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The most attention EVs and solar power will get is during an
| election year; yet no candidate is dealing with the issue of oil addiction. The candidates, and the media, pretend as if the existing RAV4-EV don't exist. They pretend that battery research is needed, because they claim, EVs failed when GM crushed the EV1 (!!). One big question is why not keep these NiMH 120-mile-range Electric cars in production, and another is why NO plug-in car is for sale, out of the 16 million vehicles sold each year in the USA. No one seems to ask these questions; this issue cuts across all other issues, from the oil war in Iraq to oil spills and drilling spoils of oil extraction; from refinery emissions to auto emissions causing kids lungs to shrivel; from urban runoff of oil droplets, brake lining, etc., to MTBE and other oil pollution, all the way down to political donations, environmental quality, asthma and health care cost shifting, global warming, and the deadlock in Sacramento and Washington which is paralyzing any chance to lower oil use. What's needed is a crash program of EV building and solar panel production, leading to new "green" jobs and exportable commodities. But that's not what's happening. A lot of fluff, and no production of existing oil-free cars. These are the discussions we need to have, and we need to confront our societal failure to come to grips with the oil megalopoly and its tremendous political power. But all the politicians are ducking it. And GM and Toyota are just waiting for our Toyota RAV4-EV to fail, just waiting for the battery replacement that's inevitable. Toyota flacks STILL advise filling to 100% every time you charge, and, at least, going throught the "leveling cycle" every month (every 10 cycles, or so, the Toyota softward "levels", overcharges the batteries, fries them with extra electric, to level the voltage on each cell). When full, especially if you go downhill, the regen is not able to be recouped by the battery; instead, it shows up as delta temperature and pressure (!!), just what you DON'T want in a fully- charged NiMH pack. So Toyota, which wants the RAV4-EV to die and go away, is telling people that it's necessary to level the batteries. Well, about 18 months ago, our stupid "mangnecharger" input port inverter/rectifier blew out (what is, I'm told, a design flaw, needing a new capacitor). Since that time, the only "level" I've done is bring it to at most 95% (about 14.1v) wherein the module voltages are at most .1 different. That's what I call level, perforce. The way the NiMH batteries function, their voltage drops when accelerating or going up hill. The weaker the batteries, the more pronounced the drop, depending on the State of Charge. If any battery falls below 10v, the pack goes into "limp mode", to protect against permanent battery damage. Last night, I went 75 miles up to Pomona and back down, starting from 92.4%, and ending at 35% (using 57% to go the 75 miles), all while retaining .1 difference, at most, between modules. Now each module is 10 cells, so there could be internal variation; but so far as the software, .1 is the minimum sensibilia. It could be that the cells on module reading of 14v are something like <13.8 13.9 14.2 14.1 and so on, and it would not show up on the module level; but that's tendentious. I'll go through Toyota's end-of-charge protocol, and the influence of heat, later, but you can see that while it's possible to damage the battery pack, some packs can last a long time. This is Toyota's, and GM's, nightmare. They want to distract people with "lithium research" and The Great Green Bally-hoo, waiting smugly until the RAVs wear out. Then, they can obscure the fact that a real EV ever existed. Even today, idiot academics pontificate that there's no battery capable of a 40-miles range that can be put into a serial hybrid EV. And they establish 'researh' to make a big noise, while doing NOTHING. STILL NO PLUG-IN CAR FOR SALE ON THE FREE MARKET. |
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