Posted on 11/04/2023 12:19:12 PM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion
Have batteries PEAKED? Of course not, but they’re awfully good.
How much BETTER can BATTERIES get? Considering that they’re already pretty good.
I have a youTube channel called “My Tesla Weekend” . . . I’m a tech analyst who happens to be on youTube. You may see me on shows like “Best in Tesla,” … Randy Kirk . . . a lot of them.
Electric cars were made a hundred years ago, but the battery chemistry just wasn’t there yet. They cost three times too much.
So then get to cars like the EV 1, where they just put car batteries in. So they just put lead acid batteries in. Those batteries were supposed to cycle 500 to 1000 times. They don’t - I don’t know where that number came from; that was just ridiculous. So this was discontinued in 2002. By 2003 they were all gone. And WHY?
In 2002 there was no battery in the whole world that you could possibly make an electric car out of. You know - laptop batteries hadn’t come along yet. Oh yeah, they had,. Laptop batteries were already lithium-ion, and they were already awfully good.
But there was a problem with them in that if you wanted to put them in a car, you needed to put thousands and thousands of them. So if you tried to put them in a car you needed about 6000 of them, and even if you got them for $10 apiece, that’s 60 grand. And it wasn’t $10 apiece it was more than that - even if you got them at volume. So you would have had to have been crazy to try and push forward with this good battery, THAT WORKED.
So - modern battery longevity - who’s making good batteries today?
LG. Panasonic. CATL. Samsung. SK. Everybody. Chevy had some problems with their LG battery; they got it sorted out. SK makes the battery that Ford uses - SK, out of Korea. They are one of the bigger players in the world . . .
Toyota doesn’t want to use batteries in EVs “because that’d give them too much reliance on China.” OK, you’ve got options. And all of them are good options.
Auto makers BY LAW are required to warrant their batteries for 8 years or 100,000 miles. At the end of that time, if you don’t have 70% of your original capacity, you get a new battery. That’s a win-win. Because if your battery fails, you get a newer, nicer one. And if your battery doesn’t fail - your battery didn’t fail.
. . .
How good are the batteries actually? [Shows a graph whose average battery capacity starts out at 10%, and tapers down to about 85% at 250,000 kilometers.] . . . A lot of these batteries didn’t have good battery management [of temperature] - and that’s most of what’s gonna save your battery, prolong its life.
. . .
So now we get to the lithium-iron-phosphate, which is the new, exciting one. And it’s not exciting, it’s very boring, and that’s what I want, I don’t want exciting, I want boring! It’s a little bit heavier, it’s not as fast - but it doesn’t wear out. And it doesn’t doesn’t some of the problems of earlier batteries. It doesn’t catch fire the way lithium-ion batteries do. It’s cheaper to make. It doesn’t have any cobalt or nickel, and it lasts a LONG time. Making it environmentally sustainable . . . I mean, they all are - but this one is especially so. . . . Four million mile battery is now a reality. Because LFP cycles like crazy. It doesn’t mind, it doesn’t wear out like traditional Li-ion does. So you get a whole lot of life out of it. And this isn’t lab, unproven, “miracle breakthrough,” this is stuff that exists. Four million miles? That means your battery is going to outlast your car.
So what’s next? Slightly better chemistry. Slightly better range. Slightly cheaper manufacturing. Whole new chemistries. Sodium ion is coming. We don’t know how good they’ll be, they’re in test vehicles in China right now. They have even less power per kilogram than LFP, so these may go into stationary storage, while the Li-ion goes into automotive.
So what’s NOT coming? If it’s miracle battery, it goes a thousand miles on a charge - THAT’S not how it works.
… Solid state. Toyota’s been telling us solid state is only two years away for eleven years. Please, just buy one more Toyota. And that’s not a great way to do business.
Big dumb myths: “Batteries die in ten years” - ever heard that one? . . . A lot of gas car companies spent a lot of money convincing people that that’s the truth. And now they’re realizing that they can’t sell electric cars because people believed them! The required warranty on batteries is enough to mean that there would be too much warranty replacement if the batteries were dying in ten years.
“Batteries can’t be recycled” A lot of people believe that. “We’re gonna be jammed full of worn-out Lithium batteries!” We’re not - because the CAN be recycled, and they’re NOT [being recycled] because they don’t wear out like we were told they would.
Those cars last a lot longer [than some predicted], and batteries often get a second life [as stationary storage, where their weight per watt-hour of capacity isn’t so important]. In Japan, they’re using old Leaf batteries to back up power in case another Tsunami hits.
“There’s not enough Lithium.” There is - maybe not as cheap as we’d like, but . . .
Most of the batteries in new cars worldwide are Lithium-Iron-Phosphate, but there’s been a problem with a patent issue which has prevented their being used in America. LFP batteries are nominally less energetic per kilogram than more traditional Li-ion, but as a practical matter the traditional ones are more sensitive to deep cycling than LSP - so it’s recommended that they not be charged above 80% routinely. Meaning, for routine use LSP batteries are as good or better on ACTUAL energy per kilogram.
It is all fun and games until your Tesla catches on fire inside your garage and then the fire department tries to put it out with water.
“Auto makers BY LAW are required to warrant their batteries for 8 years or 100,000 miles.”
Unless it rains, and causes water damage Tesla doesn’t cover in its warranty https://www.thedrive.com/news/scottish-couple-left-with-huge-bill-for-replacement-tesla-battery
Never buy an EV!
So what’s the so what with this article? Is the author saying the current battery technology being used today is as good as it gets, and never charge a battery to more than 80% of its capacity, or the better battery of the future is just around the corner?
Sorry but simply do not believe anything written about EVs in the corporate media, corporate owned automobile and driver oriented publications or by non independent “journalists” writing or speaking in the media.
If all you are doing is traveling to work and back, they are probably adequate. However, until you can travel in winter, under adverse conditions and tow a heave trailer and charge up within a reasonable travel time frame, they are limited in their usefulness.
A gas vehicle might lose 15% of fuel efficiency in winter, adverse conditions and towing a trailer, but an electric car loses 3/4 and doesn’t charge up in 5 minutes.
The grid is maxed out so it early doesn’t matter. They are trying to kill oil gas coal nuclear, so walking looks like the alternative.
“It doesn’t have any cobalt or nickel, and it lasts a LONG time. Making it environmentally sustainable . . . I mean, they all are - but this one is especially so. . . . “
Oh yes. Perfect. Just like wind generators and not managing forests. (rolling eyes)
The battery revolution is just getting started.
I wonder if the slave labor mining for rare earth elements for those batteries feel the same way?
RE: BATTERIES
The little ones are a lot stronger than they used to be.
I recently pulled the “BEDBUGS” game out of the toy closet to play with my grandchildren. The plastic bugs hopped right off the bed. It was a lot louder than I remembered too.
Regular car batteries suck now. My last few batteries lasted little over 18 months. I remember them lasting 6-7 years not that long ago. Warranty periods have shrunk too.
Range constraints of an EV wouldn’t be much of a bother to me, but there is one financial effect on top of the price that has to be considered. Namely, the “Osborne Effect.” Osborne Computer Corp shot itself in the foot by announcing an upcoming product prematurely - with the result that its sales of its existing product dried up instantly. Tesla has not literally done that - but then, there is always an “Osborne Effect” chronically, when it’s known that your company has a history and a strategy of driving down the cost of production, and the sales price, of your product.
That was a problem industry-wide in the heyday of Moore’s Law when you had to always consider your computer purchase decisions in light of the knowledge that you could get more bang for your computer buck if you just waited another six months or year. That actually is still an issue with iPhones . . .
IMHO computer sellers should reduce that effect by offering valuable software for the oldest 10%, say, of its products at a significant discount. And Tesla is a computer seller; every Tesla comes with a computer as standard equipment and Tesla sells software over and above its standard suite.
The prospect of such a discount could be calibrated to keep the value of a used version of your product from dropping too precipitously. Or so I suppose . . .
Until they have the following issues, I’m sitting it out:
* Super long charge times. I want 30 minutes MAX (15 would be better)
* Temperature sensitivity. I want them to work in Phoenix and Anchorage at any time of the year.
* Low max output due to thermals. I want them to be able to crank out HIGH OUTPUT for the majority of their charge without baking themselves.
* Weight. I’d like a track car that weighs 1500 pounds MAX. As excessive weight is felt everywhere.
Until these hurdles are overcome, I’ll be over here.
“Electric cars were made a hundred years ago, but the battery chemistry just wasn’t there yet. They cost three times too much” Pretty much sounds like today.
There may be something in the lab that makes you technically correct, but it’s not being made commercially available because it’s not economically viable.
What we have has been super-computed for thirty years and they’ve maxed out what is available. What we have is all we can have and what we have is inadequate.
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