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Ford's answer to EV supply chain hell: Cheaper batteries

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Re: Ford's answer to EV supply chain hell: Cheaper batteries

#181

Post by bryanlarsen »

tuatoru wrote: post #93
konschubert wrote: post #49

The only thing that tops range anxiety for me is battery degradation anxiety. I would probably be totally fine with a lower range if I know that my battery can do 100 000 cycles.

For a practical car, 200 to 500 full charge cycles per year is all that could happen. 200 for a suburban family car, 500 for an urban commercial vehicle. (200 cycles per year would be perceived by an owner as being "every day", because the days she's away on holiday or sick at home or WFH are not remembered. Nor would she remember that she only charges once on weekends.) 100_000 cycles is therefore 20 to (more likely…

A full charge cycle is 0 to 100 and back. If you only do 20 to 80 as most owners do you get about ten times as many cycles. So a typical owner does well under 100 per year. 250,000 km is a reasonable expectation.

Re: Ford's answer to EV supply chain hell: Cheaper batteries

#182

Post by bryanlarsen »

konschubert wrote: post #49

The only thing that tops range anxiety for me is battery degradation anxiety. I would probably be totally fine with a lower range if I know that my battery can do 100 000 cycles.

The LFP batteries in the article have an expected life of 6000 cycles, which in real world usage corresponds to about 750,000 kilometers. (6000 is worst case cycle, which never happens in a car with a proper BMS).

You're asking for a battery with an expected life span of 12.5 million kilometers.

Re: Ford's answer to EV supply chain hell: Cheaper batteries

#183

Post by bryanlarsen »

curiousgal wrote: post #41

> Ctrl - F recycle > 0 matches It feels like we are trading one poison for another from a climate change perspective. Just passing down the buck.

Each kilogram of battery in an EV removes a need for about a 100kg of gasoline.

I'm sure they'll be recycling those batteries in about 25 years when they'll be starting to wear out, but even if they don't we're still leaning hard on the "reduce" in the three R's mantra.

Re: Ford's answer to EV supply chain hell: Cheaper batteries

#184

Post by epistasis »

justapassenger wrote: post #151
solarkraft wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Current-day Ford Motor having to go begging to China - for a major, iron-based component needed to produce more cars - that is laughable, and beyond pathetic. They're lucky China is answering. They're incredibly late to the EV game; considering that they're doing remarkably well.

Incredibly late? EV are still tiny % of global sales. And compared to what some EV startups want people to think, building good EV isn’t that hard for traditional OEMs, once company commits to it. F150 and MachE are very good EVs.

It's at around 9% of market share and doubling annually.

https://www.iea.org/commentaries/electric-cars-fend-off-supp...

They are missing out on the easy part of the S-curve of adoption, and will have a far far harder time securing key competitive tech and supply chains by entering too late

There are currently ~8 major battery manufacturers, and right now a large bevy of battery startups. But right now is probably the last time in history to enter the market, because you can't just innovate on electrolyte or anode or cathode and enter the market, you have to do it all. And the lead times for development of new products, even in wel established companies with solid pipelines, is around five years.

The US did innovate quite a bit in this space, but political interference and strange political beliefs about batteries, like the physics prevents them from being used in all the ways we are currently using them, has significantly held back the US from leading as much as it could have in this space.

This is I n large part because industry leaders like Ford were so anti-scientifically anti-EV.

We kneecapped our future to let current rentiers, masquerading as gigantic industrialists, collect rent.

Re: Ford's answer to EV supply chain hell: Cheaper batteries

#185

Post by rblatz »

SigmundA wrote: post #136
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #4

This is huge. To date, Tesla has been the only non-Chinese manufacturer talking iron. LFP is often touted for being cheaper than NMC, but given growing insecurity around battery-grade nickel supplies, using the far-more-prevalent iron and phosphate isn’t just about cheaper cars. It’s about having cars to sell in the first place. With respect to range anxiety, pretty much every EV in the 200 to 300-mile range is sold…

LFP Also has much more cycle life and can be cycled 0-100% with much less degradation than NMC meaning a much longer lasting battery. The LFP Tesla it is recommended to charge to 100% always rather than only doing 80% except on long trips on the NMC Teslas. LFP is also safer with much less chance for thermal runaway. So safer, cheaper, longer lasting, easier material sourcing, only downside is lower energy density (a…

Tesla recommends charging to 100% because otherwise it has trouble accurately estimating the vehicle range and battery state of charge.

Re: Ford's answer to EV supply chain hell: Cheaper batteries

#186

Post by heymijo »

chiph wrote: post #100
tedk-42 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Current-day Ford Motor having to go begging to China - for a major, iron-based component needed to produce more cars - that is laughable, and beyond pathetic. In a dark, miserable sort of way, if you care about America or its future. Sounds similar to Boeing where accounting for personal gain (promotions / raises) of upper managers and executives took effect over the long term advantage of the company.

Funny you should mention Boeing. Alan Mulally went to Ford in 2006 after working for Boeing for 35+ years. In my opinion he was a net positive for the company, securing a credit line just before the 2007 recession so that Ford did not have to get bailed out by the government. He also sold off Jaguar/Land Rover just in time before gas prices spiked and their sales slumped. I think he is one of the "good" Boeing execs,…

> In my opinion he was a net positive for the company

That opinion is well founded. In the book American Icon by Bryce Hoffman (Detroit News journalist) he chronicles that entire time period.

Mulally pulled off one of the greatest challenges, a bonafide turn around. They had a company culture that was all about individuals protecting their own interests. Mulally changed it to one where they focused on making vehicles people want and thinking about the long-term.

For example, Mulally held a weekly executive meeting and each head would give a color coded report of their domain's status (green for good, yellow for issues, red for caution). For weeks in this meeting every single executive reported their status as "green" for good. This in a fiscal quarter when Ford had a $6 billion loss! Mulally managed to change that culture, which for anyone who has work experience should speak very loudly.

Re: Ford's answer to EV supply chain hell: Cheaper batteries

#187

Post by jacquesm »

treeman79 wrote: post #106
chiph wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny you should mention Boeing. Alan Mulally went to Ford in 2006 after working for Boeing for 35+ years. In my opinion he was a net positive for the company, securing a credit line just before the 2007 recession so that Ford did not have to get bailed out by the government. He also sold off Jaguar/Land Rover just in time before gas prices spiked and their sales slumped. I think he is one of the "good" Boeing execs,…

Story my dad told of McDonald Douglass merger was that they intentionally hired a drunk incompetent ceo to scare away all of their business. So that the merger with Boeing could be approved. He had many stories to tell of engineering non sense there. Supposedly they just trained whomever to be an engineer. They offered to make my dad one since they liked him.

> McDonald Douglass merger

Pray do tell more about that merger!

Re: Ford's answer to EV supply chain hell: Cheaper batteries

#188

Post by heymijo »

heymijo wrote: post #186
chiph wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny you should mention Boeing. Alan Mulally went to Ford in 2006 after working for Boeing for 35+ years. In my opinion he was a net positive for the company, securing a credit line just before the 2007 recession so that Ford did not have to get bailed out by the government. He also sold off Jaguar/Land Rover just in time before gas prices spiked and their sales slumped. I think he is one of the "good" Boeing execs,…

> In my opinion he was a net positive for the company That opinion is well founded. In the book American Icon by Bryce Hoffman (Detroit News journalist) he chronicles that entire time period. Mulally pulled off one of the greatest challenges, a bonafide turn around. They had a company culture that was all about individuals protecting their own interests. Mulally changed it to one where they focused on making vehicles…

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13132620-american-icon

Re: Ford's answer to EV supply chain hell: Cheaper batteries

#189

Post by jacquesm »

dylan604 wrote: post #132
solarkraft wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Current-day Ford Motor having to go begging to China - for a major, iron-based component needed to produce more cars - that is laughable, and beyond pathetic. They're lucky China is answering. They're incredibly late to the EV game; considering that they're doing remarkably well.

>They're incredibly late to the EV game; considering that they're doing remarkably well. When you're not the trailblazer, it's easy to make catch-up progress to those that went before you in much much less time. Why this is constantly a source of amazement is funny to me. By the time Ford got involved, the path was no longer a beaten down path, it was fully paved 8-lane highway. Instead trying to figure out how to ma…

> That's easy to do when you are riding coat tails

No, that really isn't easy to do when you're running something as large as the Ford Motor Company. In fact it is much easier for a new entrant to make such big changes.

Re: Ford's answer to EV supply chain hell: Cheaper batteries

#190

Post by cogman10 »

rblatz wrote: post #185
SigmundA wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LFP Also has much more cycle life and can be cycled 0-100% with much less degradation than NMC meaning a much longer lasting battery. The LFP Tesla it is recommended to charge to 100% always rather than only doing 80% except on long trips on the NMC Teslas. LFP is also safer with much less chance for thermal runaway. So safer, cheaper, longer lasting, easier material sourcing, only downside is lower energy density (a…

Tesla recommends charging to 100% because otherwise it has trouble accurately estimating the vehicle range and battery state of charge.

True. Though the damage is low from hitting 100% which is part of the reason why this is a "just leave it at 100%" rather than a "hit 100% once a week".

That said, I'd probably do 90% as the max and 100% on the weekend if I owned an LFP vehicle.

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