Letters to the Editor: EV batteries don't last forever. Using them as backup power could wear them out

Los Angeles Times Opinion
·2 min read
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KOKOMO, IN - OCTOBER 25: An electric vehicle (EV) charging station in a parking garage in downtown Kokomo on Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2022 in Kokomo, IN. Kokomo is known as the "City of Firsts,"as a significant number of technical and engineering innovations were developed in Kokomo, particularly in automobile production - which a large portion of the city's employment still relies upon. (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)
An electric vehicle is plugged in at a parking garage charging station in Kokomo, Ind., in 2022. (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

To the editor: Your editorial urges the state to require that electric vehicles have the capability to put energy back into the grid during blackouts or times when electricity demand is extremely high. That might be a good idea for all — that is, if batteries lasted forever.

But they don't. EV batteries are warranted for a limited time, not forever. Would utilities help EV owners pay for a replacement battery? I suspect not, as the cost to them would be too high.

For perspective, imagine the uproar if the state required gas-powered vehicles to idle at night to supplement the grid. Owners would see their engines prematurely wearing out.

So, if you insist on EV owners helping power the electric grid when it's unable to meet demand, you should also support requiring fossil-fueled vehicles to have electrical outputs so they can shore up the grid by running their engines all day and night.

Tom Egan, Costa Mesa

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To the editor: The average Californian drives about 39 miles per day. If a typical EV battery has a capacity of 40 kilowatt hours and goes about 3.5 miles per kilowatt hour, and if existing California EV drivers kept 100% of their average daily miles driven in reserve, then the roughly 1.1 million EV drivers in the state would have nearly 19,000 megawatt hours of electricity daily to contribute to the grid.

That's more than eight hours of output from our largest power plant, the nuclear facility at Diablo Canyon, which now supplies about 9% of all our electricity.

EV sales are skyrocketing (I love my Hyundai Kona EV), and batteries are getting bigger. Expanding vehicle-to-home and vehicle-to-grid capacity could supply the stable base-load capacity we need to fully take advantage of our cheapest and healthiest electricity sources, wind and solar.

Tom Hazelleaf, Seal Beach

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To the editor: I would hope that a nation that can create and deploy a technological marvel such as the James Webb Space Telescope can figure out a way to incorporate solar panels into the roof of a car so that there would be a near-constant replenishing of the car's batteries.

This could help improve range, reduce the need for expensive home modifications to accommodate EV charging, and reduce the need to spend tax dollars for large numbers of charging stations.

Mary Edwards, Camarillo

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.