Recent content by Kiwi_ME

Perhaps better to leave the science to those who are appropriately educated. It's a complicated subject.

With good reason. EVs allow you to carry on with your first-world lifestyle with less guilt of contributing to the irreversible degradation of the human habitat. It may take 20 more years but eventually you'll realise that. It doesn't hurt the cause that they're crazy fast and can be cheap to...

I could be wrong but I don't think any EV after the Nissan Leaf shows SoH (state of health) on the dash or menus, where available you'd always need to use a simple Bluetooth dongle and a free phone app. You configure the EV in the app and it finds all available data for you, not implying that...

I was interested in this as well so researched it. Unlike the Hyundai-Kia products which maintains an SoH value, readable using OBD, with the iD4 all you have is the currently available energy in kWh which at 100% charge you’d have to compare with the specified value when new.

Yes, for example overnight. This is why we also have public DC chargers which are way faster.

One possibility for excessive gear wear is that the unusual angular-contact ball-bearing pair used on the diff carrier lost preload and disturbed the correct hypoid contact area. It wouldn't take much clearance for this to happen.

The amount of debris present in the gear housing did not come from a failed bearing. The only plausible source and one that leaves little evidence is the gear set due to the large surface area present. That amount of debris in circulation could certainly cause the bearing damage seen. But the...

His first video was all about making a good business decision and he rightly didn't think that the exact technical details were relevant. But his viewers seem to be mostly gearheads and wanted more. In his second video he didn't need to address anything other than providing that detail. I...

There's been a follow-up video from that shop with more detail but the exact cause remains unanswered:

Earlier EVs like the Leaf, BMW i3, Tesla S/X and the first-gen Ioniq/Kona/Niro used a conventional internally-dry motor with a coolant jacket. The motors connect to the gear reducer with a normal greased splined coupling. Most if not all later EVs including the gen-2 Kona/Niro and all other...

Since the traction battery is isolated from any loads when parked by relays on both + and - terminals you’re only suffering internal losses while those remain open, and by all accounts that is surprisingly low. But all EVs that I’m aware of charge the 12V (or Tesla’s 16V) auxiliary battery on a...

The Kona EV has a 3-phase 400V compressor with both an evaporator and a condenser in the cabin airflow path. That allows efficient dehumidification as needed to clear the windshield. It also has a 400V resistive PTC heater next to those to heat the air on start-up when under 7°C while the...

I rarely drive, perhaps 3,000 km a year and see very little depletion while my Kona EV sits over a week or two unused, about 1%. The vast majority of that energy is undoubtably used to power the car's electronics during each 20-minute 12V charge process, about 200 watts. The schedule of six...

Assuming an NMC-type battery simply avoid the extremes of the charge range. Try to keep the time spent at a particular charge level balanced across the middle, like water settled in a bathtub. And don't worry about charging small amounts more frequently. No need to avoid max acceleration.

I think Tesla should stick to the higher end of the market. Chinese EVs have been on the market here in NZ for years, are fairly popular and have excellent quality. If they were awful I would have heard about it by now. Tesla won't beat them and a low-cost model diminishes the brand, just...