Jaguar I-Pace

[R.S]

That's 750MPH of charge rate. Assuming 3 miles per KWh, that's a 250KW power delivery (about what I guestimated the "350 KW" chargers would practically deliver).

That's over 2.6C. That's a bit above the sameC rate as the Ioniq, which is about the fastest I'm aware of. It will be interesting to see what the other performance parameters and longevity of a pack like that are.

I think Porsche is saying they will maintain those 250 kW on average over 0-80%, so that would be an improvement even over the already impressive Ioniq.

so it seems we have noticeably slow charging, noticeably greater power consumption with the iPace.

Doesnt make it totally unusuable, but does make it a huge disappointment that Jaguar failed to match Tesla on two of the fundamental metrics of EVs, after all this time.

Of all the current manufacturers out there I seriously believe Jaguar would be well advised to link up with Tesla's superchargers. With the Germans (trying) to gang up, this would be Jaguar's best defence, best way to gain immediate credibility and actually Jaguar and Tesla are not a bad fit.

I suspect they won't eveon consider it out of some false sense of pride, so that makes 3 major failings against Tesla so far.

Maybe this is why the Porsche Trashcan has been deferred to 2020 delivery.
The ICE manufacturers are making plently of money with fossil fuel so what's the hurry.

Why a disappointment, to me it looks like what you were hoping for.

The Porsche Liam Neeson edition is not postponed for 2020. It will be sold starting 2019, as a 2020 model year. The 2017 model year Volt started production in February 2016. Not sure why car makers do that, but that's why some sites give 2020 for the Porsche and some 2019.

But 2019 was always planned as the release date, though could be that they start in Europe and it will take until 2020 to get to the US.

 

[thegruf]

Why a disappointment, to me it looks like what you were hoping for.

hoping for? - you could not be more wrong
the more EVs the better

but if major existing manufacturers cannot release something at least as competitive as Tesla on the significant aspects of EV design having watched them for 6+years I call that a poor show.

At least the Germans have ganged up to build out a fast charging network, Jaguar appear to have failed to appreciate the importance of this which is why I suggested they would be well advised to (re)consider the Supercharger network.

Porsche at least do seem to be taking EVs seriously and no doubt the Taycan will be a good car, but clearly they do not feel the need to hasten release as they are doing very well with ICE just now. My worry with Porsche is this ultra fast 250KW 0-80% charging claim @R.S states above has to come with compromises, most likely of which is battery life and likelihood of individual cell failure.
Further this whole 800V is a potential red herring and just might be a marketing move by VAG that could yet show up all sorts of issues. Remember motors work on electric fields which are generated by current not voltage, higher volts does not necessarily delivery high motor power for same current, you also have all the insulation concerns with higher voltage. Agreed higher volts are needed for charging at 2-350KW charging else the cables would get unmanageably thick, but as with all things in life it is not as simple as it seems.

We cannot get away from the fact that transferring energy at a quarter MegaWatt - is some serious power, even the minutest issue has the (ahem) potential for exctiing consequences.

From Tesla's perspective they almost don't need to push the EV tech side just now, but focus on stabilising production and quality consistency and refining the MS fit and finish, then as other manufacturers release their products, Tesla can have next gen tech all ready to go to beat them back again, probably with the MY and then rolling that back into the rest of the range. We already know that Elon was held back from a lot of the stuff he wanted in the M3 due to the time consttraints, but you can be sure the MY will have a bunch of this new thinking.

Exciting times.

 

[R.S]

Porsche at least do seem to be taking EVs seriously and no doubt the Taycan will be a good car, but clearly they do not feel the need to hasten release as they are doing very well with ICE just now. My worry with Porsche is this ultra fast 250KW 0-80% charging claim @R.S states above has to come with compromises, most likely of which is battery life and likelihood of individual cell failure.

I think I've heard that when Tesla introduced 120 kW charging in a pack with thousands of cells, but it has worked well so far, so maybe engineers working in that field have a bit more knowledge than the average internet commenter. But who knows, right? And if you don't trust sloppy German engineers, aside from automation guys, they are awesome, I bet with the V3 supercharger a Model 3 will suddenly also charge much faster.

Further this whole 800V is a potential red herring and just might be a marketing move by VAG that could yet show up all sorts of issues. Remember motors work on electric fields which are generated by current not voltage, higher volts does not necessarily delivery high motor power for same current, you also have all the insulation concerns with higher voltage.

Damn, I think we need to have a motor talk. Sorry for hijacking the topic.

The motor current has actually little to do with the battery current, since you can put windings in series instead of parallel. But you are more wrong on a general level. Power is always voltage times current and that is true for an electric motor as well.

Where you are right is that there is a field, that has something to do with current. It's not the electric, but the magnetic field, though.The electric field is caused by voltage.

That magnetic field contains energy, the higher the current, the higher the energy, basically. If we have a permanent magnet rotor, the field of the stator, caused by the current through the windings, interacts with the rotor field and we have a force. That force applied on over the radius of the rotor is the motor torque.

But, now the rotor has only moved a bit, not even a full revolution. Now you need to change the direction of current, so that the rotor moves further. If you use a sine field and three phases, you can get in theory a near perfect constant torque. But that changing current needs voltage. The higher the voltage, the faster that current can change.

The faster the current can change, the higher the maximum frequency, or revolutions can be at which the maximum torque can be applied. Frequency times torque is power, so in theory a motor with a max 1000 A and 400 V rating is as powerful as a motor with a 500 A and 800 V rating. You can also argue with the magnetic energy stored in the field, since Power is energy per time, a twice as fast changing magnetic field transmits as much power as a twice as strong magnetic field with halve the frequency.

In reality, you don't even need to sacrifice torque. You can just double the number of pole pairs and you get the same amount of torque. The big benefit is, that the magnetic field has to travel a lower distance now, which means less iron, which means a lighter motor.

And that's usually what you see in real motors, with the same power rating but different voltage ratings. The higher voltage rated motors are lighter for the same amount of power.

In the high voltage net, you need more isolation, but you need less copper. Since any isolator is lighter than copper, the weight of the HV board net goes down, too. The same reasoning goes for the charger cable, that's why they went for 800V.

 

[scaesare]

I think Porsche is saying they will maintain those 250 kW on average over 0-80%, so that would be an improvement even over the already impressive Ioniq.

The Ioniq goes from ~60-68KW (2.1-2.5c) over about that first 80% as well... so similar ballpark:

 

[R.S]

The Ioniq goes from ~60-68KW (2.1-2.5c) over about that first 80% as well... so similar ballpark:

That Ioniq battery is impressive! If they had a 60 kWh version, I'd really think about getting one instead of a Model 3 as our secondary car.

 

[thegruf]

nothing to do with insinuating "sloppy German engineers" - that's an unecessary remark

simple answer is - the Taycan is not available today so, we will see when ...

Porsche eventually release the car and when we see real owner charging rates and degradation charts for the batteries over a few years, 100,000 Kms+
But with Tesla managing excessive Supercharging use today, this suggests that even 130KW has to be approached with care, doubling that will have consequences even if Porsche have chosen a different cell chemistry. There is no free lunch in the world and most definteily Tesla would use a faster charging cell if they could without other compromises.

It may well be that Porsche have deliberately accepted a lower battery lifetime as a tradeoff for faster charging and that is not an unreasonable strategy, however it does present owners with a value equation which will be built into resale pricing that essentially is not present for Tesla.

 

[scaesare]

That Ioniq battery is impressive! If they had a 60 kWh version, I'd really think about getting one instead of a Model 3 as our secondary car.

Again... I think time well tell how well it lasts...

The other likelihood is that in order to support charge rates of that magnitude, that gravimetric or volumetric densities are such that larger battery sizes may not be as practical. That 28KHw pack may be an example of that. Typically something's gotta give on the performance axes...

 

[R.S]

Porsche eventually release the car and when we see real owner charging rates and degradation charts for the batteries over a few years, 100,000 Kms+
But with Tesla managing excessive Supercharging use today, this suggests that even 130KW has to be approached with care, doubling that will have consequences even if Porsche have chosen a different cell chemistry. There is no free lunch in the world and most definteily Tesla would use a faster charging cell if they could without other compromises.

It may well be that Porsche have deliberately accepted a lower battery lifetime as a tradeoff for faster charging and that is not an unreasonable strategy, however it does present owners with a value equation which will be built into resale pricing that essentially is not present for Tesla.

I guess that could be, but on the other hand it's just speculation. I am not a fan of all that "but how long will the batteries last" speculation, since that was too many detractors arguments back in the day. But I guess we will see it, once it's out.

Again... I think time well tell how well it lasts...

The other likelihood is that in order to support charge rates of that magnitude, that gravimetric or volumetric densities are such that larger battery sizes may not be as practical. That 28KHw pack may be an example of that. Typically something's gotta give on the performance axes...

Could be that volumetric, or gravimetric energy density could be lower. But at least gravimetric energy density probably isn't that much lower. The Model 3 probably has one of the most energy dense cells out there, and upgrading from 50 to 75 is 253 lb. So a 28 kWh Model 3 would be about 3330 lb and the 28 kWh Ioniq is 3130 lb. Sure the Ioniq is a bit shorter, but the 3 has some aluminum parts.

With the Audi A4 2.0 TFSI quattro sedan and the A3 2.0 TFSI quattro sedan, which have about the same differences in size, it's 250 lb. So in the end, there probably isn't that much of a difference. Volumetric might be different though and pricing is also a total unknown.

Isn't there an EPA document showing the Model 3 being able to accept a much higher charge current? I guess in the end, I guess it's safe to assume, that no matter if you go for Panasonic, LG, or CATL, all cells are about as performant as another, just with different focuses on single performance criteria.

And while every OEM might weigh those a bit differently, in the end the optimal range for cost, charging speed, power output, longevity and such is probably not that different. Though I could see Nissan and Porsche being on two ends of a spectrum, when it comes to cost over performance, for example. Or longevity in a Rimac sports car and a Tesla Semi truck.

 

[Evoforce]

That Ioniq battery is impressive! If they had a 60 kWh version, I'd really think about getting one instead of a Model 3 as our secondary car.

As far as I have been told though, the Ioniq has no liquid TMS. Only a cabin air fan to cool the pack like Kia Soul. Soul has been having problems in hot climates and have had to replace most batteries. The other problem is there is no lifetime battery warranty transfer for the Ioniq to the next owner. So you will have to keep the car forever, or be willing to give it away because in the secondary market, it will be worthless without a battery warranty.

 

[scaesare]

Could be that volumetric, or gravimetric energy density could be lower. But at least gravimetric energy density probably isn't that much lower. The Model 3 probably has one of the most energy dense cells out there, and upgrading from 50 to 75 is 253 lb. So a 28 kWh Model 3 would be about 3330 lb and the 28 kWh Ioniq is 3130 lb. Sure the Ioniq is a bit shorter, but the 3 has some aluminum parts.

Good info on the relative mass of the vehicles... I hadn't bothered to look them up previously.

I guess it's safe to assume, that no matter if you go for Panasonic, LG, or CATL, all cells are about as performant as another, just with different focuses on single performance criteria.

And while every OEM might weigh those a bit differently, in the end the optimal range for cost, charging speed, power output, longevity and such is probably not that different. Though I could see Nissan and Porsche being on two ends of a spectrum, when it comes to cost over performance, for example. Or longevity in a Rimac sports car and a Tesla Semi truck.

I'm not sure I'd judge it as all cells are about equally performant, just in different areas. The cost is certainly a factor in comparison, and I suspect the value proposition along each axis is rather different. One also has to factor the overall pack design architecture in as well.

For example I'd not judge a pack that charges at 4C and has a 2 yr lifetime to be equal to one that charges at 1C and has an 8 yr lifetime.

Especially if you can make the latter cheaper and therefore architect a larger pack that accepts an commensurately greater unit of energy per time, and thus the actual range difference between charge sessions may be reduced.

 

[phil0909]

On how many days in a year do you drive more than 250 miles (no charging) and 400 miles (one charge, but maximised for 100% SoC departure)? i.e. avoiding the charging-penalty of 400+ mile journeys (assuming 90-100kWh battery)

Somewhere between zero and two for me. That's when I borrow the wife's gas guzzler, or I could just rent one. For the other 360+ days, I use the nice electric car for shorter distances. Life is too short for range anxiety and hour-long fill-ups. Life's also too short for frequent, thousand-mile drives - if you enjoy that sort of thing, more power to you, but it's not for me.

 

[bjornb]

If you have been considering buying an iPace you might want to consider watching the following video. It's in German, but there are a few graphs and other visual aids to help you understand.

Conclusion: The one charging test on a Porsche 350 kW charger resulted in a max 83 kW charge and tapering after about 55%. The tapering was not that bad, but the car never reached 100 kW. Based on their findings they figure the iPace would only get about 270 km at 130 km/h (~81 MPH).

There are things to be considered here. First, the charger they were at was maybe to blame. The charge maxed out at 200A, so maybe the charger was limited. I doubt that charger was ever tested by a car that can charge with that kind of power.
As to the range... you can see the remaining range and the SoC on the cluster... and that really says it all.

I'll reserve my final judgement until I see another report on this, but it isn't looking good.

Edit:
I just saw on Twitter (somebody who is brand agnostic) that supposedly the iPace is currently limited to 80 kW, but that client cars will be able to charge at 100 kW. We'll see...

Very interesting. I drew the datapoints in that video by hand on top of the ABRT BTX4 90kWh pack data, i-pace shown in green:

The i-pace is currently software limited to 200A charging current (~80kW). According to the image in my previous post the max current will be 250A. That should help a lot in the 10-50% region (it should lift that part of the curve to about 100kW). We don't know whether the charging current also is software limited at 50%+ SOC levels as well or if the tapering observed here is the real limit of the i-pace battery pack. One can also see that the i-pace tapering is a bit gentler than Tesla and it seems to be able to charge at higher power at 75%+ SOC levels.

 

[WannabeOwner]

Life is too short for range anxiety and hour-long fill-ups.

I agree, but I'm surprised it bothers you for once or twice a year; no criticism intended, especially as you are an EV driver the rest of the time but for me: the more I have driven EV the more I have come to loath driving ICE. Can't quite put my finger on "why", and I have seen physiologist reports that EV drivers are more "content" (or whatever term they used ) but even they didn't know why. Quiet maybe? Smug / self congratulation maybe? Stick-shift the majority here, so maybe in places where the majority is already Automatic the difference is not as great.

We still have a couple of ICE, a small car "just in case" and a people carrier for the rare occasions we have to haul 7 people, or to retrieve my eBay purchases! and for such limited use that I cannot justify an X but I will be very happy when they are both gone, and we have kitted out the kids with Model-3's (they aren't going to arrive on our shores for probably a year or so).

 

[WarpedOne]

That Ioniq battery is impressive! If they had a 60 kWh version, I'd really think about getting one instead of a Model 3 as our secondary car.

Go for it.
Just do not come hear crying about the battery degradation in a few years.

 

[R.S]

Good info on the relative mass of the vehicles... I hadn't bothered to look them up previously.

As @Evoforce mentioned, they don't have a liquid TMS, but rather an air cooled battery, so that might save weight, too. But that's also due to the different cells. Sure in hot climate the Soul EV doesn't seem to do so well, maybe that's also true for the Ioniq, but there has been no "rapid gate", even though the cells are not liquid cooled, which is doubly impressive given the charge rate.

I'm not sure I'd judge it as all cells are about equally performant, just in different areas. The cost is certainly a factor in comparison, and I suspect the value proposition along each axis is rather different. One also has to factor the overall pack design architecture in as well.

For example I'd not judge a pack that charges at 4C and has a 2 yr lifetime to be equal to one that charges at 1C and has an 8 yr lifetime.

Especially if you can make the latter cheaper and therefore architect a larger pack that accepts an commensurately greater unit of energy per time, and thus the actual range difference between charge sessions may be reduced.

Well, usually the limiting factor should be the cell supplier. The better their process is, the better the battery will turn out. But as we have seen, manufacturers have gone for different chemistries as well. Like I said, it also depends on the application. And since you will never see a 2 year life in a car part by any manufacturer, unless of course it's something that's intended to be replaced, like brake pads, it really depends on the application and of course on the size of the battery.

Tesla's cells actually don't have an impressive cycle life. The Toyota Prius cells have an impressive cycle life, The Chevrolet Volt pack also has an impressive cycle life. You can easily do 100k EV miles and will notice no capacity loss. Now 100k EV miles might not sound like a lot, but in a 35 mile EV, that's as much as 570k miles in a 200 mile EV. In the Prius you will have multiple full cycles every day and those cars can easily drive halve a million miles.

So the longest living car cells are usually in hybrids and plug in hybrids, but they aren't very energy dense and are pretty expensive per kWh. They also often have really high charge and discharge rates, though.

So usually it's some optimal point of cycle life, energy density and power density. Cost only comes in, if you look at $ per kWh, or $ per kW, or $ per kWh stored over lifetime.

In my opinion, the optimal battery will not last a million miles, but rather 300k on average, but has a good energy density and power density. Of course that lifetime has to be determined for every vehicle, so if you want to use the same cell in a 200 mile EV and a 300 mile EV, the 300 mile EV's battery will last 50% longer (or more).

And of course once you go into other categories, like trucks, buses, airplanes and so on, the lifetime must be much longer.

 

[WarpedOne]

So the longest living car cells are usually in hybrids and plug in hybrids, but they aren't very energy dense and are pretty expensive per kWh. They also often have really high charge and discharge rates, though.

What they also have is absence of 'capacity visibility'. As long as they do not totally fail (0 kWh), you are hard pressed to tell what their capacity is.
At best there are some 'bars' telling you whatever the computer decided to tell you.

 

[transpondster]

As far as I have been told though, the Ioniq has no liquid TMS. Only a cabin air fan to cool the pack like Kia Soul. Soul has been having problems in hot climates and have had to replace most batteries. The other problem is there is no lifetime battery warranty transfer for the Ioniq to the next owner. So you will have to keep the car forever, or be willing to give it away because in the secondary market, it will be worthless without a battery warranty.

Souls use 4,35V cells from a lesser known producer. I remember Samsung and LG had 4,35V 18650 cells, but recent cylindric and all automotive cells are 4,2V probably for a reason...

 

[scaesare]

(emphasis mine)

Well, usually the limiting factor should be the cell supplier. The better their process is, the better the battery will turn out. But as we have seen, manufacturers have gone for different chemistries as well. Like I said, it also depends on the application. And since you will never see a 2 year life in a car part by any manufacturer, unless of course it's something that's intended to be replaced, like brake pads, it really depends on the application and of course on the size of the battery.

I'd argue that the limiting capacity isn't going to be the cell supplier, and indeed it is much more the chemistry. There are cells out there that have >15C discharge C-rate differences based on the chemistry. And 4X the cycle life differences. Look at he last column on this chart:

That's not just from variation from one manufacturer to another. And that chart doesn't address weight, volume, etc... those are all directly attributable to chemistry type.

Think about it: PowerWall cells and Model 3 cells have different performance characteristics but come from the same supplier at the same factory on (likely) the same machines. There should be almost zero supplier variation, yet they have different cell characteristics based on chemistry.

And of course my "2 yr" timeframe was to make a point. Cycle life is much more important than a charge rate, such that no manufacturer would supply a 2-yr cell, but absolutely would consider a battery that charges 2C rather than 4C. This illustrates my point: lifetime is a more important characteristic in this application, and you can't really judge all batteries as roughly equally performant just by tallying up their characteristics along the different axes...

Tesla's cells actually don't have an impressive cycle life. The Toyota Prius cells have an impressive cycle life, The Chevrolet Volt pack also has an impressive cycle life. You can easily do 100k EV miles and will notice no capacity loss. Now 100k EV miles might not sound like a lot, but in a 35 mile EV, that's as much as 570k miles in a 200 mile EV. In the Prius you will have multiple full cycles every day and those cars can easily drive halve a million miles.

So the longest living car cells are usually in hybrids and plug in hybrids, but they aren't very energy dense and are pretty expensive per kWh. They also often have really high charge and discharge rates, though.

So usually it's some optimal point of cycle life, energy density and power density. Cost only comes in, if you look at $ per kWh, or $ per kW, or $ per kWh stored over lifetime.

In my opinion, the optimal battery will not last a million miles, but rather 300k on average, but has a good energy density and power density. Of course that lifetime has to be determined for every vehicle, so if you want to use the same cell in a 200 mile EV and a 300 mile EV, the 300 mile EV's battery will last 50% longer (or more).

And of course once you go into other categories, like trucks, buses, airplanes and so on, the lifetime must be much longer.

It's understood that some platforms hide degradation in the first place. but certainly there are chemistries with superior cycle life. But because of other considerations (weight, cost, etc..) thise hyvrid cells may not be an effective chemistry for making a full BEV out of.

This is why PowerWall has different cell chemistry than Model 3, and Semi may as well.

And this this is where pack architecture comes into play: If you architect a larger pack using cells with other characteristics also important, you can then choose to size the pack larger such that overall cycle count for a given mileage is reduced. In addition the power that can be drawn and thus effective range per unit of time charging increases.

 

[phil0909]

I agree, but I'm surprised it bothers you for once or twice a year; no criticism intended, especially as you are an EV driver the rest of the time but for me: the more I have driven EV the more I have come to loath driving ICE. Can't quite put my finger on "why", and I have seen physiologist reports that EV drivers are more "content" (or whatever term they used ) but even they didn't know why. Quiet maybe? Smug / self congratulation maybe? Stick-shift the majority here, so maybe in places where the majority is already Automatic the difference is not as great.

We still have a couple of ICE, a small car "just in case" and a people carrier for the rare occasions we have to haul 7 people, or to retrieve my eBay purchases! and for such limited use that I cannot justify an X but I will be very happy when they are both gone, and we have kitted out the kids with Model-3's (they aren't going to arrive on our shores for probably a year or so).

I guess my experience is just different. I love the EV for both driving and convenience, but it's no hardship for me to drive a nice ICEV for a day or two. (I have driven a crummy rental ICEV while my car was in the shop, and I'll admit that was unpleasant.)

I too look forward to the day when all the EV kinks are worked out, infrastructure matures, and ICEVs have no material advantages remaining. Hope I live that long

 

[Asterix187]

I am doing a 1100 mile road trip next week for a bit of fun in a 75D. I will be spending more on coffee and cinnamon swirls than I will on ‘fuel’.