Electric Cars and Batteries: How Will the World Produce Enough? | Hacker News Reader

Electric Cars and Batteries: How Will the World Produce Enough?

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26 pointsinfodocket59 comments

By changing what "enough" means. Provide easy access to other/better means of mobility and then we can have fewer cars in total.

Love that whole “décroissance” concept and all those pushing it… Let’s skip the extra steps and just become Amish while we’re at it.

The solution to modern problems shouldn’t ever be “less”. It ought the be more!

Maybe the solution is “more” pedestrian focused zoning and public transit

I think they mean in the sense you shouldn’t need to drive everywhere for everything. Or possibly there could be a system to share or rent electric cars so you don’t need to own one.

We have finite resources on this planet. At a certain point we're gonna have a hard time finding the materials needed for things. Putting those resources into shared infrastructure like public transit means a more efficient use of those materials to benefit more people. A city bus can hold 42 people and uses far less resources and street space than 42 personal vehicles.

We live on a finite planet. "More" can't last forever. That why people talk about degrowth. Growth is unsustainable on our planet. Either we degrow with control, or we collapse.

I suggest you play with the recently added timeline feature on Google Maps: notice how close we are as a species to a bacteria colony in a Petri dish. The forest areas of the world are especially impressive. You can see "mold" spreading on them at exponential speed.

So much this! Electric cars also take up the same amount of space and don't solve traffic. Plus they use so much more resources with less efficiency of moving people. Making them self driving and fast comes into conflict with pedestrians and cyclists in dense urban environments. Would rather see high speed electric trains for long distances and trolleys, light rail, busses, and bike lanes for getting around the city.

A lot of comments here about the need for more public transportation or other transportation options I think come from projecting one’s personal lifestyle on the rest of the country. Property in dense walkable urban areas is expensive and transporting anything more than yourself and some personal items is difficult. For most of the population and especially those with families or who’s occupation requires it personal vehicles will be the status quo in the US for the foreseeable future.

The lightbulb was one invention, but what changed the world, was the lightbulb making machine. So a style of battery that can be manufactured with high speed, efficiency and low waste.

Some solid state battery technologies promise this. Potentially a lot easier to make. Solventless dry electrode are some keywords.

On the other hand, regular li-ion is already quite scaled, proven and entrenched, so maybe the solution turns out to be incremental changes to those processes. Multiple companies have tried to leapfrog to solid state but have canceled or delayed their plans. With large scale mass production, don't underestimate the power of path dependency. These supply chains and manufacturing methods have inertia.

New financial methods probably will also happen with personal cars, as the investment cost goes up but running and maintenance down. Also alternative ways to move around. Taxis, scooters, robotaxis - all make more sense with electrics. Maybe some tunnels for electric vehicles. They're building light rail a lot in my country, and new Chinese electric buses have started to appear en masse. Air quality should improve a lot.

If you think about, is buying a car with a huge battery good for the environment? Maybe instead of mostly sitting on the driveway, those batteries could have been applied to supplanting diesel in an electric bus. Or coal or gas in a grid storage system, together with solar and wind.

The article is about what raw materials may be in short supply as the world transitions to electric vehicles. Lithium-based batteries are expected to remain dominant as they are very efficient and so much know-how exist about them. The world is not expected to run out of lithium as existing reserves will cover the demand for many decades to come. Also, the reserves are likely to expand to meet demand. Especially if the cost of lithium increases. Cobalt, apparently, is the real bottleneck and most of it is mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo under unsafe working conditions. Fortunately, researchers have invented alternative lithium battery chemistries that doesn't require cobalt but are still as efficient as them. Batteries without nickel is also being researched but those are further in the future. Recycling is still more expensive than mining raw materials. Making recycling cheaper would make the shortage problem easier to manage.

This is a lot of trouble to go to just to avoid building a grocery store within walking distance.

People in the suburbs have to walk a mile just to get out of their neighborhood. And hundreds of millions of Americans live in these suburbs.

I think what the parent is suggesting is that we shouldn't be doomed to continue to make this same mistake.

I just want to do one (big) round of grocery shopping a week. I drive 15 min past 3 smaller grocery stores to get to the one with a decent size/selection/prices.

I wouldn’t want to have a large grocery store much closer because of the amount of traffic it generates. As I see it, almost all shopping and commerce is much better in walkable areas, but groceries is one of few things I want a huge store for, and I’m ready to drive some distance to it.

How can you buy groceries once a week and have fresh food? Do you only eat out of boxes of processed food?

Milk lasts a week, meat lasts 2 weeks (and only gets better closer to the end!). The very few things that go bad in less than 7 days (e.g. fresh fish) I just plan so I eat that the first few days after shopping and eat meat later and so on. Bread I typically pick up more times during the week or keep frozen. You can do clever things like buy fruit like bananas with different levels of ripeness so they don’t all go brown at the same time.

A week is a really short time compared to how long most food lasts.

I think Tesla's "battery day" from last year addressed almost all these concerns.

Do people not realize how much extra capacity is already in the system? Let's take a look at Ontario:

https://www.ieso.ca/power-data

Without doing actual calculus, let's eye ball: how many kilometers of range is there if you ran the system at peak? Peak demand is 22GW, baseline is 14, sum the differences for each hour. That's how much power we could be supplying, but is not being used up. In Ontario, that's about 100GWh per day. Model 3 uses up 75KWh for 500km, That's 1.3 million fully charged sedans for a population of 14 million, or 50km per inhabitant per day.

Yes, this is an unrealistic scenario (where capacity is perfectly used up), but 50km per day per inhabitant is also insane and unrealistic.

So, the way we'll make the transition to EVs is that people will do their jobs, they'll upgrade lines, they'll make batteries, they'll make cars, consumers will buy new cars. It'll be fine, don't midwit this.

I would be more worried about producing enough battery chargers and upgrading the electrical infrastructure to support all the charging.

We already have quite a bit of extra capacity overnight while commercial and industrial are "offline".

My energy provider already allows a separate EV charging meter that charges a reduced rate if you charge at night. I suspect they are not alone in this.

I wish utilities were more open about this data. I would love to see if EVs have done a good job (or maybe too good a job*) flattening out the overnight demand curve. Back in 2012, Georgia Power evangelists were marketing this as a path to greater efficiency: The "base load" caters to minimum demand, and if the curve flattens out, the way I understand it, they can get rid of some of that temporary/spiking demand generation.

But that's not saying it's better for the environment. Here in georgia, my impression is that base load is coal generation, and the more expensive natural gas peaker plants are actually cleaner-burning? The desire for more data is to really just verify all these half-baked impressions in my brain.

Base load plants like thermal and nuclear are retiring, therefore the load shifting to night time provides less benefit over time. Ideally, load is shifted around renewable generation, with only demand that is most inelastic relying on battery storage, pumped storage, or natural gas.

Counter-intuitively, having more and cheaper batteries will help with that. Given cheap enough distributed battery storage gives you leverage on scaling back the current requirement that all electricy currently produced needs to be consumed at the same time.

So combining distributed generation (solar) with distributed energy storage can dial down the need for the currently planned, highly contested HVDC links by buffering the capacity and making the load less spiky.

I think there will be more spikes, assuming people go back to commuting. As soon as folk get home they will plug in their car and draw large amounts of power. This article is fairly informative: https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/sta...

If you are on 15 min based pricing and charging when at home is 5 - 20x more expensive vs at nought or during the day, I think it’s a matter of time before someone releases a software update for your charger or car that coordinates charging your car with optimal energy prices.

In NL you can already get prices by the 15 minutes and sometimes I get paid to use electricity on windy and sunny days. eg see easyenergy.com. You get the prices 24h in advance, so you can even plan optimally without the need for advanced predictions.

Agree, connected smart charging is the way to go. But the fact is if a car needs to be charged by the morning you are going to see spikes in the evening. I am rather ignorant about how often people with plug ins actually change, maybe you don't need to charge every evening.

I plug my car in whenever I get home, but it only ever charges between 1:30 and 8:30 am because thats when my electricity is cheapest, so thats when ive set it to charge.

It's crude but if what you're saying actually became an issue, you could solve it by doing the same thing and charging people more at those high demand times.

What's actually more likely to happen though is covered in the article you linked: cars hooked up to the grid will charge when there's excess electricity, and discharge when there's a demand for electricity. See page 8 here: https://www.chademo.com/wp2016/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/CH...

In my area in Norway there are now over 50% EVs. Not new sales but total cars. Since it's a "villa area" everybody charges at home.

No issues with the grid :)

Norway is awesome. Y’all could ban new fossil fuel vehicle sales tomorrow and it’s be a non issue.

Norway’s leading exports are fossil-fuel extraction.

Well, 20% of new sales are still fossils so you'd have some grumpy men in the outskirts but I think that would be it.

Even in the most northern county (Finnmark) the new sales for EVs are approaching 50%.

I have two EVs myself, and going back would be a hassle. Imagine having to go to the gas station every time you need to "fill up" :)

I imagine you're not regularly driving 500km in a day. :/

Not every day but once every two weeks I have a trip with about 500 km each way.

When I came home yesterday I had 4% left from 100% on my model x.

Still if I had to charge a bit it would have been included in my 20 minute "pee and hot dog break" on the trip.

The biggest issue I have with fast charging is that the car charges so fast I don't have time to eat properly.

The tax rate on a new car in Norway is over 50%. So you can expect a compact gasoline car to cost almost double what it would be in the USA, while EVs are exempt from the taxes.

Infrastructure is something that can be accomodated. Providers have a ~20 year window to ramp up production and infrastructure. I think the providers are well aware of the direction electric cars are headed and are able to plan for expansion. Charging stations will be taken care of by whoever sees the opportunity and is able to act on it.

The problem with batteries is far greater as the technology relies finite resources that are already stretched.

Load is already lower at night. Increasing grid peak load times at night first can provide substantial a buffer as well as total usage ramps up ~80,000,000 killowatt hours [1]

Do you have estimates on "100%" electric usage for today's currently miles drive on gas?

[1] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915

Several major carmakers produce cars that run on natural gas. I have yet to see a good comparison (eco & other) of EVs versus NG cars.

I wonder how the work-from-home revolution will play into this. If we don't need to commute there will be a huge change in our vehicle needs and transportation energy needs.

If only production and recycling of tires caused such fervor too...

Lithium is more abundant by far than lead. Global lead production is larger than current lithium production.

Cobalt and nickel are the issue.

It sounds like they're more concerned about Cobalt, Nickel, and child labor in the DRC.

My understanding is that there are already battery chemistries without these elements (LFP batteries) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_iron_phosphate_battery, and while they're currently not quite as good as the cobalt/nickel batteries, they're not far off and they're expected to improve (and they're mainstream enough that Tesla is already using them in some of their cars).

LFP does have somewhat lower energy density compared to nickel-based chemistries. But it also has excellent durability and and stability properties (long cycle life, no fires).

Not sure about cobalt and nickel, but child labor is a problem for all kinds of resources and not just those that go into batteries. This is a political problem not a technical problem.

> This is a political problem not a technical problem.

I don't think the article suggests otherwise. Political problems are part of the "how" of production.

Elon Musk said recently that he expects much of the car industry will move towards to lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4) cell chemistry, which contains no cobalt or nickel.

LiFePO4 has somewhat lower energy density compared to nickel-based chemistries, but significant cost advantages.

Tesla already uses LiFePO4 cells in many of its standard-range Model 3 vehicles.

For those downvoting this, here is the source:

"Tesla uses no cobalt in the iron phosphate packs and almost none in the nickel-based chemistries.

I think probably there is a long-term shift more in the direction of iron-based lithium-ion cells rather over nickel ... I think probably we'll see a shift -- my guess is probably to two-thirds iron, one-third nickel, or something on that order. And this is actually good because there's plenty of iron in the world. There's an insane amount of iron. But nickel, there's much less nickel, and there's way less cobalt."

- Elon Musk -- Chief Executive Officer

Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2021 Earnings Call Transcript: https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2021/07/27/te...

Slave labor. Literal slave labor in developing nations with absolutely no environmental controls, a humanitarian crisis on a scale never before seen.

This question need only be asked if we continue to insist that every person should have their own private vehicle to get places. Why can't we go back to trains instead and use bicycles or e-bikes for the last stretches?

Most car journeys are under 5 miles and are probably as fast on a bike if you account for the time spent sitting in traffic in the car. Any longer journey is happening along a highway which could just be replaced with rails that can bring trains of way more people at way greater speeds from place to place.

The good news is that the mass industrialisation of battery production for the auto industry will also mean cheaper batteries for e-bikes and other personal electric mobility vehicles.

Cars can carry much more than a bike, I can't do my grocery shopping with an e-bike.

Cars insulate you from the environment, heat, cold, rain etc. Bikes can leave you sweaty, freezing, or wet.

Rail is a complex solution. The UK has lots of rail but I'd do anything to avoid using it for anything other than day-trips. Commuting or depending on rail is a depressing experience. Granted the UK's rail network is Victorian but even with a modern infrastructure the challenges of running an efficient rail network are numerous. Some countries nail it, it's doable but I am skeptical that the UK could replace motorways with rail in any meaningful way.

I do all my groceries on a bike pretty easily. If you need to haul large loads, like gravel or cement or something, you can look into a cargo bike. Pushing a 1000+ kg car around by burning fuel is complete overkill for almost all journeys.

I've depended on rail and bike my whole life without getting depressed. The only thing that makes me sad is how many more cars and how much larger they are these days, causing more traffic, more pollution, and creating more danger for pedestrians and cyclists.

In some ways, rail is a lot simpler than cars and roads. You have one solution to serve everyone, rather than depending on many institutions to build cars, maintain roads, enforce traffic rules, etc. I've seen a pretty clear trend of worsening road quality, more disregard for rules and lack of consequence, and more wasteful vehicles as I've grown older. Instead we could have put all the resources that go into that system into one of more efficiency, comfort, and cleanliness and which worked for more people.

If you value your time, the convenience of a car cannot be beaten, especially for unplanned trips. Even most of those who ride buses aspire to own a car one day.

I would be absolutely delighted to use public transit to transport 250kgs of equipment, radios, drones, and firearms to a site after a natural disaster. I'm certain that will be possible.

There is absolutely no chance of a material shortage being a long term problem, even for the currently problematic cobalt.

No need to mention LFP, or spinel chemistries, which have neither cobalt, nor nickel as such, and will not be impacted by cobalt prices at all.

The problem is entirely the supply chain. 9 out of 10 cells today are made in China from Chinese components, which themselves are produced in China, from ores refined in China. And there are few suppliers, so they hold prices high.

Around 15-10 years ago, a lot of lithium batteries were manufactured literally in garages, with chemicals mixed in household buckets. Today, it's no way possible to outcompete the fully automated line with manual assembly, except probably for the biggest cell sizes.

There are less than 10 companies around the world with fully automated cell lines, and they set the prices, and largely the pace for the entire industry.

Makes you wonder who's really benefitting from this drive to switch to EVs.

They won't, this is half a massive con and the other half exuberant arrogance.

The only possibility is some type of breakthrough in storage density. We then have the issue of charging and the capacity on the grid.

Additionally, how well will this work when my rental properties parking is a gravel lot. If the charging situation is then figured out... How well does it preform in 30 below temeratures? Sometimes my car sits for several weeks or months how well will the cars handle this?

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