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.

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.

You’d be correct. However, I am aware that the, after thirty years of research and billions of dollars spent, the best batteries are about 6% as energy dense to gasoline and the only alternative, at this point, to making batteries more efficient is to make them bigger or make them denser. Making them denser makes them more dangerous.

I agree on the energy density part! Of course, efficiency (IC engine ~30 % - electric motor ~90+ %) has to be considered as well.

In any case, an IC car still fits my needs better.

The IC combustion engine is theoretically about 64% convertible to energy, with the rest being heat. The heat, of course, could probably by used for energy purposes as well.

I think the best combination, imo, is an IC engine with battery for the first 30 miles of your trip and trying to capture the wasted heat in some fashion to turn it into energy.

I don’t have anything against EV’s, but I don’t want to be mandated into them until they can be practical alternatives to IC’s, meaning similar mileage in winter and adverse condtions, while towing a trailer. Under those conditions, a pure IC only loses about 15% efficiency.

The theoretical efficiency limits are meaningless for the real world. Gasoline engines are typically well below 30%, in the 20% range, and diesel engines maybe 5 to 10% above that.

Cars have water/oil cooling and large radiators to get rid of a lot of heat for a reason. If there were some efficient way to harvest that waste heat (other than cabin heating in cold temperatures) to make the car more efficient, it would have been implemented a long time ago. A turbo charger uses some of the exaust heat, but that’s a few added percent of efficiency at best.

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