Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s not cheaper.
If EVs were cheaper, everyone would own one.
Only those buying news cars would own one. And that is beginning to happen.
CATL has announced a new “condensed” battery with 500 Wh/kg
911–919 of 919 posts
Re: CATL has announced a new “condensed” battery with 500 Wh/kg
#912Earlier quoted context omitted.
Meh, the devil's in the details with a lot of those announcements. A surprising number of them are things like... it will be 50% better 5-10 years from now! That's actually incremental improvement if you think about it in annual improvement terms.
It is, except for the fact that the future isn't guaranteed, so there could be unforeseen problems with scaling up, and that 50% improvement never gets delivered. As mentioned upthread though, CATL has expertise in that area, and "end of this year" is so a trackable claim, unlike the claims about gallium-based batteries.
I agree. Its also not uncommon that the "old" tech improves incrementally during the same timeframe, mitigating the seeming impact.
Re: CATL has announced a new “condensed” battery with 500 Wh/kg
#913Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Aptera gets 1000 miles on a 100 kWh battery. Porsche Taycan: 2 miles per kWh Tesla Model 3: 5 miles per kWh Lightyear Zero: 7 miles per kWh Aptera: 10 miles per kWh Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpiH-Y-HOvE
> The Aptera gets 1000 miles on a 100 kWh battery. The Aptera gets 0 miles on a 0 kWh battery because they've shipped 0 cars, right? Can I go buy one and drive it today?
What makes you think it won't get to market?
Sure, they failed in the past but they have the money now and they've certainly shown they won't give up.
Re: CATL has announced a new “condensed” battery with 500 Wh/kg
#914Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, they were already possible and being sold. But with relatively short but usable ranges. Those now more than double with this battery. Which makes those planes usable in a lot more scenarios. Consider the Eviation Alice, one of the 9 passenger prototype electrical planes that is currently undergoing test flights (i.e. it definitely works). The advertised range is 250nm. Not amazing. But far enough for a lot of r…
Just a naive question, would having 10 planes not also make personnel way more expensive - you’d need 20 pilots instead of 2? OTOH, security costs and airport fees could be cut I guess?
A small propeller pilot costs a lot less to train than a commercial jet pilot.
Quick search on hourly pilot wage: 30$ vs 200$ per hour
Re: CATL has announced a new “condensed” battery with 500 Wh/kg
#915They're one of Tesla's biggest suppliers. It is unsurprising they'll be doing battery research themselves.
They were battery kings well before that. CATL is the OG of the LiFePO4 chemistry and developed most of the mass production techniques to make the chemistry feasible. Tesla came along later and just bought lots of their stuff.
I thought tesla used Panasonic exclusively until after they expanded into China with the Shanghai Gigafactory?
Re: CATL has announced a new “condensed” battery with 500 Wh/kg
#916Earlier quoted context omitted.
They were battery kings well before that. CATL is the OG of the LiFePO4 chemistry and developed most of the mass production techniques to make the chemistry feasible. Tesla came along later and just bought lots of their stuff.
I thought tesla used Panasonic exclusively until after they expanded into China with the Shanghai Gigafactory?
Yeah precisely. Tesla only adopted LFP when they started production in China and instead of producing their own batteries like they had to in US they just bought from CATL instead. CATL was already supplying SAIC, JAG, BYD, etc in China well before Tesla landed there.
Re: CATL has announced a new “condensed” battery with 500 Wh/kg
#917Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The Aptera gets 1000 miles on a 100 kWh battery. The Aptera gets 0 miles on a 0 kWh battery because they've shipped 0 cars, right? Can I go buy one and drive it today?
What makes you think it won't get to market? Sure, they failed in the past but they have the money now and they've certainly shown they won't give up.
> The Aptera gets 1000 miles on a 100 kWh battery.
Gets, as in present tense. A theoretical car made sometime in the future shouldn't use present tense terminology. No consumer on the road today is getting 1,000mi on a 100kWh battery in an Aptera. If Aptera manages to actually ship cars, then the word "gets" is accurate.
> What makes you think it won't get to market?
See:
> Sure, they failed in the past
Building cars has extremely high barriers to entry. Getting things approved costs tons of money. Spinning up factories is no small challenge. Actually making more than one or two cars is incredibly challenging. Meanwhile, in order to spread those costs out you'll hopefully want to make a lot of them otherwise a good chunk of your value proposition goes away as the costs for the car would quickly get out of hand.
Then comes the challenges of actually selling them at any volume. I legally can't buy one in my state if they don't create a franchise dealer network. Its hard to get shoppers to compare your vehicles if you don't have a way for them to actually buy the cars. Tesla manages because they spent a ton on "galleries", they were the only real EV option for a while, and have massive brand presence. Ask any random average car buyer if they've thought of buying an Tesla, and they'll probably have an opinion. Ask anyone if they've thought of buying an Aptera, and they'll probably have no clue what you're talking about.
If Aptera manages to actually make some cars, that's great! Even better if they manage to sell them for profit. Its good to have more competition. But I'm not holding my breath.
Re: CATL has announced a new “condensed” battery with 500 Wh/kg
#918Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's particular ironic in China, where >50% of their domestic energy production is apparently from coal. That being said, it could improve metro air quality a large degree because I'm guessing coal power plants aren't built in downtown Beijing.
China's CO2 intensity is about 550g/kWh currently (and falling rapidly). An EV takes about 15kWh/100km. That's less than 90g/km. About as much as a Prius.
I don't really see what CO2 has to do with the point I am making. It's massively better for air quality to have the coal burnt at a distant powerplant than to have a car burning coal (or fossil fuels) in downtown Beijing.
Re: CATL has announced a new “condensed” battery with 500 Wh/kg
#919Earlier quoted context omitted.
"The only way they're replacing ICE vehicles is by making the EVs cheaper" Even if electric cars would be cheaper, faster and longer running - some people would rather die, than give up their ICE cars and motorcycles. The strong lobby in germany against banning aren't the poor, but the rich who want to drive their roaring Porsche till eternity. They literally say that. I can somewhat understand the appeal of an loud…
If it’s really only about the rich, then just tax the heck out of the cars, or better yet the gasoline. If the price of gas includes the full cost of carbon sequestration then sure, why not? It’s still not a great look from the perspective of income inequality, of course.
That would force all the poor Joe Schmoes to switch from fossil fuel-driven vehicles to electric ones, but the billionaires (and probably many [most?] of the multi-millionaires) would still be able to afford burning fuel. All the billionaires and even the single-millionaires could of course also afford to switch to electric vehicles... but the poor Joe Schmoes can't.
So what you're proposing is basically "Let's make using cars (even more than it already is) something for the rich only!"