All "Future" battery technology thread

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GRA said:
I agree wityh you that there would be a cost issue, however, I;m not so sure that energy density would be as big a big deal given rapid refueling. Although it's always nice to have, you don't need as much range if you can be on your way again in 3-5 minutes. I suspect 2 hours of freeway range would be acceptable to most people other than real road warriors.

It's not acceptable to the general public, let alone road warriors. Less than 200 miles of range is not acceptable, especially when it drops even further in bad weather. Not to mention building the "filling" infrastructure would be much more complicated than installing high power chargers, and the added expense of keeping large bins of these "footballs" in stock to be available for use.

Whether such batteries could do that with acceptable weight/volume, I have no idea.

They can't. The best pack systems today can barely do it with superior weight/volume compared to these footballs.
 
JRP3 said:
GRA said:
I agree with you that there would be a cost issue, however, I'm not so sure that energy density would be as big a big deal given rapid refueling. Although it's always nice to have, you don't need as much range if you can be on your way again in 3-5 minutes. I suspect 2 hours of freeway range would be acceptable to most people other than real road warriors.
It's not acceptable to the general public, let alone road warriors. Less than 200 miles of range is not acceptable, especially when it drops even further in bad weather.
To be clear, when quoting ranges I always mean in poor conditions, including HVAC use etc. As to whether it would be acceptable to the general public, I'm not sure that's true. Most weekend trips are within 4 hours of range, so a five minute stop isn't a big deal. Even a single 30 minute stop wouldn't be that big a deal for BEVs, as most people can schedule themselves to take a food break then. It's when you get beyond a single enroute 30 minute stop that the delay starts to get unacceptable. Sure, I'd rather have 4+ hours of range (I've got 6+ in my current ICE), but that's mainly of advantage in allowing me to do weekend round trips without needing to gas up enroute.

JRP3 said:
Not to mention building the "filling" infrastructure would be much more complicated than installing high power chargers, and the added expense of keeping large bins of these "footballs" in stock to be available for use.
OTOH, there would be less need for having to pay demand charges to enable high rates of recharging. But either method relies on reducing the cost of mass storage to be profitable, and neither is or would be now.

JRP3 said:
Whether such batteries could do that with acceptable weight/volume, I have no idea.
They can't. The best pack systems today can barely do it with superior weight/volume compared to these footballs.
Of course, but that's now. I'm talking about some future date, when energy densities have increased considerably (as you point out, current densities are only marginally adequate for cars with integrated packs when new).
 
It seems obvious to me that it's a complete crap idea and can never work. We've seen that limited range EV's have limited popularity with the general public. With the Bolt and the Model 3 on the market the default minimum range will be 200+ miles, and in a few years that will move to 300+ miles. High rate demand charges for fast charging will be less of an issue with a grid based on renewables with battery backups, which is likely the direction the grid will go. Plus since you're talking about future technologies that means conventional batteries will have better energy density, will cost less, and will charge faster.
 
JRP3 said:
It seems obvious to me that it's a complete crap idea and can never work. We've seen that limited range EV's have limited popularity with the general public. With the Bolt and the Model 3 on the market the default minimum range will be 200+ miles, and in a few years that will move to 300+ miles.
That default 200+ miles is really about 2 hours at freeway speeds, with a reserve and including HVAC use, some allowance for winds/climbs etc., which is exactly what I'm talking about. Would I prefer 300+ miles, to match ICEs? Absolutely. But it comes down to cost. If BEVs can reach 300+ miles of range under all but awful conditions, and do that for a decade or more at a competitive price, then fine. For now, that's not possible, so the idea of putting battery degradation on the company rather than the individual has value. I'm a big fan of battery leasing for the same reason, as it limits the size of pack that an owner has to pay for,and allows for future upgrades. And there are still situations where pack swapping for trips may make economic sense, albeit almost certainly not for private vehicles. Fleets are a different matter.

JRP3 said:
High rate demand charges for fast charging will be less of an issue with a grid based on renewables with battery backups, which is likely the direction the grid will go. Plus since you're talking about future technologies that means conventional batteries will have better energy density, will cost less, and will charge faster.
And that's the essential part, batteries must cost less if variable renewables with mass storage is to be cost-effective. We're not there yet, and can't know when we will be.
 
In fact we are already there for islands, as Tesla has shown. http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/22/13712750/tesla-microgrid-tau-samoa

As for the rest, pack leasing, pack swapping, and football batteries are all bad ideas which will never catch on. Better Place tried both pack leasing and swapping, and they went bankrupt, just as I predicted well in advance.
 
JRP3 said:
In fact we are already there for islands, as Tesla has shown. http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/22/13712750/tesla-microgrid-tau-samoa

As for the rest, pack leasing, pack swapping, and football batteries are all bad ideas which will never catch on. Better Place tried both pack leasing and swapping, and they went bankrupt, just as I predicted well in advance.
Better Place had lousy management that believed their own hype, so I don't think we can judge battery swapping by them:
A Broken Place: The Spectacular Failure Of The Startup That Was Going To Change The World
https://www.fastcompany.com/3028159/a-broken-place-better-place

Tesla has suffered from much the same issues on occasion, but fortunately there are enough people there who know what they're doing that they've managed to produce much of what they claimed, albeit usually late and often at a higher price.

As to pack leasing, it's quite popular where it's offered in Europe (see the 97% take rate mentioned here: http://www.plugincars.com/buying-peace-mind-smarts-80-month-battery-rental-127595.html, and this recent story re the Zoe which mentions a 93% take rate:
]Renault Leases 100,000th EV Battery, Offers ZOE Upgrades To 41 kWh Packs
http://insideevs.com/renault-leases-100000th-ev-battery-offers-zoe-upgrades-to-41-kwh-packs/), and 90% of Smart ED owners opted for it when it was first offered here:
Our Conversation With Smart Boss: Electric Drive A Hit In US, Consumers Love Renting Batteries, And Future Plans
http://insideevs.com/smart-talks-electric-drive-with-us/ I don't know if that % has remained stable, grown or fallen off in the meantime, but then the number of Smart EDs being bought/leased here now is so small that it doesn't much matter.

As battery capacity grows, there is less need to lease for longevity reasons, but the price, weight and space advantages still apply.
 
How does leasing provide price, weight, and space advantages? You do understand that 1. you can lease the entire vehicle, not just the pack, so that's no real advantage, and, 2. leasing is more expensive in the long run, which is why it's offered, because it makes the companies more money than selling outright.
 
JRP3 said:
How does leasing provide price, weight, and space advantages? You do understand that 1. you can lease the entire vehicle, not just the pack, so that's no real advantage, and, 2. leasing is more expensive in the long run, which is why it's offered, because it makes the companies more money than selling outright.
It's simple. The average consumer doesn't look at life cycle costs. Their main concerns when buying or leasing a car are upfront costs and monthly expenses, i.e. whether or not they can afford it on a pay-as-you-go basis. Leasing means you don't need to do it all at once, nor are you locked into the original battery as tech improves. Sure, buying is cheaper in the long run (I've never leased a car, pay cash and keep mine until they die), but that's not how the U.S. market (at least) works.
 
So it sounds as if you agree with me that leasing the entire vehicle would make the most sense for the type of consumer you describe, and that leasing the battery alone makes no sense at all, i.e. if leasing the pack is "good" then leasing the entire vehicle is "better".
 
JRP3 said:
So it sounds as if you agree with me that leasing the entire vehicle would make the most sense for the type of consumer you describe, and that leasing the battery alone makes no sense at all, i.e. if leasing the pack is "good" then leasing the entire vehicle is "better".
No, the car itself will last far longer than the battery (average age of the U.S. LDV fleet is currently 11.6 yrs), and the battery's the most expensive part that will have to be replaced during that time period. To give an example, if the design requirement is a car that you want to commute/do all your local errands in, call it a maximum of 70 miles with a 10 mile reserve using HVAC in all weather for say 12 years, you've got two options. You can buy a Bolt, with a battery that's vastly oversized for your design case (but allows you to use it for other things for several years), at a battery price north of $12k, which boosts the price (lease or buy) of the car well above the median price of the U.S. LDV fleet. Or, you can buy the car but lease a much smaller and lighter battery, paying much less up front for the most expensive component, but with no worries about not meeting your use case as the battery ages, with the option to either lease or buy a bigger battery down the road when the costs have dropped considerably, as is the case with the Zoe's 22 to 41kWh upgrade option. At some point the capabilities, prices and (maybe) lifetimes of batteries will become comparable with ICEs; Some forecasts predict that will happen around 2025, but until that happy moment arrives, BEV batteries remain an immature tech with a limited lifespan.

Of course, for people who routinely turn their cars over every three years leasing is the way to go and battery life's less relevant, but presumably we both agree that's the most expensive method of car ownership. In any case, this discussion has strayed far from the topic, so if you wish to continue it let's do so via PM.
 
Brad Berman via plugincars.com:
Tesla Makes Progress in Pursuit of a Battery Breakthrough
http://www.plugincars.com/tesla-makes-progress-its-pursuit-battery-breakthrough-132868.html

I generally treat most announcements of battery breakthroughs as so much hot air, but this is more of an announcement of continuing gradual improvement, and it's from Jeff Dahn, who has more credibility than the average startup promoter trolling for investors (which isn't to say that hype is impossible).

researcher working for Tesla said this week that the life of electric car batteries could be extended to 20 years of use. Jeff Dahn of Dalhousie University, based in Nova Scotia, said that battery life—the capability of cells to maintain their energy and power capacity over time—is one of his four critical interrelated research goals. The other three are lower costs, increased energy density and improved safety.

“Doubling the lifetime of the cells was exceeded in round one,” said Dahn in a presentation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The use of an aluminum coating appeared to be helpful in extending the longevity of cells. “We have another four years to go,” said Dahn. “So we’re going to go as far as we can.”

Panasonic is Tesla’s battery partner. “We think the existing technology can extend the energy density of lithium-ion batteries by 20 to 30 percent,” said Kazuhiro Tsuga, Panasonic’s president, as reported last month by Japan’s Nikkei. Increased energy density and reduced costs are the keys to offering long-range electric cars at an affordable price. . . .

Dahn’s research project with Tesla is only one year into a five-year effort—and is already being utilized in “2170” cells being produced in Tesla’s Nevada-based Gigafactory.
IMO, the two out of four which are most important at the moment are reduced cost/kWh and increased longevity. The former will directly lower battery prices for a given capacity, while the latter will reduce the need to oversize battery capacity to give it an adequate range at its end of life, while reducing battery weight and space and contributing to knock-on weight reductions, and indirectly reduce cost even if $/kWh remains the same. It will also reduce/eliminate any concerns about having to find the money for a replacement at some nebulous point int he future. The closer a battery's life comes to equaling the life of the car, the more acceptable and better value for money it will be for the general public (assuming it's affordable in the first place).

Increased energy density is always nice, but cost is the pacing factor to mass adoption right now. Safety seems to be adequate among currently available batteries, but it never hurts to improve it.
 
Thanks, GRA! Great find! I've been unsuccessfully trying to locate Dr. Dahn's recent presentation at the 34th Annual International Battery Seminar. No matter, the news you found gives us an idea where things are going.

Of course, since this is Dr. Dahn's NMC technology that they are discussing, Tesla (or their customers if they give them the option) will have the option to trade some or all of the additional life against capacity by simply adjusting the upper cutoff voltage. From the Electrek article which was quoted in the article in International Business Times which PlugInCars was quoting:
Electrek quoting Dr. Jeff Dahn said:
“In the description of the [Tesla] project that we sent to NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada) to get matching funds from the government for the project, I wrote down the goal of doubling the lifetime of the cells used in the Tesla products at the same upper cutoff voltage. We exceeded that in round one. OK? So that was the goal of the project and it has already been exceeded. We are not going to stop – obviously – we have another four years to go. We are going to go as far as we can.”
Here is another interesting quote:
Electrek said:
In the second half of the talk, he explained how their new testing methods led them to discover that a certain aluminum coating outperformed any other material. The cells tested showed barely any degradation under high numbers of cycles at moderate temperature and only little degradation even in difficult conditions.
I wonder what is getting coated in aluminum.

Unfortunately, MIT pulled the video of the session which Electrek linked to in their article.
 
GRA said:
IMO, the two out of four which are most important at the moment are reduced cost/kWh and increased longevity. The former will directly lower battery prices for a given capacity, while the latter will reduce the need to oversize battery capacity to give it an adequate range at its end of life,...

Except no one is really doing that. Tesla didn't make a 100kWh pack to provide extra range at the end of the vehicle life, they did it because people want more range now. Tesla packs are showing very good capacity retention. Tesla reserves maybe 10% of capacity total, more of at the low end, because extreme DOD is harmful to the pack, and I've not seen any evidence that Dahn's work would change that. Longer cycle life is good but at this point cost and energy density are still the highest priority, with improved safety coming in third. Cycle life would be fourth on that list for automotive, though a higher priority for grid storage packs.
 
JRP3 said:
GRA said:
IMO, the two out of four which are most important at the moment are reduced cost/kWh and increased longevity. The former will directly lower battery prices for a given capacity, while the latter will reduce the need to oversize battery capacity to give it an adequate range at its end of life,...
Except no one is really doing that. Tesla didn't make a 100kWh pack to provide extra range at the end of the vehicle life, they did it because people want more range now. Tesla packs are showing very good capacity retention. Tesla reserves maybe 10% of capacity total, more of at the low end, because extreme DOD is harmful to the pack, and I've not seen any evidence that Dahn's work would change that. Longer cycle life is good but at this point cost and energy density are still the highest priority, with improved safety coming in third. Cycle life would be fourth on that list for automotive, though a higher priority for grid storage packs.
I agree that people want more range, but the question is what are they willing to pay for. Tesla buyers don't much care about the cost, but everyone else does. The Bolt can probably meet commute/errand needs for a decade or more pretty much regardless of climate, but it's a very expensive way to achieve that. The general public would be far more willing to accept even two-passenger commute cars with adequate range, if they cost $15k and they knew the battery would last for 15 years.

So sure, we'd all like to see a miracle battery with a lot higher specific energy and energy density, but until longevity is increased the car will cost far more (and be far heavier) than it should be to give it long range over time, compared to an ICE.
 
Cost is directly tied to specific energy. The more kWh you get from the same amount of material the lower the cost. Longevity has no impact on cost at this point.
 
JRP3 said:
Cost is directly tied to specific energy. The more kWh you get from the same amount of material the lower the cost. Longevity has no impact on cost at this point.
Cost can be tied to specific energy either way. If you have to use more expensive materials (i.e. different chemistry) to boost the specific energy, or your quality control has to be tighter, then it can cost more. Just as a for instance, LFP is probably slightly cheaper in raw materials costs than NMC or most of the others, and also has better cycle life, heat tolerance and safety, but lower energy densities. LTO same re life, lowest cost but lowest specific energy, on the anode side.
 
NCA is more than twice the density of LiFePO4 so on a per kWh basis it is in fact cheaper. It is a prime example of why cycle life does not improve costs, as is LTO, which is the most expensive lithium based chemistry yet has the longest cycle life, the exact opposite of your claims. As I keep saying, longer cycle life does not positively impact vehicle purchase costs.
 
JRP3 said:
NCA is more than twice the density of LiFePO4 so on a per kWh basis it is in fact cheaper
Yo have cost breakdowns?

JRP3 said:
It is a prime example of why cycle life does not improve costs, as is LTO, which is the most expensive lithium based chemistry yet has the longest cycle life, the exact opposite of your claims. As I keep saying, longer cycle life does not positively impact vehicle purchase costs.
It seems our sources differ, as the one (admittedly, simplistic) I consulted shows LTO as having the lowest cost (which surprised me): http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/types_of_lithium_ion

What source(s) were you using?
 
Battery University isn't always an up to date resource, but even they show NCA as lower cost than LiFePO4, and though their graph shows LiTiO as least expensive, further down in their summary table they say the following:

Long life, fast charge, wide temperature range but low specific energy and expensive.
 
JRP3 said:
Battery University isn't always an up to date resource,...
It's no wonder when it comes to Li-ion considering how quickly things are changing. They list LFP as having a cycle life of 1000-2000 cycles, but you can purchase LFP batteries with a similar capacity, but that can handle 12,000 cycles.

The work that Dr. Jeff Dahn is doing to eliminate the corrosion of the NMC cathode at high voltages is very critical, as it will allow significantly more capacity by allowing the termination voltage to be increased to 4.5V. If he can pull that off, it will put NMC far ahead of other technologies for vehicle applications. He recently identified the key cause of the corrosion and is working to find other chemistries that will work better.
 
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