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Is It Safe to Ship Thousands of Electric Cars on Big Ships?

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Re: Is It Safe to Ship Thousands of Electric Cars on Big Ships?

#71

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

londons_explore wrote: post #63
Animats wrote: post #58

I'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…

The 2019 and 2020 fires were mostly because of a 'misunderstanding' between US consumers and Chinese manufacturers. Manufacturers wrote in the product manual 'do not charge device for more than 4 hours'. US consumers left it charging overnight. The devices reliably caught fire when charging for more than about 15 hours. They just didn't have circuitry to stop charging when full. The same used to be the case in the 19…

> The 2019 and 2020 fires were mostly because of a 'misunderstanding' between US consumers and Chinese manufacturers.

Do you have any source articles about that? I can't quite tell your intended level of sarcasm around "misunderstanding".

Because that design, where a device that's left plugged in too long then just ignites, is ridiculously stupid from any side of the equation, especially since over the past 20 years people have been trained with things like cell phones to just plug it in and leave it. I wonder how this "self igniting" design got through any regulatory constraints at all.

Re: Is It Safe to Ship Thousands of Electric Cars on Big Ships?

#73

Post by moffkalast »

Reason077 wrote: post #62
Animats wrote: post #58

I'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…

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.

Re: Is It Safe to Ship Thousands of Electric Cars on Big Ships?

#74

Post by Reason077 »

moffkalast wrote: post #73
Reason077 wrote: post #62

Earlier 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 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.

Re: Is It Safe to Ship Thousands of Electric Cars on Big Ships?

#75

Post by _ph_ »

moffkalast wrote: post #73
Reason077 wrote: post #62

Earlier 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.

It works well for the Model 3. The standard range version now mostly uses LFP batteries. They have about the same size and weight as the long range batteries. And of course, there is constant progress in battery density. The move to 4680 cells supposedly gives 16% more capacity due to the different geometry. That would make LFP batteries competitive for more configurations.

Re: Is It Safe to Ship Thousands of Electric Cars on Big Ships?

#76

Post by _ph_ »

hutzlibu wrote: post #65
jbay808 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm all for serviceable batteries, but I don't see how it solves the shipping safety issue. So you ship the EVs without batteries, and then... you ship the batteries?

I think that might be done at some point. So most shipments of cars are hazard free and cheap (to insure). And then you have high risk battery shipments. With lots of expensive measures to minimize risks and fail safe. (This is already today a thing, as you can ship items without batteries for less money.)

It is not clear to me, why it would be cheaper to ship the batteries separately. The car shipment might be theoretically cheaper, however it is much more difficult to ship cars which cannot drive. On the other side, you would have the increased risk for the battery shipment with the associated insurance costs. However, it is not obvious to me, that shipping electric cars is more risky. Actually all statistics point to electric cars being more safe than combustion engined cars.

As the article points out, it is probably necessary to change best practises of handling electric vs. combustion engined cars. Making really sure, that no car moves and crashes into others, change in firefighting strategies. Make sure, that the cars only contain a minimum amount of charge and of course continue to improve battery safety itself.

Re: Is It Safe to Ship Thousands of Electric Cars on Big Ships?

#77

Post by Reason077 »

_ph_ wrote: post #75
moffkalast wrote: post #73

Earlier 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.

It works well for the Model 3. The standard range version now mostly uses LFP batteries. They have about the same size and weight as the long range batteries. And of course, there is constant progress in battery density. The move to 4680 cells supposedly gives 16% more capacity due to the different geometry. That would make LFP batteries competitive for more configurations.

For LFP they (Tesla) are actually using prismatic cells which have even better density.

An advantage of cylindrical cells is that they allow for more effective cooling, but that’s not so necessary with LFP.

Re: Is It Safe to Ship Thousands of Electric Cars on Big Ships?

#78

Post by _ph_ »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #39

This boils down to safety of battery EVs. Indeed, soon they will be everywhere. Think not only of cargo ships but of traffic, rows of parked cars, whole carparks, etc. In this case, the change is that was probably considered an inert cargo (cars) will now have be considered a potentially hazardous cargo perhaps requiring extra safety measures.

It might simply boil down on learning how to safely treat EVs. As the article points out, currently they are shipped like combustion engined vehicles and so far there is no differentiation in treatment. Combustion engined vehicles became relatively safe to handle by about 100 years of experience. Still, statistics point out that they catch fire more often than EVs. But that doesn't mean, one might not have to handle EVs slightly different when putting them on these ships. Like tying them down properly, adjusting the fire extinguishing facilities accordingly. And of course, battery technology itself and the engineering of BEVs will progress constantly.

Re: Is It Safe to Ship Thousands of Electric Cars on Big Ships?

#79

Post by quickthrower2 »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #71
londons_explore wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 2019 and 2020 fires were mostly because of a 'misunderstanding' between US consumers and Chinese manufacturers. Manufacturers wrote in the product manual 'do not charge device for more than 4 hours'. US consumers left it charging overnight. The devices reliably caught fire when charging for more than about 15 hours. They just didn't have circuitry to stop charging when full. The same used to be the case in the 19…

> The 2019 and 2020 fires were mostly because of a 'misunderstanding' between US consumers and Chinese manufacturers. Do you have any source articles about that? I can't quite tell your intended level of sarcasm around "misunderstanding". Because that design, where a device that's left plugged in too long then just ignites, is ridiculously stupid from any side of the equation, especially since over the past 20 years…

I feel nostalgic: Don’t charge for too long takes me back to 1990s RC cars.

Re: Is It Safe to Ship Thousands of Electric Cars on Big Ships?

#80

Post by kkfx »

I think it's not much different than shipping refined petrol or LPG... The main issue is always the need of transports, unless we can scale toward mass distributed small productions to built as much as possible locally so to avoid the scale of eventual accidents, not much differently than the concept of coming back from big ships to smaller one for petrol, hyper-giant plane trend to smaller ones etc

Accidents/incidents can always happen but at smaller scale means smaller issues...

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