling over to the middle of people to get the center empty seat 80%. Then lights go down and ushers walk you in the dark with a flash light 80-100% which takes much longer to fill the few remaining spaces. So if this helps it’s my version I modified from stealing from Jamie. He used a sports stadium which also works

I’ll take it! It’s not math!! (Even tho I do appreciate all the math).

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

I plan to DCFC the $hit out of my Scout. Back to the back of the clown car

We have hundreds of DCFC sessions on our 2022 Mustang, picked up in late February of 2022 and built in mid January 2022. The Mustang is fantastic and still going strong, with very minimal battery degradation, all of which can be attributed to the first 2-3 year “degradation” that all lithium batteries experience as the chemistry settles. The last time I measured its state of health was a few days ago. It was at 94%. A year ago last week, it was at 94%. I haven’t done a BMS refresh in probably a year. It’s time to run it to ~0% and then charge it up to 100% without using it. That will likely add a few % back to the state of health estimate.

We still get ~310 miles of range on the freeway, so there has been no effective degradation.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

At the reveal-and I give Jamie credit-even though he’ll admit someone told him he gave us an analogy and this is my take. Imagine the battery pack is an empty concert hall. When you enter you don’t know your seats, so there are ushers (20%) that guide yide you to your seat which gets everyone moving quickly. When theater is empty the seats start filling quickly (electrons-or whatever-@spaceEV will correct me ) as seats start to fill you start sliding by people and seat filling slows down 60-70%. Then you are crawling over to the middle of people to get the center empty seat 80%. Then lights go down and ushers walk you in the dark with a flash light 80-100% which takes much longer to fill the few remaining spaces. So if this helps it’s my version I modified from stealing from Jamie. He used a sports stadium which also works

This is a common and great metaphor for charging.

 

[J Alynn]

This is a common and great metaphor for charging.

When Jamie told us the light bulb went off so hope it helps others who hate math but appreciate all your insight. I enjoy seeing the math banter and the descriptions to get us learning faster. I’m guessing most of this chatter will make sense when the info in on the screen in front of us

 

[oldgeeksguide]

With the latest Porsche and Audi's charging really quickly, I'm optimistic.

Check out this charging curve from Audis latest. It holds over 300kw from ~3% - 65%. As a result, it charges over 10 minutes faster to 80% than my Ioniq 9 (which is also 800v, and a decent charger). Thats a huge improvement.

More of this please.

View attachment 10951

It’d be interesting to see a 0-100% charging curve with time in the x axis.

 

[R1TVT]

If you want to really "geek out" and see how charging curves and energy really impact driving (out on a road trip) this will give you a LOT of information on this subject (albeit with a Rivian R1T). BUT it is notable since Scout will be taking advantage of Rivian's Zonal Architecture. I have zero complaints about the Rivian's SW and U/I for what its worth:

 

[6-ScoutFamily]

At the reveal-and I give Jamie credit-even though he’ll admit someone told him he gave us an analogy and this is my take. Imagine the battery pack is an empty concert hall. When you enter you don’t know your seats, so there are ushers (20%) that guide you to your seat which gets everyone moving quickly. When theater is empty the seats start filling quickly (electrons-or whatever-@spaceEV will correct me ) as seats start to fill you start sliding by people and seat filling slows down 60-70%. Then you are crawling over to the middle of people to get the center empty seat 80%. Then lights go down and ushers walk you in the dark with a flash light 80-100% which takes much longer to fill the few remaining spaces. So if this helps it’s my version I modified from stealing from Jamie. He used a sports stadium which also works

Kind of sounds like a computer hard drive.

 

[strider]

Thats sort of what happened to the Cybertruck TBH. Announced range wasn't achieved, and the price was way off. I think they took the battery too small to try to reach the price point they wanted, but it impacted range negatively.

Sort of.... The CyberTruck uses a brand new cell type, called a 4680 (46mm in diamter and 80mm high) that was developed in-house by Tesla and Panasonic. They were also trying to use a new "dry" process to hold the lithium which was supposed to lower cost. Elon's famously optimistic targets were never met. The new cells still haven't lived up to the targeted storage capacity per cell. Tesla delayed it as long as they could and then shipped it with the current version of the 4680. The miss in range and price are due directly to the failure of the 4680 cells to meet their targets (they used the originally planned cell count but those cells have less capacity than promised so total pack capacity was lower than planned). I personally wondered by they didn't just fall back to the 2170 cells from the 3/Y or 18650 from the S/X but they pressed on with the 4680 (Elon is famously stubborn). I had a Day 1 reservation and I was going to be able to look past the aesthetics if they hit the advertised price and performance numbers but once I saw the final numbers I cancelled.

does anyone else have no fckin idea what is being discussed here??? asking for a friend..

A metaphor I have used is filling up a glass with water without overflowing. When the glass is empty you can fill very fast. As the water level reaches the top you need to slow down so you don't overflow the sides. Now the "curves" that everyone is discussing have several factors like thermal load (charging creates heat so how quickly the vehicle can remove the heat affects the charge rate), cell chemistry (some Li-Ion chemistries can charge faster at the expense of other aspects like energy density, etc), and pack design (voltage vs amperages).

This stuff seems overwhelming but it will become common knowledge just like ICE idiosyncrasies. For example, explaining things like octane, what weight of oil to use when, or power loss at altitude can also be overwhelming to someone new but experiences people take that knowledge for granted. Also, stuff like, "Oh that was the year they went with the flat crank engine" or, "that model only came with a 4 speed" will change to, "that was the year they switch chemistries from NMC to LFP" or "that year only had the XXkWh battery pack available." The aspects of battery care and powertrain differentiation will go into the same part of your brain that currently knows about oil changes, spark plugs, air filters, etc.

So for all of us EV newbies when we get our Scouts all of you who are old hats at this are going to help us right?

Absolutely! And then you will grow wise from your own experiences and share that knowledge with the next group of newbies.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

It’d be interesting to see a 0-100% charging curve with time in the x axis.

I don’t have one on a DCFC charging to 100% (because I never do that), but here’s a trip I took a few years ago coming back up the mountain after we went shopping in the valley. We drove the Mustang. We stopped to go for a hike and there happened to be a DCFC charger there, so we figured we’d charge up while hiking.

The top graph is distance. You can see the time was just about 2:30 PM when we stopped for our hike. We left the charger at around 3:15 PM.

The middle graph is the power from (positive) and to (negative) the battery. Lots of spikes when driving because we’re passing, slowing down with traffic, etc. Then at just before 2:40 PM, we plugged in to the DCFC. Looking at the curve, you can see a peak for a few minutes, then a flattening out, then another drop, etc. Because it’s energy going into the battery, everything is “upside down” in this graph.

The bottom graph is the state of charge vs time. We were driving up over a small mountain, then down it to get to our trailhead, so you can see before we stop that the state of charge is steadily decreasing (going up the mountain), then it starts to increase (going down the mountain), then we speed up (straight road) and the state of charge decreases down to about 30%. Then we stop and plug in just before 2:40 PM. The state of charge climbs steadily until about 3:13 PM, at which time it kind of flattens out because the charge rate has decreased quite a bit above 85%.