Electric cars are no longer held back by crappy, expensive batteries • Hacker News Board

Re: Electric cars are no longer held back by crappy, expensive batteries

#71

Post by Xcelerate » Mon, May 23, 2016, 5:55 AM UTC

8note wrote: post #42

dredmorbius wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a real problem and a real concern. An EV essentially is a car with a very expensive fuel tank (the battery), made out of specific materials and properties. While it is efficient in energy use and can make use of fungible electricity, lithium is rare, limited to specific areas of concentration, and can (as any material) only be partially recycled. There's lithium elsewhere on Earth, or more precisely, in seawa…

There's someone in Halifax researching Sodium Batteries, which would be a fair bit easier to find than lithium, though less effective.

Oak Ridge National Labs is doing research on sodium batteries as well (this is a very recent thing).

Re: Electric cars are no longer held back by crappy, expensive batteries

#72

Post by eru » Mon, May 23, 2016, 6:03 AM UTC

vonklaus wrote: post #60

hliyan wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is wrong. The battery is not tied to the drive train. Given the same electrical interface, dimensions and a compatible BMS, swapping out for a lighter, cheaper battery IS trivial. Even cell level replacement is possible -- it's actually happening commercially where I live.

Again, this isn't my area, but conventional ICE vehicles are typically a total loss if they need the entire engine & gas tank replaced. So, again, I am sure I am not totally correct/wrong here in the entirety but my point was just that: > Except for the battery and motor, almost every technology in the car is what you'd find in a regular vehicle. This statement I found funny because it was stating that the core techn…

> This statement I found funny because it was stating that the core technological difference between ICEs and EVs was the energy source and the motor.

That might be the main difference between EV and ICE cars. The similarities are much bigger though. Eg they can use the same technology for providing safety at high impact speeds, and the same aerodynamic shape.

The ICE is but a part of what makes a modern car.

Re: Electric cars are no longer held back by crappy, expensive batteries

#73

Post by ScottBurson » Mon, May 23, 2016, 6:10 AM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #49

ScottBurson wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's too bad about the Volt? I may be about to buy one of the new ones. The 2016 model has better electric range and looks better too.

It doesn't seem to have done too well in the market and gets ragged on a lot. IMO a good concept.

I guess I live in a bubble. Here in Sunnyvale I see them everywhere.

Re: Electric cars are no longer held back by crappy, expensive batteries

#74

Post by IanCal » Mon, May 23, 2016, 6:18 AM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #48

vonklaus wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you see as the 'gaping flaws' of a pure electric vehicle? I would never want a hybrid, as I would optimize for either an ICE or EV but there doesn't seem to be space in a consumer vehicle to have a workable hybrid that is better than either of its pureplay counterparts.

A few: - Road trips. Range needs to accommodate the 95th percentile trip, not the mean. - Apartment living - Unknown depreciation curve The other inconvenient fact is that you need to drive a lot for the TCO of an electric car to be lower than a similar gasoline car.

Median daily distance is actually close to about 30 miles in the US. I'd be surprised if the 95th percentile (equating to more than once per month) wasn't already within the range of a Tesla, though the report doesn't have that figure.

https://www.aaafoundation.org/american-driving-survey-year-o...

Re: Electric cars are no longer held back by crappy, expensive batteries

#75

Post by scythe » Mon, May 23, 2016, 6:46 AM UTC

pcr0 wrote: post #18

I'm all for electric vehicles, but there are a few things that have bothered me about its mass adoption. Right now, electrics comprise a tiny part of the automobile market share. Yet Tesla is already running into supply issues, particularly with lithium as there are only 3 companies in the world that do industrial-scale lithium mining, that too in a handful of mines around the world. Secondly, I suppose we're current…

Supply issues are normal when demand rises suddenly. They aren't necessarily indicative of the long-term productive capacity of the Earth.

Websites go back and forth on this, but truly scientific analyses of "will we run out of X" are few and far between. But there's just no point in looking for a new quarry if the demand isn't there. You think it will be, but technology is capricious -- someone could invent a new gizmo that renders your investment worthless, so market forces generally don't support dragging a bunch of resources around until there's no other option.

There are ten pounds of lithium in a car battery. It's about as common as copper. That's hardly the end of the world.

http://gas2.org/2008/10/13/lithium-counterpoint-no-shortage-...

Re: Electric cars are no longer held back by crappy, expensive batteries

#76

Post by sunstone » Mon, May 23, 2016, 6:52 AM UTC

Interesting article but the timelines seem way to conservative to me.

For example if batteries continue to improve over the next four years as they have over the past four years, according to the article then in 2020 the batteries will weight 1500 lbs, travel 1142 miles on a charge and cost about $10k. (Or a 500 mile battery for $5k) And the cost of electricity will be, at today's rates, $1 per "e-gallon"

Who wouldn't want that? Project this to 2040 and the numbers become just ridiculous but the article suggests just 35% market share by then. I don't think so. By 2025 the market will almost certainly be strongly in the favor of electrics.

Re: Electric cars are no longer held back by crappy, expensive batteries

#77

Post by kfk » Mon, May 23, 2016, 6:59 AM UTC

sunstone wrote: post #76

Interesting article but the timelines seem way to conservative to me. For example if batteries continue to improve over the next four years as they have over the past four years, according to the article then in 2020 the batteries will weight 1500 lbs, travel 1142 miles on a charge and cost about $10k. (Or a 500 mile battery for $5k) And the cost of electricity will be, at today's rates, $1 per "e-gallon" Who wouldn'…

Fuel engine are improving too and oil price doesn't seem to want to go down any time soon. I'd say we have an interesting 10 years ahead. Electric is probably going to win, but time estimates are very hard to do. Don't forget that replacing a car fleet is expensive and takes years. A modern car can easily last 15-20 years, so even if we started replacing fuel with electric today (which we are not), replacing the whole car fleet would require 15-20 years. I don't see the 35% so far fetched in 2025...

Re: Electric cars are no longer held back by crappy, expensive batteries

#78

Post by gambiting » Mon, May 23, 2016, 7:04 AM UTC

kfk wrote: post #77

sunstone wrote: post #76

Interesting article but the timelines seem way to conservative to me. For example if batteries continue to improve over the next four years as they have over the past four years, according to the article then in 2020 the batteries will weight 1500 lbs, travel 1142 miles on a charge and cost about $10k. (Or a 500 mile battery for $5k) And the cost of electricity will be, at today's rates, $1 per "e-gallon" Who wouldn'…

Fuel engine are improving too and oil price doesn't seem to want to go down any time soon. I'd say we have an interesting 10 years ahead. Electric is probably going to win, but time estimates are very hard to do. Don't forget that replacing a car fleet is expensive and takes years. A modern car can easily last 15-20 years, so even if we started replacing fuel with electric today (which we are not), replacing the whol…

And don't forget that there are millions of people who have a car right now, but who wouldn't have a place to charge an electric car. People living in apartments, terraced houses, especially in the UK it's very common to see rows upon rows of houses, none of them with their own driveway.

Re: Electric cars are no longer held back by crappy, expensive batteries

#79

Post by snuxoll » Mon, May 23, 2016, 7:10 AM UTC

vonklaus wrote: post #16

Spooky23 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's too bad about the Volt. I drove one a few times... It isn't a terrible car at all, and bypasses the gaping flaws in a pure electric vehicle.

What do you see as the 'gaping flaws' of a pure electric vehicle? I would never want a hybrid, as I would optimize for either an ICE or EV but there doesn't seem to be space in a consumer vehicle to have a workable hybrid that is better than either of its pureplay counterparts.

> workable hybrid that is better than either of its pureplay counterparts.

I don't really need my Prius to be better than an EV or a pure ICE, I just need something that works with existing infrastructure (not much EV infrastructure in Idaho where I live, and we make semi-regular trips to nothern Idaho to visit family) while getting decent fuel economy and reliability.

Actually, now that I think about it, from a reliability aspect my Prius trumps conventional ICE engines. The much simpler design of the Atkinson cycle engine, since it can sacrifice torque that the MG's can compensate for, leads to some pretty impressive durability and a relatively cheap replacement should it be necessary - it's much more likely (guaranteed, really) that I will need to replace the battery pack before I hit 300K miles but the engine and MG's will last until the car falls apart.

Re: Electric cars are no longer held back by crappy, expensive batteries

#80

Post by imtringued » Mon, May 23, 2016, 7:29 AM UTC

vonklaus wrote: post #60

hliyan wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is wrong. The battery is not tied to the drive train. Given the same electrical interface, dimensions and a compatible BMS, swapping out for a lighter, cheaper battery IS trivial. Even cell level replacement is possible -- it's actually happening commercially where I live.

Again, this isn't my area, but conventional ICE vehicles are typically a total loss if they need the entire engine & gas tank replaced. So, again, I am sure I am not totally correct/wrong here in the entirety but my point was just that: > Except for the battery and motor, almost every technology in the car is what you'd find in a regular vehicle. This statement I found funny because it was stating that the core techn…

> This statement I found funny because it was stating that the core technological difference between ICEs and EVs was the energy source and the motor.

Have you ever looked at the e-Golf? It's just a normal golf except it has a battery and a electric motor. The rest of the vehicle is exactly the same.