If it's safe to ship tons of LNG on big ships there's almost certainly a way to ship batteries safely. It might take a few 'incidents' though before best practise becomes clear.
Is It Safe to Ship Thousands of Electric Cars on Big Ships?
101–110 of 185 posts
Re: Is It Safe to Ship Thousands of Electric Cars on Big Ships?
#102They say not securing the cars properly can cause impacts that cause fire. But these cars are impact tested for passenger safety. The only vulnerability for the battery pack will be a bottom impact which should not occur on Roll on-Roll Off Carrier. Ships do need to adapt their firefighting process for Lithium-Ion batteries. But I'm not convinced about impacts causing fire.
I'm not sure what the inside of a car carrier looks like, but I think the idea isn't just that a little jiggle that causes the suspension to flex slightly is the concern but rather a car coming loose and falling on another car, or something similarly serious and unplanned that isn't supposed to happen if everyone is doing their job correctly. If it does happen you wouldn't want it to be a risk to the whole ship. Ther…
The ones I've seen are all just multi-storey car parks that go on the sea. This isn't a concern.
Re: Is It Safe to Ship Thousands of Electric Cars on Big Ships?
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
So they say, but the main gripe of switching to EVs has always been their too small range. Your average Li-ion 21700 cell has a capacity of 4-5Ah, whereas one with an LFP chemistry only gets 2-3Ah. That's almost a 50 % reduction in spatial density, not to mention their abysmal C rating. Perhaps they would fit for PHEV usage, but for pure EVs they would be rather shite imo.
The standard range Tesla Model 3 says otherwise. They’ve been using LFP for a while now and it actually has longer range than it’s non-LFP predecessor, albeit with somewhat increased weight. Charge rate on modern, well-managed LFP cells is not abysmal. The LFP Model 3 SR gets excellent charging speeds.
The cycle life is also insanely good which is why I'm so excited about LFPs. Pretty good density (not quiet nickel levels, but close), insane cycle life, and far cheaper materials.
It'll be a great solution for grid energy storage.
I'd be shocked if most short range EVs don't end up with LFPs.
Re: Is It Safe to Ship Thousands of Electric Cars on Big Ships?
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
Elon Musk has said that he believes a significant portion of the industry will move to LFP (Lithium iron phosphate) chemistry due to its lower cost, fewer supply constraints, and better safety and stability properties. It was recently reported that Ford is working on LFP packs for their Mustang and F-150 Lightning EVs.
LFP is also a more stable chemistry which makes them safer but also it has more than double the cycle life and can be charged to 100% while still keeping that long cycle life. No need to choose to charge to 80-90% for daily use vs 100% for long distance, Tesla recommends charging the LFP to 100% all the time. LFP's where getting ridiculously cheap recently, you can get 19" rack mount batteries with built in BMS for l…
> No nickel or cobalt is another advantage, iron in plentiful.
Nickel is a problem but you might be surprised to know that cobalt is fairly plentiful. The issue is it doesn't have a whole lot of industry usage outside of batteries. That's why it's a human rights problem. Instead of mining it locally we use small time mining operations with cheap (often child) labor.
In other words, the amounts needed to meet global demand are below the demand needed to setup industrial cobalt mining operations.
This is why iron phosphate are both great key materials. Both are highly plentiful AND highly useful outside of battery production (thus, already have industrial mining/recycling systems setup)
There was recently discussion about opening old cobalt mines in idaho (my home state). [1]
[1] https://www.mining-technology.com/projects/idaho-cobalt-proj...
Re: Is It Safe to Ship Thousands of Electric Cars on Big Ships?
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I get the impression that's true. There's an electrochemical reaction that's going to take place whether you want it to or not, and you have to keep adding water until the reaction is finished. I kind of wonder if it would help to pack batteries with something that requires a huge amount of energy to vaporize, so that the heat from a battery fire just goes into a state transition of some inert substance. (You c…
I've heard about large packs on boats catching, sinking, and continuing to burn while wholly submurged, and remote control aircraft being left to burn out because its safer and easier yo just repair the runway afterwards. I'm not sure how you soak that much energy. I've seen metal cabinets where people put iffy packs in case they go. It was clear it had been in a fire at least once. I think the normal way to dispose…
In regards to RC packs, the general consensus is to let them burn out yes. The actual purpose of a "LiPo Safe" or fire safe LiPo storage compartment isn't to protect the batteries from fire, it's to provide a safe space for a battery to burn out completely without burning down your house or car.
Re: Is It Safe to Ship Thousands of Electric Cars on Big Ships?
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of the problems is that lithium ion batteries can't be discharged fully without destroying them. Effectively, the batteries are a very large energy source that can never be fully turned off. Another problem is that (if I understand correctly) lithium ion battery fires tend to produce their own oxygen. Another problem is that a manufacturing defect in one cell could cause the whole pack to catch on fire. According…
> Putting out an EV battery fire basically entails dumping enormous amounts of water on it That's a problem fire departments are still trying to adapt to, many resorting to putting out the fire conventionally, then submerging the car in a water-filled container. But I'm unclear on how that makes the risk profile worse for ships? The initial fire should be easier to contain with EVs than with gasoline cars because EV…
Putting large amounts of salt water in the hold of a ship isn’t something people generally want to do.
Re: Is It Safe to Ship Thousands of Electric Cars on Big Ships?
#107I'm not too happy about very large lithium ion batteries as a mass market product in low-end vehicles. Lithium iron phosphate, which doesn't have the thermal runaway problem but stores less energy per kilogram, may be more appropriate there. Both BYD and Tesla are going that route at the low end. Light electric vehicles (bikes, scooters, skateboards) are now causing a sizable number of fires in NYC.[1] It's mostly a…
Can we stop it with this absurd fear mongering already? There's millions of EVs on the road now. I have had my Leaf for 8 years and keep seeing this same tired FUD online. The incidents of fires from electric cars are extremely low. The scooters and other cheap vehicles you cite are a separate problem from just being Lithium-Ion batteries. They're cheap procucts with bad electronics and poor protection of the battery…
Fire isn’t the hazard we need to be concerned about for Lithium-ion, it’s the destructive mining and the subsequent hazmat disposal that should be worrying everyone. The lithium mining companies are filing claims all over my county and the proposed large scale excavation of extremely sensitive desert dry lake habitats is just disgusting. I’m no fan of oil, but at least there you drill a hole and not remove a few cubic miles of the earth. Seeing the battery lifecycle up close has left me depressed about our options…
Re: Is It Safe to Ship Thousands of Electric Cars on Big Ships?
#108I'm not too happy about very large lithium ion batteries as a mass market product in low-end vehicles. Lithium iron phosphate, which doesn't have the thermal runaway problem but stores less energy per kilogram, may be more appropriate there. Both BYD and Tesla are going that route at the low end. Light electric vehicles (bikes, scooters, skateboards) are now causing a sizable number of fires in NYC.[1] It's mostly a…
Can we stop it with this absurd fear mongering already? There's millions of EVs on the road now. I have had my Leaf for 8 years and keep seeing this same tired FUD online. The incidents of fires from electric cars are extremely low. The scooters and other cheap vehicles you cite are a separate problem from just being Lithium-Ion batteries. They're cheap procucts with bad electronics and poor protection of the battery…
It's not FUD. Emergency responders and wrecking yards have already had problems with EV fires. An EV wreck with a damaged battery can catch fire days or weeks later. They have be stored with extra room around them just in case. Battery fires are a whole different thing than gas fires. This is a serious issue.
Re: Is It Safe to Ship Thousands of Electric Cars on Big Ships?
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
EVs catch fire drastically less than combustion fueled vehicles because they don't involve explosive materials. Also we ship giant ships full of oil and gas all over the world every single day which is vastly more combustible than batteries.
> Also we ship giant ships full of oil and gas all over the world every single day which is vastly more combustible than batteries. I see what you are saying, but the way we mitigate the fire and explosion hazards on oil and gas transport ships is not really applicable to roll-on/roll-off ships. The oil tankers and LNG ships use a technic called innert atmosphere to protect their cargo from fire hazard. The idea is t…
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Re: Is It Safe to Ship Thousands of Electric Cars on Big Ships?
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
Elon Musk has said that he believes a significant portion of the industry will move to LFP (Lithium iron phosphate) chemistry due to its lower cost, fewer supply constraints, and better safety and stability properties. It was recently reported that Ford is working on LFP packs for their Mustang and F-150 Lightning EVs.
So they say, but the main gripe of switching to EVs has always been their too small range. Your average Li-ion 21700 cell has a capacity of 4-5Ah, whereas one with an LFP chemistry only gets 2-3Ah. That's almost a 50 % reduction in spatial density, not to mention their abysmal C rating. Perhaps they would fit for PHEV usage, but for pure EVs they would be rather shite imo.
The answer is to regulate battery standards and internal input jacks.
The overwhelming majority of people don't need more than 50 miles range the overwhelming majority of the time. The problem would be solved if you could just put your house battery or a rented one in the boot for that rare long trip.
Additionally make all vehicles on the road slower, smaller, and lighter so you can safely drive something that more closely resembles a velomobile than an SUV and safely drive anywhere at 80km/h rather than having 100km/h as the minimum.
1C or 0.5C is completely fine, nothing needs to do 0-100km/h in under 20s, and as long as it can do around 15m/s up a 10% hill it has enough power.