And after 50 cycles, it still had 54 percent capacity retention...
So, your car with a 300 mile range per charge, after 50 days, has a 150 mile range. How about after five years? 20 miles?
Duh … better than the first lithium batteryl
Yes, it underperforms now.
Btw, “cycles” isn’t days. Most people do not drive 300 miles a day. If you do you shouldn’t be driving EV anyway. A hybrid or just a fuel efficient high compression diesel would be better.
My own suspicion is that they may have been recharging the battery like they do a mature tech lithium batteries and that battery memory is a significant issue at this time if you don’t do something extra. It may sound like I’m insulting but really it isn’t uncommon for people to just overlook obvious things while they hunt down percentages.
While these preliminary numbers suggest a low battery life for an iron battery, suppose after 30 cycles the iron batt retains 75% capacity. So a low-mileage user might swap out batteries at some sort of swap-station after 30 days or 45 days. An in-town driver might get 90 days out of a cycle.
Costs to replace a lithium batt are estimated to be from $1K to $6K, a range so wide so as to be ridiculous. I have no direct experience. Allegedly they last 2-3 years. But we know lithium is a problem on the supply front. Suppose a Li 30 month batt costs $3K, $100 a month. Lithium costs roughly $10 per kilo, iron is pennies. It’s not inconceivable that a rapid-and-cheap-replace iron battery pack that only lasts a month and costs $100 to swap out wouldn’t be the functional equivalent of a lithium batt.
I don’t know, there are a lot of interconnected factors, obviously. Just sayin’. We *do* have a history of replacing costly elements with cheaper ones; iron for lithium would be about as dramatic as imaginable. We went from platinum catalysts in cat converters to palladium, however those are both extremely rare metals. In the process, platinum went from $2000 to $850 and now sells for $600 less than gold, when it is 10x as rare a metal as gold in nature. (a nearly unfathomable anomaly) And palladium went from (depends where you measure from) $600-700 to $100 LESS than gold or about $1430. Yes, I recognize lithium is about 1/14th the weight of iron and that is sweet for vehicle use. But iron is so bloody cheap, there MUST be an economic argument in there somewhere.
Sure, it's not ready for prime time. But, the possibility that batteries can be made of rust instead of lithium is worth investigating to see if it can be made a practical reality.
This is research. It’s not a product yet. Most high tech goes thru a phase of “doable but not viable yet”.