GM, LG to Spend $2.3B on Venture to Make Electric-Car Batteries
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Vehicle launches are generally prepared starting 5 years out with defined components. This creates a special challenge when interfacing with quickly changing technology.
I don't have a publicly available source for this, so take it with a grain of salt, but I've heard that for every new battery pack released, there have been serious, funded plans for 2 or 3 other pack, battery form factor, or chemistry updates. The technology for each simply moves too fast to integrate at the pack level, much less the vehicle level.
As an example: the Model Year 2017 Bolt EV released with 238 miles of range, and the 2020 bumped that to 259, without changing the module or pack form factor. It's an incremental advance to be sure, but ~10% without adding modules is pretty dang good.
FWIW, if they have a defined form factor and connector, they can sort of assume one of these chemistries and supply chains will come through.
BEVs are far simpler than regular cars. Particularly ones that aren't retrofitted on older chassis. There are simply far fewer parts to deal with.
Chemistry for batteries doesn't really matter all that much when thinking about compatibility. Do you care about the chemistry of any given AA? Probably not. Batteries and battery packs are right there in the same wheelhouse. Whether a chemistry gives you 1wH or 20wH really doesn't matter if the form factor and voltages are all the same.
Tesla packs are a good example of this. The chemistry has changed pretty drastically from 2012->today. Yet the pack form factor for Model S and X is the same. It only recently changed with the Model 3 (and they are still producing S and Xes).
Sure, but you've still got to figure out which parts to use and how to put them together. Automakers have over a century of calibrating ICE propulsion, so the incremental change in calibration for an ICE is very small. Calibrating EVs may be much easier, but the incremental change is huge for legacy automakers. As an aside, even Tesla cheerleaders should be happy that legacy automakers are entering the EV space. Competition is great for the consumer.
> Chemistry for batteries doesn't really matter all that much when thinking about compatibility.
I mean, sure, all batteries will deliver "electricity", but engineering is all about balancing conflicting requirements. You want low volume, low weight, low risk of "thermal events", high energy capacity, high discharge rate, high charge rate, high charge cycle count, etc etc etc.
> Tesla packs are a good example of this. ... Yet the pack form factor for Model S and X is the same.
I'd say this is a good example of the cost of engineering. On the one hand, if it ain't broke don't fix it. On the other hand, customers continue to demand better vehicles, especially as competitors enter the market.
It's true that if you designed a EV battery pack to be one solid anode and cathode, you might have to worry considerably about the chemistry that makes up the pack.
That, however, isn't how anyone is building packs (that I know of). EV manufacturers are all pushing for packs made of modules made of cells. The cells that they are making are quite literally a typical form factor (Typically 18650s)
Yes, you have to figure out how to put together your pack of 18650s and how to cool/heat them. However, what you don't have to worry about is what chemistry goes into them. That's an upstream supply concern. A 10% bump in storage can be gained with better chemistry, it doesn't require that you completely redesign your pack with each new chemistry. As a bonus, that also means you can source your cells from multiple manufactures, because they are all pushing out the same form factor.
I do not agree with that. Not every EV manufacturer will develop their own chemistry or process, but they do care about it.
Typically cylindrical cells like 18650 or 21700 for Tesla, everyone else is using pouches or prismatic cells. Of course, based on sales the typical EV is a Tesla.
Vehicle manufacturers currently manufacture the internal combustion engines, transmissions and major powertrain components. It accounts for a large part of their capital investment, technology base, and value add to the end product. If they don't manufacture the comparable parts of the electric vehicle, they become much smaller companies reduced to assembling vehicles from parts made by others.
> The automaker says that by 2020, the factory will be shipping out 35GWh of cells and 50GWh of packs per year.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/panasonic-to-pour-billions-of-...
"Its projected capacity for 2018 is 50 (GWh)/yr of battery packs, and its final capacity upon completion was, as of May 2016, planned to be 150 GWh/yr of battery packs.[39] This would enable Tesla to produce 1,500,000 cars per year."
But after this quote, they failed to verify the initial numbers, so maybe there is some whitewashing of those facts?
In 2018 the numbers changed to 100GWh, but it wasn't clear if it was only for cars or all. And now nobody knows. But the point is that the outrage came with the 150Gwh quote from 2016.
Here's a 38 pound battery pack that can allegedly source 800 amps (briefly), with a nominal voltage of 60.8. That's crazy. You could run a car off of about three of these. It wouldn't go very far, but still. It's kind of the exact opposite of the Tesla approach, which is to use cells with low-ish power density, but to make up for it by using huge battery packs.
https://www.evwest.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=4&prod...
PC & Server markets have been flat or declining for the last 5 years, so the DRAM demand is more or less constant (probably propped up by laptop sales).
Maybe they'll start following a boom/bust cycle once the market becomes mature, but considering how much we need to invest in renewables paired with energy storage, thats not going to be for at least a few decades.
Though they must have the cylindrical too, since LG is currently making the cells for the Model 3 in China before Tesla starts their own production there.
Top of the list: GameStop, followed by Bed Bath & Beyond.
Ford already saw the writing on the wall and gave up on making cars altogether.
I do agree however that the government should not have bailed them out. Their suppliers would have turned to other automakers, and their assets would have been bought up by other companies and put to better use. The GM brand really isn't worth much (it might even have negative value), so bailing it out, while in the short-term interest of the people working there, was not good in the long term for the nation overall. They failed because of their own choices, and should have been allowed to die.
It is a tricky technical problem though. Aerodynamics are not valued in trucks but would be required for an EV. Trucks have low beds and big engines, which is very non-ideal for batteries. Putting the batteries in the front is bad for driveability. Putting them in the normal skateboard spot raises the bed. The huge leftover space where the engine was is a big part of the look, but it's so high up that it would be hard to use as a frunk, very bad for aero, and increase the cost and size of the truck for no good reason.
There are good reasons the telsa truck looks like it does- the low nose avoids the problems with normal pickups without making it look like a cabover. The cover in the back allows them to have a deeper bed even though they had to raise it a bunch to put in batteries. There aren't many concepts of what a pickup without a giant, long hood would look like.
American car companies seem to have been reluctant to put EV engines in trucks for exactly those same sorts of marketing and bragging rights. "Guys" know how to "compare sizes" when it comes to wacky ICE engine numbers and descriptors like V8 and "ultra boosted turbocharged", but no one is actually really paying attention to physics or day-to-day commute reality. To announce that they were finally going to build an electric F-150, Ford pulled a marketing stunt of "towing a train" with it, because they felt they needed some way to brag about how powerful it was that looked interesting for ads.
Meanwhile Rivian is the interesting EV truck company not enough people are currently paying attention to.
Tesla's truck looks as ridiculous as it does for its own reasons of wanting to look futuristic and gather PR attention. They could have picked a more "traditional" form factor if they wanted (look at Rivian's projects or Ford using a traditional F-150 look), but they as much wanted to do their own version of "we can tow a train with it", albeit in this case it was probably more "we remembered Blade Runner was set in 2019 and were sad there weren't enough dystopian looking futuristic car models on the road like we were all promised".
People I talk to say that it looks "tiny" and toy-like. Not so much ugly. Also, fun to drive.
Maybe they can beef up the look a bit -- this Hyundai Kona EV is the same size, but looks better (the SUV look may appeal to GM buyers): https://www.consumerreports.org/hybrids-evs/2019-hyundai-kon...