Posted on 02/24/2022 11:05:35 AM PST by george76
Soaring battery metal costs are leading to a renewed interest in ithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries.
Manufacturers are looking to cut cobalt use as they are looking to cut costs and improve their ESG profile.
Tesla is making the switch to LFP mandatory in all its markets after a positive reception in the U.S.
In the vast majority of cases, technological innovation leads to newer, cheaper, and more efficient designs than their predecessors. But every once in a while, technological progress goes into reverse gear when progress turns out to be turbocharged regress.
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During an investor presentation last year, Tesla revealed that it’s switching battery chemistry for all standard-range Models 3 and Y from nickel cobalt aluminum (NCA) chemistry to an alternative, older technology that uses a lithium iron phosphate (LFP) chemistry.
Cobalt-free batteries..
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Lithium-ion batteries contain a variety of elements, including lithium, nickel, aluminum, iron, manganese and cobalt. Of these metals, cobalt is the most expensive, with the average cost of the blue metal surpassing the cost of all the other battery metals put together
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Even more worryingly, beyond its price, is that cobalt mining comes with a huge human cost, too: about 60% comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where mining has been linked to child labor and deaths.
Scarcity, price, and human rights concerns have made the elimination of cobalt from EV batteries
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LFP Batteries..
LFP technology is commonly used in simple, less demanding devices such as golf carts and home backup power systems..
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LFP batteries have a key attraction that is proving too powerful to ignore: price.
LFP cells not only have much longer useful lifetimes but are also cheaper than NCA or nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) cells.
(Excerpt) Read more at oilprice.com ...
Tesla shying away from “Blood Cobalt.”
Iron Edison batteries.
They get better with age, can't be damaged by over or under charge and have been proven for over 100 years.
Actually, Lithium Iron batteries are a much more recent development than Lithium Cobalt batteries... By more than a decade.
I have wondered why these are not used in offgrid solar applications.
But maybe they are?
“They get better with age, can’t be damaged by over or under charge and have been proven for over 100 years.”
They charge VERY slowly and would increase the car weight by several thousand pounds.
Pink Eveready Bunny:
I told you. The old school ways keep going and going and going....
With nanotechnology improvements, we’re going to end up back to the future with the nickel-iron battery that Edison invented in 1901 which is durable, safe, and lasts for decades.
Also, how fast will it charge and discharge? My solar inverter can convert DC to AC at 9 kW continuously. That means nothing if the batteries can't discharge that quickly -- otherwise I'm pulling from the grid. The same with charging quickly (my 10 kW solar panels need somewhere for that power to be stored if my home isn't using the power, but that means the batteries have to be able to accept up to 10kW charge from my charge controllers at any given time). If the batteries don't have rapid charge and discharge they're practically useless for running a home with.
I said in an earlier post that Tesla’s goal of 500,000 miles before EV batteries failed sounded unrealistic, but after reading about the lithium iron phosphate batteries in wikipedia, that lifetime sounds realistic.
I’ve got an electric car design that doesn’t require any rare earth minerals or precious metals for batteries at all!
We’ll just put a giant flywheel in the trunk to store all the energy. Now the steering might be affected a bit, but that’s a small price to pay for “going green”!
Back in the 80s at Allison we built a bus drivetrain with the flywheel concept. It was set up to use braking energy to charge the flywheel. Since the flywheel has to be in a vacuum and magnetic bearings to minimize the drag, it was too big of a technical challenge (and $$$) for road vehicle equipment.
They are. I just bought some to replace my old flooded cell batts. Supposed to last 3 times longer plus can be cycled deeper. We'll see.
Don't be thrown by his looks. He looks like he's 14 but he's in his 30s and really knows his stuff.
They were doing that back in the 40s in buses. And more modern adaptations, too.
Or go real old school, Flintstone cars.yaba daba do.😏
Wil Prouse been following him for a while.
Oops I meant Will Prowse.
Axis direction and gimbals need to given some thought.
Now THAT IS how to post an article ladies and gentlemen!! Nice Excerpt! Thank you George!
and good article too
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