LOL! This 'electrical appliance' has four-wheel drive and does 0-60 in 2.5 seconds!
Posted on 10/27/2017 11:57:21 AM PDT by catnipman
the DOE and everybody in the auto industry pegged their EV hopes and dreams on lithium manganese oxide, or LMO, and lithium iron phosphate, or LFP, batteries. The reasons were simple. Both chemistries had great performance profiles for EVs and both chemistries were made using cheap and abundant raw materials – lithium, manganese and iron.
The sole renegade was Tesla, which planned to use consumer grade cells and a nickel-cobalt chemistry instead of more costly automotive grade LMO and LFP cells. Tesla's theory, which had more than a touch of genius, was that using consumer grade cells would allow it to over-build its battery packs to improve safety and slow cell degradation while pitching a 300-mile range with neck snapping acceleration as major advantages, even though most Tesla owners would crawl through city traffic with the rest of us and average less than 35 miles of daily driving.
While Tesla's electric muscle cars have always been energy, emissions and economic nightmares, the sales pitch resonated with one percenters who were drawn to Tesla's richly subsidized eco-bling like moths to a flame.
The consumer response was so strong that most players in the EV industry are moving away from LMO and LFP batteries and embracing high-energy nickel manganese cobalt, or NMC, batteries.
The EV industry's transition away from cheap and abundant raw materials in favor of costly nickel and cobalt will not end well.
Manufacturing 100 million EVs per year to completely replace ICE technology would require about 800,000 TPY of refined cobalt and exhaust planetary reserves in less than seven years.
(Excerpt) Read more at seekingalpha.com ...
The shift to cobalt will no doubt delight folks in the Congo, the ones who aren’t dead from ebola, marburg, starvation, or internecine genocide.
Anything that requires a socket to plug to a wall...is an electrical appliance. Not a car.
It would be decades and maybe never before EVs could largely replace IC vehicles even with a lot of infrastructure in place. The lesser flexibility of EVs would make them less attractive as personal transport should IC vehicles be severely restricted. Mass transit would be more attractive, as intended, and the number of personal vehicles manufactured would decline.
When the Elon-Musk-cum-Tesla bubble finally bursts (which it surely will very soon,) St. Elon will make Malcolm Bricklin look like little more than a penny ante barker in some third rate carnival. Sit back everyone and enjoy the show that is unfolding before us all.
“800,000 TPY of refined cobalt and exhaust planetary reserves in less than seven years”
The rest of the article lacks as much credibility. The author is implying the market prefers a costly battery technology instead of its cheap and abundant counterparts, either he is dumb, or he is intentionnally telling just half of the story.
If Tesla fails and the sooner the better, it is because the EV is cr.p and its crony capitalism business model is unsustainable, not because of the battery technology choice.
They should refrain from scare tactics.
The author exhibits significant Musk Derangement Syndrome, more insults than facts.
I am not sop sure that the battery technology will change over the next ten years and that Tesla and the others will change technologies as needed as cobalt becomes too rare or too expensive. A LOT of folks are working on better battery technology and the right breakthrough (e.g. superconductivity) will put the whole market upside down regardless of the availability of cobalt.
Also, outside of places like China (where they can easily be mandated without regard for the public will), the electric vehicles may not sell well enough to meet projected numbers. It is all guesswork at this point.
Viewing your post, I thought, "Seems like a smart guy.", then I saw your handle and was convinced.
Muscle cars and beer: Making America Great Again.
Regardless of the supply claim, I thing the point was that making cars at the same rate as today with gas engines is unattainable, as only some 41,000 TPY is available, less than 5% what is needed to make cars at he same rate.
There are some misunderstandings in this article. The neck-snapping acceleration is a trait of any electric vehicle with a sufficiently large electric motor driving the drive wheels, it has nothing to do with the battery chemistry. There are resto-mod electric ‘68 Mustangs being remanufactured and sold out of I believe Texas that use lithium iron phosphate batteries that will absolutely burn the rear tires off.
Regarding the reasoning of Tesla as far as going with nickel-cobalt my understanding was energy density and speed of recharging, even though there is some risk of overheating, fire and explosion, whereas there is no such risk with lithium iron phosphate, it just needs to be generally kept above freezing and below very hot outside temperatures for overall performance reasons, and charging below freezing will damage the battery so they’re typically placed in conditioned space rather than exterior.
I think Tesla perhaps made an error in going with this battery chemistry but the rest of the industry is using it too, by and large. You only run into LFP in RV, Marine and electric scooters or bicycles at present. I think it’s the superior battery due to being more inherently stable and not a fire risk, with the other considerations being negligible but I’m not building and selling electric cars so what do I know, I just researched the matter for an RV I’m updating.
“I am not so sure that the battery technology will change over the next ten years and that Tesla and the others will change technologies as needed as cobalt becomes too rare or too expensive”
i sure hope they make more progress than they’ve made since Alessandro Volta invented the first battery 200 years ago ...
LOL! This 'electrical appliance' has four-wheel drive and does 0-60 in 2.5 seconds!
It’s come a considerable way, here’s a company named Volta Systems oddly enough, that is specializing in mobile battery banks. They’re using the same battery chemistry as Tesla, which runs counter to most that use LFP, but they do have a good comparison with lead-acid batteries and even AGM golf cart batteries.
http://www.voltapowersystems.com
Gee, if you increase usage of anything by a factor of 100x...you may run out of materials or make them prohibitively expensive....gee...novel concept...
Any time diesel is cheap and gas gets expensive, people have a knee jerk reaction and buy a bunch of diesel cars. Next thing you know, diesel is more expensive than gas...because the demand/supply chain got severely altered!
Bueller, Bueller.....
“Muscle cars and beer: Making America Great Again. “
Fastest Vette: 0-60 3.0 seconds.
Tesla S: 0-60 2.5 seconds.
It would be decades and maybe never before EVs could largely replace IC vehicles even with a lot of infrastructure in place. The lesser flexibility of EVs would make them less attractive as personal transport should IC vehicles be severely restricted. Mass transit would be more attractive, as intended, and the number of personal vehicles manufactured would decline.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.