Toyota plans to be the first company to sell an EV with a solid-state battery
asia.nikkei.com
asia.nikkei.com
[1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.caranddriver.com/news/amp33...
500km = 310 miles. That's not even remotely twice the range of a Tesla. Heck, it's not even that much more than my Chevrolet Bolt gets.
Everything else about this sounds great, especially the charge times. That takes a lot out of the hassles of a long distance trip in an electric car. ~250 miles is a fine point for getting out, taking a restroom break, stretching legs etc. Get back and the car is all topped up? Sounds perfect.
The main problem here is that it's still dependent on Lithium, and we've really got to get off that.
> The electric vehicles being developed by Toyota will have a range more than twice the distance of a vehicle running on a conventional lithium-ion battery under the same conditions
and
> Because solid-state batteries use lithium, an element with limited global reserves, the government will assist in procuring the material.
It seems that Lithium will be the next oil crisis, especially if governments will be directly involved in the procurement...and I agree with parent, we must do better than Lithium. Perhaps good 'ol Hydrogen? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sP-ZPM0nKkk)
My understanding is that the biggest limitations with lithium battery recycling are the economics. Lead-acid batteries are already highly recyclable. Seems like as lithium gets harder to extract the economic forces will prioritize recyclable batteries.
" Just as economic factors can make the case for recycling batteries, they also make the case against it. Large fluctuations in the prices of raw battery materials, for example, cast uncertainty on the economics of recycling. In particular, the recent large drop in cobalt’s price raises questions about whether recycling Li-ion batteries or repurposing them is a good business choice compared with manufacturing new batteries with fresh materials. Basically, if the price of cobalt drops, recycled cobalt would struggle to compete with mined cobalt in terms of price, and manufacturers would choose mined material over recycled, forcing recyclers out of business. Another long-term financial concern for companies considering stepping into battery recycling is whether a different type of battery, such as Li air, or a different vehicle propulsion system, like hydrogen-powered fuel cells, will gain a major foothold on the electric-vehicle market in coming years, lowering the demand for recycling Li-ion batteries.
Battery chemistry also complicates recycling. Since the early 1990s when Sony commercialized Li-ion batteries, researchers have repeatedly tailored the cathode’s composition to reduce cost and to enhance charge capacity, longevity, recharge time, and other performance parameters.
Some Li-ion batteries use cathodes made of lithium cobalt oxide (LCO). Others use lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide (NMC), lithium nickel cobalt aluminum oxide, lithium iron phosphate, or other materials. And the proportions of the components within one type of cathode—for example, NMC—can vary substantially among manufacturers. The upshot is that Li-ion batteries contain “a wide diversity of ever-evolving materials, which makes recycling challenging,” says Liang An, a battery-recycling specialist at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Recyclers may need to sort and separate batteries by composition to meet the specifications of people buying the recycled materials, making the process more complicated and raising costs.
Battery structure further complicates recycling efforts. Li-ion batteries are compact, complex devices, come in a variety of sizes and shapes, and are not designed to be disassembled. Each cell contains a cathode, anode, separator, and electrolyte.
Cathodes generally consist of an electrochemically active powder (LCO, NMC, etc.) mixed with carbon black and glued to an aluminum-foil current collector with a polymeric compound such as poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF). Anodes usually contain graphite, PVDF, and copper foil. Separators, which insulate the electrodes to prevent short circuiting, are thin, porous plastic films, often polyethylene or polypropylene. The electrolyte is typically a solution of LiPF6 dissolved in a mixture of ethylene carbonate and dimethyl carbonate. The components are tightly wound or stacked and packed securely in a plastic or aluminum case.
Large battery packs that power electric vehicles may contain several thousand cells grouped in modules. The packs also include sensors, safety devices, and circuitry that controls battery operation, all of which add yet another layer of complexity and additional costs to dismantling and recycling.
All these battery components and materials need to be dealt with by a recycler to get at the valuable metals and other materials. In stark contrast, lead-acid car batteries are easily disassembled, and the lead, which accounts for about 60% of a battery’s weight, can be separated quickly from the other components. As a result, nearly 100% of the lead in these batteries is recycled in the US, far surpassing recycling rates for glass, paper, and other materials."
[0] https://cen.acs.org/materials/energy-storage/time-serious-re...
Compare that to polyethylene which consists of "chain links" with 4 hydrogen and 2 carbon. If you extract the raw elements of a random mixture of polyethylene and polylactic acid then you only get hydrogen, carbon and some oxygen, not neatly separated polyethylene and polylactic acid. Fossil fuels are a much cheaper source for carbon and hydrogen. There is also no shortage of oxygen on this planet. Recycling a mix of two types of pure plastic is already an impossible task. Once you consider that there is actually no pure plastic on this planet because of pigmentation and additives you realize that the problem is far harder than "impossible".
"Battery costs have already fallen and are expected to drop further. We assume a 35% fall in battery pack prices by 2025, resulting in what started off as a luxury car market trend becoming more mainstream. Moreover, as demand for graphite, lithium, cobalt, manganese and copper rise, auto and battery industries will be forced to look for alternative materials making investments in certain commodities or commodity-related sectors one of the most volatile parts of our smart mobility theme." [0]
They are already assuming prices drop 35% in another 4-5 years for battery packs and still are saying auto and battery companies will be forced to look elsewhere…
What do you have to share?
[0] https://www.ubs.com/global/en/wealth-management/chief-invest...
Or more economically with a lower environmental impact:
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201124-how-geothermal-l...
Yeah, I'm more interested in other salt batteries for thermal storage with high delta_k combined with efficient thermoelectric couples but it seems like big money is behind all things Li electrochemical for the forseable future.
There are lots of companies working on lithium extraction from clay salts, and if that is cracked, the amount is literally unlimited.
In fact, once you start locking into batteries, by far the biggest problem is actually nickel, not lithium. Nickel is of course already a large market because of stainless steel and already having issues with growth. Once we add absurd amounts of battery production for cathodes, the nickel is by far the biggest bottleneck.
Getting away from nickel would be the real win condition in terms of price and sustainability. Lithium mining is actually relatively reasonable environmentally speaking. Nickel mining however is growing in Indonesia where they use very bad process and using coal power to do it.
It doesn't help that we are already at 80-90% nickel in the cathode, and likely soon go to almost 100%. In comparison, lithium is only 1-2% of the battery, while nickel is around 50% depending on what and how we measure.
There is a reason Elon Musk tweeted out 'Mine more nickel' and not 'Mine more lithium'.
Battery tech aside, how does any auto maker plan to get 10 minute charge time when just getting they much power through a cable is a huge challenge.
By comparison a normal 200HP engine at 30% efficiency is producing 667kw of waste heat into the air with a tiny percentage of that going out the exhaust pipe.
An average ICE is only producing 200HP at a specific RPM, for short period of time. Red-lining any sedan while being stationary will probably overheat the engine pretty quickly, as the on-board radiator fan either electric or mechanical will not provide enough airflow. They are designed to be cooled by incoming air while driving.
With electronic ignition, you usually have a way to limit max RPM by stopping ignition, so you're not producing work (and heat) either way.
This isn't really a fair comparison. Cooling capacity goes up with the temperature difference to ambient. It's a lot harder to cool 8kw of heat at 20C above ambient compared to 8kw at 200C above ambient.
The majority of that heat is removed via the radiator which uses a liquid coolant which should not exceed 105C even when the outside temperature is 45C so that’s only 60C of wiggle room.
Though it’s a fair point batteries have lower maximum temperatures, at worst reducing charging rates when outside temperatures exceed ~(110C or 43C) is hardly deceptive or particularly relevant to most people. High end cars could even use the car’s AC in extreme situations.
Just to be clear, you'd ordinarily have the cells themselves in series or a bunch of parallel groups in series to reach high voltages, and as far as the charger is concerned it's just one big battery with a single positive and a single negative terminal.
On the other hand, if you're suggesting balance charging where you have an individual connection with the charger between each cell, that's not really practical to do with large batteries because the current would be very high and the voltages very low, which, as far as cabling goes, is the worst-case scenario. Charging a single cell at 100 amps and low voltage requires basically the same size cable as charging a bunch of cells in series at 100 amps and high voltage. If you need a big, thick cable for each cell, that gets unwieldy very quickly.
Another unpractical option is to switch the battery into a single parallel group during charging and charge the whole group as if it was a single low-voltage high-amp-hour cell. That's unpractical for the same reason; low-voltage charging is an inefficient way to move energy around. Also, switching from series to parallel would require a lot of high-current contactors (basically, electro-mechanical relays), which are kind of expensive.
A quick search tells me that 1000 kcmil wire is rated for 450 amps [1].
Another quick search finds that reasonably sized 1000 kcmil rated for 15000 volts are available and reasonably sized for a vehicle charger [2].
[1] http://wiresizecalculator.net/wiresizechart.htm
[2] (note that kcmil and mcm mean the same things) https://www.lighting-gallery.net/gallery/displayimage.php?po...
I can't bend a 24mm-diameter solid copper rod with my bare hands. Can you?
Going stranded enough to feel even remotely like a "cord" or "cable" will bloat that diameter far, far beyond 24mm.
I used to work with ~9mm diameter solid copper and even for that I treated it like EMT and used task-specific benders to shape it.
1000 kcmil cable x2 +ground and insulation is going to be one beefy cable. I’m not saying it can’t be done, just that it’s not a trivial problem to solve. Add to this an environment with a wide range of ambient temperatures and untrained humans sure to be yanking on stuff.
I just would like to see some details on exactly how these claims will be achieved rather than some marketing puff piece. And Toyota is not alone here, GM pulled the same with the hummer EV and “watts to freedom” marketing buzz with no explanation of what that even means.
http://www.ecswire.com/mmspecs/Specsheets/Belden/leadWireSel...
So you don’t actually need so big a cable. You also wouldn’t normally be using MV cables for a car charger — getting 15kV safely through a car charger terminal sounds like an interesting challenge. But 450A at 1kV doesn’t sound like a particularly big deal.
Keep in mind that there’s potentially a free factor or 2 available. I don’t know how actual DC chargers work, but I imagine you could supply -1kV and 1kV relative to ground without too much trouble, resulting in effectively 2kV while only operating at 1kV relative to ground. AIUI you trigger rather more onerous NEC rules if you get to much higher voltages relative to ground.
It's not a general safety code.
It's 80% about making sure buildings don't burn down, and 20% about peoples expectations about what parts of their house can shock them if a fork is stuck into them. That's it.
Regardless of how anyone may feel about the NEC, this is a field installation that needs to follow the rules. So those big cables will be sized per the NEC ampacity tables, and they will follow NEC rules based on their operating voltage.
[0] I randomly stumbled on one under construction.
The contacts are on the roof of the vehicle and the charger drops down onto them.
I'm not sure how that adapts for smaller vehicles, but they aren't starting from nothing.
Since this thing is meant not to charge a single bus, but rather a fleet of buses, it's almost certainly not safe for the general public to get anywhere near it.
This thing is in the same class as transmission line transformers.
https://new.siemens.com/global/en/products/energy/medium-vol...
The 450 Kw charger can be setup standalone, it doesn't have to be in a charging depot. It charges 1 bus at a time. The design is focused on installation at locations along a bus route where the bus pauses. If the bus automatically charges during the pause, it can operate with a smaller, cheaper battery.
https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1125436_the-most-powerf...
I'm not an electrical engineer; I don't know what the proper cable size is for this application with all the correct safety margins, but it doesn't seem too terribly unreasonable as long as the voltages are pretty high and the battery can tolerate it. If heat is a problem, then water cooled cables can help.
... for a very brief period of time.
Please don't use horsepower as a measure of electrical power, it's misleading. All the stuff around us that is commonly measured in horsepower is fossil-fuel-burning equipment with fossil-fuel-levels of energy density at any given cost point. They make hard things seem easy because they don't have to be rechargeable.
With electric motors it seems to be at least fairly common to refer to an electric motor's mechanical power output in kilowatts rather than horsepower. In a lot of ways that makes sense, but horsepower is a unit that more people are familiar with.
This is not an issue because, even if a small wire is used, the efficiency loss is not all that considerable. Energy is cheap, so liquid cooling the cables and dissipating i.e. 5% of the energy into the conductor is a straightforward trade-off.
Compare that trivially to petrol, which costs petrol (diesel) to move to petrol stations, and it's actually not that surprising.
Additionally, there has recently been a lot of investment into EV chargers with built-in batteries that charge at slower rates when a vehicle is not present, and operate independently from the grid once a vehicle is connected. This answers the obvious question about infrastructure to deliver the power required.
Two such chargers:
https://freewiretech.com/products/dc-boost-charger/
https://insideevs.com/news/398348/eon-volkswagen-fast-chargi...
Is this even going to be required in most cases? Charging at that speed is only really useful for road trips where you're sitting there waiting for charging to complete so you can go. If you're charging while the car is parked at home for the night, what does it matter if it's ten minutes or ten hours?
So then you only really need the very fast chargers at truck stops on the highway and the like, and then couldn't those chargers just be given a hefty grid connection? The high voltage lines already run parallel to major highways.
Increasing I^2R heat loss by 5% doesn't let you shrink the cable much. You go from "humongously phat cable" to "really phat cable". The problem remains.
Also remember that the cost of the petroleum distribution infrastructure is shared between in-town drivers and road-trip drivers. If these "fast chargers" are only supposed to be used by people who need more than one batteryful of driving in a given day (i.e. people on a road trip), the budget available to pay for the refueling infrastructure is going to be tiny compared to the petroleum infrastructure. EVs will simply never "catch on" for non-commuter use if we go down that road.
Also note that 1000V isn't an upper bound; many vehicles under design now will be ~1000V, and I expect that to push up to at least 1500V within the next few years.
Imagine we used 35mm2 at 0.55 Ohm/km and we have 2 poles. If the charging cable is 3m including inside the device, that’s 2x3 = 6m. That’s 6.6 mOhms total, so I2R on that at 500A is only 1.65kW, which is nothing.
As for chargers with batteries, I don’t see how that’s viable. 75kWh would require each charger to have 6 powerwalls just to store 75kWh. If you wanted to dispense that amount of power in 10 minutes you would need 60 powerwalls per charger. Maybe a battery could be designed to provide higher power output, but it’s going to have the same issues that car will have when attempting to charge at a fast rate. Even with storage in the charger how quickly can it recover? Tesla superchargers run non-stop on busy travel holiday. Relying on a onsite battery would do no good on high demand days.
I admit I’m rather impressed that the connectors can handle this amount of current, but they don’t seem to have a problem with it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_physics
It is not opposite to "aqueous".
E.g. "solid state relay" is a silicon alternative to an electromagnet moving a switch, both of which are devoid of liquid.
A full recharge in 10 minutes means it will be charging at 6C, which is impressive.
I'm not a battery expert, but in a few years I guess their main competition will be whatever Tesla manages to accomplish with lithium ion (assuming they don't switch to something completely new), and lithium sulfur if someone figures out how to manufacture it in a way that's durable and cheap. Maybe there are other promising alternatives I'm not aware of (possibly including other solid state chemistries).
https://electrek.co/2020/12/08/tesla-co-founder-jb-straubel-...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGnPSkXKb0I
Volkswagen will be using it eventually.
The reason is because sometimes new technologies takes a while to develop and commercialise.
But the same argument could have been made about solar power, batteries, smartphones etc. a decade or two ago and now they are changing the world.
> Because solid-state batteries use lithium
So this new solid state battery from Toyota will still use lithium.
I guess it’s not common knowledge that lithium-ion is not a solid state battery. But rather, it is a liquid solution.
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a33435923/toyota-solid-sta...
toyota has a solid state battery that has a low cycle lifetime. it sounds like they need a breakthrough, thus the tentative, low volume production target for 2025.
The advantage they have is _at least they're on the road_, but, it's going to be tough even going in as the incumbent against a breakthrough and true differentiator like this - if Elon was 100% sober and on point on Battery Day, they still have a shot of not getting _too_ far behind for 3-5 years. But they'll need to figure out how to get to solid state long term without the associated IP or research. :/
nostradamus at this point, don't take it literally, but seriously: You can imagine they'd start looking like Blackberry - niche success among affluent users, ultimately, a stepping stone to the iPhone that'll revolutionize the industry wide, and hopefully Waymo decides to build 1P cars by 2030 and buys out Tesla for $80 billion.
It's always seemed clear to me that what would kill Tesla dead is Toyota moving into EVs in a big way - the reputation alone would carry them for a good long while.
That they finally fulfilled a big part of their mission statement and got the biggest (single) Auto Manufacture to develop the battery tech to pivot their entire lineup to EV.
> It would be bad. But honestly Battery Tech to me is "I'll believe it when I see it".
Agreed. GM invested in the Badger to compete with the Cybertruck only for everything to fall apart at the last minute, I want to see this tech proven and on the road in the 100s of thousand of Camrys and Corollas they sell a year before I think it can pose a threat to Tesla. But maybe a merger happens?
The factory in Fremont used to be a Toyota factory after all. And Toyota's CEO has a 'real chef and kitchen' [0] and has its sight on them.
0: https://electrek.co/2020/11/06/toyota-ceo-goes-after-tesla-e...
Toyota has shipped fifteen million battery-powered cars and they started two decades before Tesla. I seriously doubt they were adrift until Tesla finally inspired them.
When they did fully electric RAV4 EV, they got the batteries from, wait for it, Tesla.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_RAV4_EV
Per Musk, when original RAV4 EV contract expired, Toyota wanted more batteries but Tesla refused because at the time they were battery limited even for their own cars and the planned Model 3.
Toyota apparently was incapable of doing the battery themselves so they terminated RAV4 EV production.
Volkswagen will be getting their solid-state batteries from QuantumScape: https://electrek.co/2020/12/08/tesla-co-founder-jb-straubel-...
BMW will be getting their solid-state batteries from Solid Power: https://insideevs.com/news/438664/solid-power-all-solid-stat...
That’s a long time to catch up to Tesla, who can pull billions from capital markets on a whim.
The real issue for electric is that a 300 mile electric costs more than $35k because the world wide battery production capacity is limited.
If solid state batteries are easier to produce and the price comes down faster than lithium ion then there might be a crossover point by 2030. Until then, this probably means cooler high end sports cars (formula E?)
This is just the vaporware of the week. Next week there will be another “Tesla killer.”
Even if true, Toyota would still have to up its game on a number of other fronts.
In the short run, there just isn't enough battery manufacturing capacity for everyone who wants one to buy an electric car with two or three hundred plus miles of range. Toyota can fill some of that demand but probably not all of it.
Why'd you buy a re-badged BMW if you are worried about re-sale value and not just buy a MK4 Supra as an investment that holds its Toyota tax value as well as the Landcruisers have?
EV is finally making even the non-believers aware that the paradigm shift is happening, what I fail to see is how well those ICE to EV conversions will be. Much of the excitement of a ICE is how it makes you feel from the sound to the vibration you feel, when its all dialed in its an inexplicable feeling that satisfies all 5 senses.
You get none of that driving an EV, I did 1000 miles in a performance Model 3 when it first came out and while it was fun, and you have to have a different approach to driving a car with 100% torque at 0 RPM.
The raw feeling of man and machine coming into one wasn't there at all, although it was a lot of fun to drive, which is why I'm giving up my collection of ICE stuff besides my first car and bike and getting a Cybertruck.
I'm a diehard Pajero/Montero fan and have owned several, but this year was my fixations swan song as I had to deal with the delays from COIVD but also the fact that after Nissan's acquisition of Mitsubishi meant its entire back catalog of parts were a liability and they stopped making them in Japan so they simply stopped producing them in any significant numbers for the vehicles still on the road. I can give you a long list of reasons of why that makes sense from a supply chain/logistics standpoint, but the short answer is this too will eventually happen to you car.
I worked for BMW before, and its EV program was at best a plaything, but given the amount of progress made by Tesla and now Toyota I fear you may be in a situation where they simply stop producing parts and you'll have to buy broken chassis to just be able to maintain one.
In other words, have your fun and keep it as a relic of the 20th Century, or sell it now and get some of you investment back. Get an LFA and keep low miles on it if you want to buy a Toyota that will rise in value if you want something other than a MK4 Supra, I think that will be worth way more in the future and probably sought out by Saudi Shieks as a plaything where gas will still be pennies.
0: https://www.autoblog.com/2020/12/03/japan-considers-ban-on-i...
Disclaimer: I can't afford a Roadster II.
I've had enough high HP cars and super sport bikes on the street to know they're a waste of time and energy 90% of the time.
I'll take a Cybertruck and haul my car/bike (the only ones I'm keeping) to the track when I want to get that excitement back and use them to their full potential; both have amazing power/weight ratios that rival many modern'ish super cars--the bike will outrun a Ferrari Enzo in a straight and will embarrass one in the turns, don't ask me how I know.
Perhaps I'll even buy a shifter kart before I buy another 'sports car' ICE or EV ever again.
But, if I had to choose and money were no object it would definitely be the Plaid Version Roadster 2, I'm excited to see what Nissan comes out with (if they survive) but other than that not I'm really interested in EV sports cars for the street enough to care.
I used to run the indoor K1 karts for fun and to keep fit and sharp in the off-season, and its just not the same.
I wonder if this is more of a Telsa thing than an electric car thing? I test-drove a dual-motor model-3, and while the acceleration was very impressive, it felt kind of boring to drive in general. Not that I'm some automotive connoisseur, I've been mostly driving boring stick-shift Hondas for the last couple decades.
(My current project is to convert a Mazda RX-8 I picked up cheap with a bad engine to electric. I thought about getting a Tesla model 3, but in the end it wasn't quite the car I wanted, and was more expensive than I wanted to pay, and too locked down. If I can get the RX-8 going, it'll have a lot less range and not any better in terms of storage space, but it should at least be fun to drive and I can configure it however I like.)
And do what with it?
I'm a Nissan guy, and only reason to ever get a Mazda was to be able to bounce a 13b/20b off redline on the track for the ~30k before it needed a rebuild, why would an EV RX8, arguable the least interesting of all the RX chassis be a good platform?
I'm not trying to discourage you as I think it seems like a cool thing to play with if you have the time/money, but what adjustability would you have not found with a 13b/20b in it?
I could have looked for an RX-7, but those seem to be a lot more expensive and harder to find, and besides I like the look of the RX-8. I also wanted modern safety features and a vehicle that's relatively new. The RX-7 is about 200 pounds lighter, but it's also a 2-seater so less room to haul stuff. (Mazda also made a rotary pickup which would also be an awesome conversion, but those are much rarer.)
Really, the main decision point for me was whether to get an RX-8, or go with a Miata, which is about a thousand pounds lighter. In some ways, the Miata might have been a better choice, but I live in a rainy climate and sometimes want to transport large objects. Also, used Miatas tend to be either thirty years old or expensive, so I went with the RX-8.
As for what I'll do with it? Mostly just use it to get around town, like any other car. I've never owned anything that one could plausibly describe as a "sports car", and I don't know if I'll do any stereotypical sports car things like drive it up and down windy roads or take it to a track. It should at least perform decently. The motor I'm putting in it is about 120 HP, which is a lot less than the 230 or so HP that the rotary could put out, but the torque is about the same and I get full torque from 0 rpm. I'm keeping the 6-speed and clutch, so that should go a long way towards not needing a super-powerful motor.
The hard part of the project so far has been building the battery enclosures for about 450 pounds of LiFePO4 cells, a little over half of which go in the engine compartment, and the rest go under the car where the gas tank was. It'll be a little heavier and probably have the weight a little forward of where it was originally, but it should be at least close.
Tl;dr: RX-8s are really cheap if you don't need a working engine, and if you're going to convert a sedan you might as well go with something with something more fun than a Toyota Corolla or whatever.
> and I've been concerned its value will tank
A car is a depreciating asset.