The federal government’s successful incentive program for zero-emissions vehicle purchases is running out of money and not slated for renewal, much to the dismay of environmental and industry groups.
Automotive pollution causes thousands of excess deaths every year. It is also linked to a number of negative health outcomes, and has a correlation to autism in children.
Used EV parts have the possibility of really transforming our society — EV batteries that are no longer suitable for transportation can still hold enough charge to power a home for a day or two; couple that with used EV motors which can generate electricity, and each EV that can no longer be driven is effectively a cheap and ready power plant that can power a home or office, or can help provide grid-scale storage on the cheap.
Everyone is going to benefit from a (near) fully EV world.
E-bikes are already cheaper than even the cheapest new car. If people want an e-bike instead of a car it’s already affordable. Having a Federal Rebate isn’t going to move any more e-bikes, and isn’t going to convince more than a handful of people to stop driving and cycle instead.
The end result will simply be that we would still have too many gas-guzzlers on the road spewing CO2 and other pollutants into the atmosphere (right next to bike lanes, where cyclists have to breathe that crap in). The CO2 reductions for the cost would be significantly less than incentivizing EV sales. The current incentives are supposed to help reduce the cost of EVs so they are comparable in price to the gas guzzlers; e-bikes don’t need an incentive as they’re already pretty cheap.
Governments would do better by investing in better cycling infrastructure than providing a rebate for something most people won’t use anyway.
The motors in EVs are designed to also provide regenerative services — the charge you put into the battery gets extended by having all “breaking” re-generate power in the battery. So if you’re in a situation where you’re driving down a mountain, you can wind up in a situation where you’re can have more charge when you get to the bottom as you had at the top.
(This is a problem EVs actually have to design around — they’ll turn off the regenerative breaking if your battery is at 100% so you don’t risk overcharging it driving down a long, steep decline).
When removed from the car, you can use the motors like this in a permanent installation. Anything that provides rotational power can then be used to generate electricity — a wind turbine, a water wheel, steam, 2 thousand hamsters — whatever you have on hand. Use that power to turn the motor, and you get electricity out the other end.
These systems aren’t passive, so an EV sitting in a parking lot isn’t going to generate electricity. You need movement from an external source to turn the motors to get power out.
The motors in EVs are designed to also provide regenerative services
Just a point of…not really correction… additional detail?
Any electric motor is capable of generating electricity. It’s about whether the motor is doing work, spinning through electrical input, or if it’s being spun by an outside force. This is why you can repurpose an old washing machine into an actually useful hydroelectric generator. The only difference between an electric motor in a washing machine and an EV is power output in terms of torque and speed, there’s been some efficiency gains (not really an amazing innovation as there just really wasn’t much need in prior typical applications) and finally the fact that they’re wired to also generate power while breaking (aka regenerative breaking).
Other than that bit of extra on top, very well explained. 👍
Yes this was my understanding. I could see some DIY people making it work but I doubt we would see a massive scale industry around re using the motors. The amount of work and refurbishment coupled with relatively low power productions would make it hard to keep economically viable i think. People would worry the used motors would wear out prematurely when investing in their own power supply. Unlike something like solar, the motor needs rotational force, where as solar almost always makes at least some energy in the day even if cloudy.
As I alluded to in a comment just a moment ago, there’s actually a really vibrant community/cottage industry world wide taking the motor and the internal drum from old washing machines and turning them into hydroelectric plants, capable of powering off grid homes quite effectively for as much of the year as the water is flowing in the area.
I could absolutely see what OP was theorising happening with only a little bit of government support. The motors and batteries could easily be sold on as part of a kit, and the rest of the car recycled where possible.
Used EV cells are already starting to find use in industry. In Japan, Nissan resells pairs of used Leaf batteries that pass their testing inside an inverter pack that can provide emergency power or as a generator replacement. On top of that, they have repurposed 16 Leaf EV batteries to provide backup for and smooth out fluctuations from a solar power array in Japan. And Canada’s own Moment Energy specializes in building grid-scale storage from used EV batteries.
Work in this area is admittedly low right now — but mostly because in the 15 years since the first readily available commercial EVs started shipping, the vast bulk of them are still on the road today. So EV battery supply is pretty low right now (I’d imagine mostly being from EVs that have been in accidents which haven’t affected the battery itself). But with EV adoption increasing that supply will also increase, albeit with a 15 - 20 year lag.
And the motors don’t really ever wear out. I have no doubt some company out there will start using them for small-ish wind turbines once a reliable second hand supply is available. I agree for now that’s most likely to be in the domain of hobbies to, but if it becomes easy to source hundreds of EV motors cheaply that I don’t see why they wouldn’t be used to create small, and relatively inexpensive power stations for remote communities.
The possibilities are pretty huge here. On top of that, once these second-life uses for EV batteries and motors have finally exhausted their usefulness, they’re 95+% recyclable into new battery packs and motors, allowing the cycle to begin anew. It’s pretty exciting stuff — which is why I’m hopeful long term that the Canadian governments investments into both mineral mining and battery production pay off — EVs are just the tip of that iceberg.
Cue my friends moaning about how the gov’t wont give them thousands of dollars of free money to buy a tesla
Meanwhile, where’s my free money for never contributing to gridlock, never causing potholes, never polluting the environment, etc.?
Automotive pollution causes thousands of excess deaths every year. It is also linked to a number of negative health outcomes, and has a correlation to autism in children.
Used EV parts have the possibility of really transforming our society — EV batteries that are no longer suitable for transportation can still hold enough charge to power a home for a day or two; couple that with used EV motors which can generate electricity, and each EV that can no longer be driven is effectively a cheap and ready power plant that can power a home or office, or can help provide grid-scale storage on the cheap.
Everyone is going to benefit from a (near) fully EV world.
Where’s the federal ebike subsidy then?
E-bikes are already cheaper than even the cheapest new car. If people want an e-bike instead of a car it’s already affordable. Having a Federal Rebate isn’t going to move any more e-bikes, and isn’t going to convince more than a handful of people to stop driving and cycle instead.
The end result will simply be that we would still have too many gas-guzzlers on the road spewing CO2 and other pollutants into the atmosphere (right next to bike lanes, where cyclists have to breathe that crap in). The CO2 reductions for the cost would be significantly less than incentivizing EV sales. The current incentives are supposed to help reduce the cost of EVs so they are comparable in price to the gas guzzlers; e-bikes don’t need an incentive as they’re already pretty cheap.
Governments would do better by investing in better cycling infrastructure than providing a rebate for something most people won’t use anyway.
How exactly does an EV become a power plant? If EVs were power plants they wouldn’t need charging stations or to be plugged in over night.
The motors in EVs are designed to also provide regenerative services — the charge you put into the battery gets extended by having all “breaking” re-generate power in the battery. So if you’re in a situation where you’re driving down a mountain, you can wind up in a situation where you’re can have more charge when you get to the bottom as you had at the top.
(This is a problem EVs actually have to design around — they’ll turn off the regenerative breaking if your battery is at 100% so you don’t risk overcharging it driving down a long, steep decline).
When removed from the car, you can use the motors like this in a permanent installation. Anything that provides rotational power can then be used to generate electricity — a wind turbine, a water wheel, steam, 2 thousand hamsters — whatever you have on hand. Use that power to turn the motor, and you get electricity out the other end.
These systems aren’t passive, so an EV sitting in a parking lot isn’t going to generate electricity. You need movement from an external source to turn the motors to get power out.
Just a point of…not really correction… additional detail?
Any electric motor is capable of generating electricity. It’s about whether the motor is doing work, spinning through electrical input, or if it’s being spun by an outside force. This is why you can repurpose an old washing machine into an actually useful hydroelectric generator. The only difference between an electric motor in a washing machine and an EV is power output in terms of torque and speed, there’s been some efficiency gains (not really an amazing innovation as there just really wasn’t much need in prior typical applications) and finally the fact that they’re wired to also generate power while breaking (aka regenerative breaking).
Other than that bit of extra on top, very well explained. 👍
Yes this was my understanding. I could see some DIY people making it work but I doubt we would see a massive scale industry around re using the motors. The amount of work and refurbishment coupled with relatively low power productions would make it hard to keep economically viable i think. People would worry the used motors would wear out prematurely when investing in their own power supply. Unlike something like solar, the motor needs rotational force, where as solar almost always makes at least some energy in the day even if cloudy.
As I alluded to in a comment just a moment ago, there’s actually a really vibrant community/cottage industry world wide taking the motor and the internal drum from old washing machines and turning them into hydroelectric plants, capable of powering off grid homes quite effectively for as much of the year as the water is flowing in the area.
I could absolutely see what OP was theorising happening with only a little bit of government support. The motors and batteries could easily be sold on as part of a kit, and the rest of the car recycled where possible.
Used EV cells are already starting to find use in industry. In Japan, Nissan resells pairs of used Leaf batteries that pass their testing inside an inverter pack that can provide emergency power or as a generator replacement. On top of that, they have repurposed 16 Leaf EV batteries to provide backup for and smooth out fluctuations from a solar power array in Japan. And Canada’s own Moment Energy specializes in building grid-scale storage from used EV batteries.
(Here’s an example of a Canadian company that resells used EV batteries and motors for use in DIY projects).
Work in this area is admittedly low right now — but mostly because in the 15 years since the first readily available commercial EVs started shipping, the vast bulk of them are still on the road today. So EV battery supply is pretty low right now (I’d imagine mostly being from EVs that have been in accidents which haven’t affected the battery itself). But with EV adoption increasing that supply will also increase, albeit with a 15 - 20 year lag.
And the motors don’t really ever wear out. I have no doubt some company out there will start using them for small-ish wind turbines once a reliable second hand supply is available. I agree for now that’s most likely to be in the domain of hobbies to, but if it becomes easy to source hundreds of EV motors cheaply that I don’t see why they wouldn’t be used to create small, and relatively inexpensive power stations for remote communities.
The possibilities are pretty huge here. On top of that, once these second-life uses for EV batteries and motors have finally exhausted their usefulness, they’re 95+% recyclable into new battery packs and motors, allowing the cycle to begin anew. It’s pretty exciting stuff — which is why I’m hopeful long term that the Canadian governments investments into both mineral mining and battery production pay off — EVs are just the tip of that iceberg.
Yoink the motor out of an old otherwise-scrap EV and diy a wind turbine
Your free money is also in the Tesla.