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Have batteries PEAKED? Of course not, but they’re awfully good.
My Tesla Weekend ^ | 10/23/1023 | Brian White

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.


TOPICS: Chit/Chat
KEYWORDS: batteries; electricvehicles; ev; fakenews; religiousecstasy; tldr
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To: BereanBrain

You’re welcome to believe what you wish. I only tell you what I know.

There is a limit on how many electrons you can store in a battery. It is physically based, because electrons have mass and can only be pushed together so close.

It’s not going to get better.


41 posted on 11/04/2023 4:50:58 PM PDT by Jonty30 (It turns out that I did not buy my cell phone for all the calls I might be missing at home.)
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To: dangus

You may have noticed that the climate cultists are doing their best to reduce grid capacity with the insane push to eliminate reliable sources of electricity and replace them with the expensive, intermittent “green” nonsense.


42 posted on 11/04/2023 5:14:58 PM PDT by allblues (God is neither a Republican nor a Democrat but Satan is definitely a Democrat)
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

It is (a disjointed, incoherent, mess of an article) but I agree with his positive review of LiFePO. I have six cells in a starting battery for a Buell 1200cc and the pack survived unbelievable abuse after running down then being left in a discharged state for two seasons... Then charged back up practically like it was brand new! It does turnover the bike’s motor just fine.


43 posted on 11/04/2023 5:20:13 PM PDT by steve86 (Numquam accusatus, numquam ad curiam ibit, numquam ad carcerem™)
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To: steve86

Sorry, I’m hazy on the cell count. Might be 8: 4s, 2p


44 posted on 11/04/2023 5:23:22 PM PDT by steve86 (Numquam accusatus, numquam ad curiam ibit, numquam ad carcerem™)
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To: Jonty30

I have 2 science degrees.

It’s nowhere close to theoretica limit.


45 posted on 11/04/2023 5:37:06 PM PDT by BereanBrain
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To: BereanBrain

I’m betting it’s a lot closer than you believe it is.
Hybrids, I can appreciate. I do not believe in full EV cars.


46 posted on 11/04/2023 5:39:56 PM PDT by Jonty30 (It turns out that I did not buy my cell phone for all the calls I might be missing at home.)
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To: volunbeer

The only trustworthy detector you can put in a garage is a thermal rate-of-rise detector. CO detectors are problematic in garages:
1. Carbon monoxide and combination alarms may not function in temperatures below 40 degrees or over 100 degrees Fahrenheit
2. Dust and other pollutants in the air may cause failure of the unit
3. Nuisance tripping. The alarm may go off when a car is just pulled into the garage and left running for a very short period of time. After a couple of times of this nuisance tripping, some people will remove the batteries or disarm the detector.


47 posted on 11/04/2023 6:01:59 PM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom (“Occupy your mind with good thoughts or your enemy will fill them with bad ones.” ~ Thomas More)
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To: StolarStorm

Same. I have a theory on that one. Modern cars have all kinds of gadgets now that draw power all the time, turned off or not.

I get that, problem is I have the same problem with my classic 1970’s Chevy’s where batteries have a much shorter life now than in the past.


48 posted on 11/04/2023 6:19:04 PM PDT by LeoTDB69
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

Fair point, but anything is better than nothing! I am going on 6 months with my CO detector in the garage but its already cold enough that it will get sketchy.

When you have a “fuel” that can go from venting to flashover or deflagration in seconds any early warning is beneficial.

I thought about a rate of rise thermal detector but I am not sure they will work well with LIB fires because the batteries often do not display rapid temperature increases while venting (pre-combustion) utilizing high quality thermal imaging and the vapor cloud itself can hide the increase. We have vented and measured vapors for seconds before it shows on a TIC but still not a bad idea.

My primary focus in the last year has been studying the toxicology and contamination. Scary stuff.


49 posted on 11/04/2023 6:22:07 PM PDT by volunbeer (We are living 2nd Thessalonians)
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To: dangus

It is for the foreseeable future if they keep pinching back oil,gas, coal, and nuclear. Sorry, solar and wind will never do it and only subsidies are keeping them afloat. If you take away the subsidies, the equivalent price for a gallon of gas would be $17 per gallon.


50 posted on 11/04/2023 6:23:09 PM PDT by silent majority rising
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To: allblues

When the article spoke of stationary uses for the incredibly cheap, but heavy for Sodium ion batteries, what did you think that was referring to? There’s plans already underway to build the infra-structure to store hours worth of the entire nation’s energy usage in a network of batteries. There’s enough lithium that’s economically recoverable for the entire world fleet of cars to have lithium batteries, and there’s 1,000 times more sodium available, and the sodium ion batteries don’t even need any of the other rare metals, like chromium.


51 posted on 11/04/2023 6:26:43 PM PDT by dangus
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To: silent majority rising

>> It is for the foreseeable future if they keep pinching back oil,gas, coal, and nuclear. Sorry, solar and wind will never do it and only subsidies are keeping them afloat. If you take away the subsidies, the equivalent price for a gallon of gas would be $17 per gallon. <<

Your data is hilariously out-of-date. It’s like I’m trying to find a 2-gigabyte drive to stick in my USB-C port, and you’re telling me that a single megabyte memory device is the size of a building. Over the last 20 years, the price of solar power generation has fallen from $12/w to $1/w. And the price of energy storage has fallen NINETY-SEVEN percent since the GM car flopped.


52 posted on 11/04/2023 6:37:00 PM PDT by dangus
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To: conservatism_IS_compassion
“There’s not enough Lithium.”

Jimmah Carter told me there wasn't enough oil.

53 posted on 11/04/2023 7:05:17 PM PDT by Libloather (Why do climate change hoax deniers live in mansions on the beach?)
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To: dangus; silent majority rising
Over the last 20 years, the price of solar power generation has fallen from $12/w to $1/w. And the price of energy storage has fallen NINETY-SEVEN percent since the GM car flopped.
When I first heard about solar cells it was in the early 1960s. They were hilariously expensive and wimpy. The only possible use for them was in space satellites where nothing else worked. But, the learning curve works. Wright’s Law says that, percentage wise, you learn about the same amount each time you double the quantity that has ever been produced. This maps to the idea that if you plot the log of the cost against the log of the quantity ever produced, a straight line will be a good fit to the data.

The result can be that a technology languishes initially because it just isn’t cost-effective. But even then, since the past production is so low it doesn’t take forever to double the quantity ever produced - with maybe a 20% (plus or minus ten percent) improvement in production efficiency with each doubling. And if that continues long enough, a tipping point is reached and the technology suddenly makes excellent sense - and the production rate accelerates remarkably. And that’s what I see happening in solar and battery tech, and the cost effectiveness “suddenly” gets a lot better than old codgers (I speak as an octogenarian of some years' standing) are used to conceiving of.


54 posted on 11/04/2023 7:06:09 PM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion (A jury represents society. It presumes the innocence of anyone the government undertakes to punish)
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To: Dr. Sivana
There were any number of problems with both Electric and Steam cars.

While the ICE was not perfect it was light years ahead of Electric and Steam, well steam had a major problem in that you had to start your engine a half hour before you could use it.

The people who were early adopters of technology are people who had to get somewhere quickly. Doctors, police, fire, military. Standing around waiting for the engine to build up a head of steam was not practical. You might as well stick to a horse.

55 posted on 11/04/2023 7:10:29 PM PDT by Harmless Teddy Bear (Keep America Beautiful by keeping Canadian Trash Out. Deport Jennifer Granholm!)
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

Agreed!


56 posted on 11/04/2023 7:48:56 PM PDT by Alas Babylon! (Repeal the Patriot Act; Abolish the DHS; reform FBI top to bottom!)
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To: Jonty30

do a quick google search for theoretical battery power density.

The results i get show curren Li-Ion batteries are about 1/10 of what’s theoretically achievable.

BTW, we get about 30% of the theoretical energy of gasoline (most of the energy is wasted as heat)


57 posted on 11/05/2023 7:47:06 AM PST by BereanBrain
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To: PGR88
I know a guy who sells tires. He explained that every car tire in its lifetime puts about 20 lbs of synthetic rubber into the air, land, and water just by normal wear/friction while driving.

Your guy is FOS. Few tires weigh 20 lbs in total. Do you see a lot of cars driving around on their rims?

58 posted on 11/05/2023 11:27:12 AM PST by Moltke (Reasoning with a liberal is like watering a rock in the hope to grow a building.)
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

It reads like an unedited transcript of a talk.


59 posted on 11/05/2023 11:58:50 AM PST by Moltke (Reasoning with a liberal is like watering a rock in the hope to grow a building.)
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To: Jonty30
There is a limit on how many electrons you can store in a battery. It is physically based, because electrons have mass and can only be pushed together so close.

No offense, but atomic physics does not seem to be your forte. It's not like cramming a load of potatoes into a truck...

60 posted on 11/05/2023 12:37:41 PM PST by Moltke (Reasoning with a liberal is like watering a rock in the hope to grow a building.)
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