Millions of electric cars are coming. What happens to all the dead batteries?
science.org
science.org
For Europe: https://cleantechnica.com/2022/05/17/hydrovolt-the-largest-b... "the Hydrovolt factory is now in commercial operation and expects to recycle 12,000 tons of depleted batteries a year initially, rising to 70,000 tons by 2025 and 300,000 tons by 2030. 12,000 tons is enough to handle all depleted batteries from electric vehicles on the road in Norway today."
Recycling currently does not happen on a larger scale, because most batteries are not EOL, not because is does not work.
On the other hand, there’s so much oil flowing that we have periods where the biggest problem is finding where we can store it. Amounts of plastic needed for general consumer uses are often measured in pennies (or less) so there hasn’t been any drive to even consider recycling from the producer side.
But it’s also possible huge lithium deposits will be found that lower prices, or we’ll find a cheaper alternative battery that makes disposability a more obvious solution than recycling. But as another data point, lead acid car batteries are generally recycled. Lithium batteries are very different, but they’ll likely face similar motivations due to cost.
Lead acid batteries are easy to recycle because there is exactly one chemistry used in car batteries. LiIon is not yet as standard.
In the case of batteries we just want to pull out the elements, which are impossible to destroy by processing.
A problem with plastics is that it is hard to create high quality plastics from recycled materials. And there is only a limited demand for park benches made from low quality recycled plastics.
This is different with metals where you can "just" melt everything and separate the metals. This is probably less expensive than mining the materials in the first place where the ore contains a much lower share of the metals. Also a car contains a few hundred kilograms of recyclable materials and there is a very limited number of different models. So there is an economic incentive.
Also, destroying the landscape to "save the climate" still ends with destroying the environment. Wind and solar aren't energy dense enough to justify the damage they cause.
What species already inhabits that land or space that will be re-purposed?
What happens to old solar panels and wind turbines after they reach their end of life?
What happens to the places that supply the raw materials for solar panels?
How many batteries are needed to make up for solar and wind variance? What is required to make those batteries? How much land do they require?
Will batteries, solar panels, and wind turbines all continue to work at the same level as other power sources in times of extreme weather?
In the case of Norway, apparently they produce ~90% of their electricity from hydro. Good strategy if there’s lots of spots in your country for hydro electric dams, pretty difficult to replicate if not.
How would you separate the metals after melting them? My understanding is that you can extract some high valuable metals via different processes, but otherwise it's technologically and economically not feasible to separate molten metals.
These are actually two steps: Melt everything into the "Black Mass" and use Hydrometallurgy to extract the metals afterwards. I think https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XylDkcrJgTw gives a good overview (although the voice is somewhat hard to listen to).
Yes, and if you have a bunch of small pieces of different metals all mixed together, you can very carefully melt one, extract it, then the next, etc by gradually raising the temperature.
But if you take an alloy, e.g. bronze, you're combining ~2 metals of different melting points (copper ~1100C, and tin ~230C) to get essentially a new metal with a usually-middling melting point (bronze ~920-970C). Raising bronze to ~300C will not melt the tin out for you to collect. It's not just a surface area issue either, chopping it up into many tiny pieces / a powder won't melt more out and give you something to collect. None will. It'll all melt at bronze's temperature, and until then it all remains solid.
Similarly, if you melt bronze and then cool it down a bit, the copper won't solidify on its own. The whole solution will solidify around 950C. It's kinda like how salty water solidifies at a lower temperature - it's not that the water is freezing at -1C but the salt is not, that'd be a slush (and wouldn't make much sense anyway, salt is solid at room temperature). The solution behaves as a new "whole".
If you want to separate two alloyed metals, you generally have to chemically bind some to something else so it comes out of solution in a way you can capture. Then you can skim it off / extract it from the bottom / etc. One less-visually-obvious strategy is to just keep the alloy hot and exposed to the air, so some of it oxidizes and comes out as slag - that's chemical separation using oxygen. It works pretty well for gold, because unlike many metals gold does not oxidize.
You can also sometimes let the metals separate themselves by density by just letting it sit while melted..... but you'll be fighting against any internal currents set up by temperature differences, so it's difficult, imprecise, and slow to do in practice. But for some combinations and equipment it's feasible.
Here's a related Quora discussion: https://www.quora.com/If-you-smelted-a-varied-mix-of-scrap-m...
I don't think you can say the same for batteries. There is valuable and scarce material contained in batteries, and it seems likely that someone will find a way to make it happen.
Companies like Redwood Materials have publicly said they are already profitable (cash flow positive) if you remove their R&D and money they're using to expand to meet demand.
At this point, any aggressive direction change from humanity has to be thought through well about environmental impact - of course no one has the incentive to do that and hence the gov has to pick it up.
EV is probably being justified as "loss leader" in terms of environmental impact - it has to be net bad for the environment right now, but eventually better for the environment. That's not good enough.
In general, these trends offer nice openings for new businesses to be a first-mover and grow quickly (these days, businesses are not even making profits in the short-term).
But EV batteries are much less spread out than cigarette butts. The waste is generated in predictable places like mechanics shops, and doesn't involve casual consumer decisions like whether to litter or recycle a pop bottle.
The people who sold the inputs to make fresh plastic didn't want you to believe that, because it would affect their sales.
The people making stuff with the plastic didnt want to pay for it if their competitors didn't, so they waited on a law.
Group number 1 stopped such a law in any country where people who sell the input for plastics have a lot of political power.
Unless the people who produce lithium become powerful enough to force people to give them money for no good reason, it'll get recycled.
A battery may loose 40% capacity. That's bad for a car, but perfectly fine for stationary electricity storage.
Also, EU has "End of Life Vehicles Directive" since 2000:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_of_Life_Vehicles_Directive
Core charges as you're describing them don't work for items the manufacturers can't economically recondition and therefore don't want back.
Tesla is also recycling batteries, but their cars are only 10 years old and so they don't get many back (because the batteries are working pretty well after 10 years). Don't compare the terrible lifespan of leaf batteries with cars with decent battery management technology.
The average monthly high temperatures in Las Vegas by comparison are 104f in July, 103f in Aug, and 100f in June. https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/usa/las-vegas/climate
Critically for battery degradation high temperatures when in actual use get well above ambient temperature. So, if you avoid driving in the heat of the day things can look better than local climate suggests.
That 116 degree day last year... x_x I have central A/C and it couldn't keep up. It was 85 degrees in the house and it sucked. Can't imagine all the poor sods that didn't even have A/C. I probably would have just sat in the bath tub all day.
And then last month when we had a 75 degree Thursday followed by snow on Monday...
I just want some nice weather so I can take my new mountain bike to Gateway Green.
For me it was a “drive into town, and back, and back in, and back” situation where I didn’t have the luxury of charging for hours at a time.
That's just one of the main issues. EVs would be very nice if they cost nearly the same of ICEs for similar distance ranges and target only retirees and teleworkers witch means some who do not/can not use a car every day and IF they own a small domestic p.v. so can wait a day to recharge from the Sun instead of the grid. Not more, so far. Honestly IMVHO in this scenario:
- cities will only be able to offer public transportation GRID-CONNECTED (witch means rails/filobus), forbidding private transportation, just some inter-modal hubs for those who came from outside and working vehicles only (emergency services, plumbers, builders etc);
- outside probably the cheapest and most effective option for private transport for both individuals and whole society will be via flying cars to cut distance effects and roads needs (with their regular hyper-expensive upkeep). A substantial revolution we already see possible but still too costly for too many [1]
witch means in turn: ~90% or so of the people unable to travel autonomously anymore for mere practical economical reasons, concentrated in "developed-Asian-like" urban settlements and a wealthy 10% living a good life in large Rivieras... I really do not see, given the input, different possible outcomes for an all-EVs scenario and I'm curios how someone can prove the contrary.
I still not have an EV simply because for my use case and their price they are too costly compared to classic diesel cars, but I do have a small p.v. with lithium storage: after an year of VERY LITTLE usage (minimum SOC if grid is operational 90% only if tomorrow meteo is good enough) I've already lost 1% of the total battery capacity, EVs since they get far more stress (accelerations AND sudden deceleration witch led to high ripple on battery side) will offer less endurance (mildly confirmed by some neighbors with moderately new Teslas and a Renault Zoe). Surely IF we will not being able to source diesel/petrol there are no other options, but that's a different story with a far larger impacts since from oil we get much more than fuels AND anything we get from oil&gas, from sweeteners/flavours to lubricants and plastics and fertilizers will be far more expensive if oil/gas is used only for them and so all that use them will be far more expensive as well... Not very optimist, so to speak...
[1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/02/uk-first-airport-elec...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/12/technology/flying-cars.ht...
http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20201111000877
https://tass.com/economy/1395363
...
This is simply wrong and totally incorrect. No one doing it "on scale" because there simply isn't enough recyclable material yet, not because it's non-profitable. (In fact the small lithium ion battery recycling companies are quite profitable already and they haven't even scaled up.) Most EVs are way too new to hit the recycle stream yet. Almost all EVs built are still driving today and on the roads and the ones getting recycled are the ones with the smallest batteries. This is a completely non-issue.
> flying cars
Flying cars will never happen because of noise and safety reasons.
Lithium batteries are heavily used outside EVs since more than a decade, witch means we have many "recyclable material" since years, did you know just how many UPSes we sent to landfills any years? How many used mobile phones? ... So sorry, no that's propaganda, not reality, in reality the small companies you mentions are just small startups hyper-funded by Green New Deal giants who want to show them as profitable, but they aren't.
> Flying cars will never happen because of noise and safety reasons.
They are already there, and keep expanding at a steady pace, only most people do not even know that because beside some unis, govs and think tanks so far we have zero propaganda on them and we have propaganda against human fly "for environmental reasons" where the real reasons are that élites want to cut journeys in general to isolate populations for better directing them.
If you think that's just an extreme and fantastic theory try a serious mind experiment: how much it cost not merely economical but also environmental costs in gazillion of tons of concrete, steel so iron, coke etc and how many years it take to build a trans-national rail line? Let's say from China to EU through central Asia as an extreme example. That imaging in such timeframe how many things might have changed making such big investments a dead project before completion. Now do the same for airborn and waterborn means: surely they need some "ports" on both ends, but they can go anywhere under a certain range. Try do do the same for road infra. We can debate on the why some push against human fly, but the economics of small flying devices and their effectiveness is clear. Cars demand much more raw material and much more regular entertainment (just for tires), flying demand far lighter and simpler cars, mostly aluminum witch is recyclable ad infinitum, and can last 50+years with regular checks and not much raw material demands. The same happen for ships vs trucks.
As I said try to find such data yourself: you'll see a deep decline on anything "giant on scale" from big ships and planes to big land-based infra, toward small and flexible systems. You'll see a growing trend toward autarchy and isolation, witch deeply need ability to change quickly since it's something experimental in the present world so something that keep change at a fast peace, run your scenario and imaging the future remembering how much the society is changed in 50+ and 100+ years any 50/100 years in recent human history, so if you imaging something equal to today you know you are probably wrong, and try to depict a possible future.
EVs use dramatically more lithium ion material than had ever before even considered. Also small batteries as a portion of their total mass have a lot more packaging material (like plastics) that require manual work to separate from the battery metals. Larger batteries that are more uniform are easier to automatically disassemble.
There is no "Green New Deal". That failed. These companies say they're profitable even without subsidies.
> They are already there
No they aren't. Sure you can strap some high power jet turbines on to a car and call it a flying car, but that doesn't make it any quieter nor does it make it safe.
About flying cars
https://vertical-aerospace.com/
https://www.airbus.com/en/innovation/zero-emission/urban-air...
Just to show some producers, and those are ONLY eVTOL models. This report is not bad https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/nl/Documents/... so is classic BBC https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201111-the-flying-car-i... some other random picked https://asiatimes.com/2021/06/virgin-atlantic-going-vertical... and http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20201111000877 or https://tass.com/economy/1395363 or https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/03/europe-moves-closer-to-mak...
Some official info https://www.easa.europa.eu/light/topics/urban-air-mobility
When driving any distance, I frequently see cars stopped on the side of the roadway. They’ve run out of fuel, had an accident (maybe very minor), had a mechanical problem or even a flat tire. If these were flying cars they would be full of serious casualties.
A problem in the air that puts a “flying car” into free fall results in approximately 80 km/hr of additional velocity within 2.25 seconds. If the “car” has even a modest forward velocity the results will be fatal. At low altitudes there is going to be no way to effectively put on the brakes.
Well one might think, why isn’t this a problem for planes and helicopters? Oh but they do have this problem caused by gravity, and they solve it with big wings or rotors, sophisticated avionics, trained and redundant pilots, special places that have room to land and take off, air traffic control, etc.
The difficulty of addressing the safety problems of vertical take off and landing, flying below glide speed, collision avoidance, small size, and extreme reliability prevent even the military of from building such things.
Edit: I'm not copying mlindner. I just had the same idea.
The point is that:
- there is no standard, most batteries are similar but not that similar to being able to disassembly them for easier processing, there are not really standard size and shapes etc;
- disassembly is dangerous, it's easier to light a fire, just try to see this live experimental recovery by a Chem researcher https://youtu.be/IH3djjP6tiA
- recovered material are not much easy to re-use
This are just SOME of the obstacles, the most technical, than we have the most social witch means where to move large quantities of batteries to process them, since the process is pollutant and far from safe and clean in environmental terms so not much want it in their backyard, how to create a supply chain etc.
My point is simple: there are some interested players who push this tech by any PR and lobbying means, selling anything as already there and perfectly doable in scale, at a scientific level not much different than "cold nuclear fusion" and similar stuff. Yes, lithium IS revolutionary but not as revolutionary nor scalable as that. So yes we can build EVs, but definitively not at the actual ICEs scale. Synthetic petrol, not a new thing, again is perfectly doable but again not at the same scale. We can't build&power enough vehicles on scale.
That's why we start reading here and there that most, intended as new and old poor must be concentrated in dense small/mid-size cities witch looks like https://global.toyota/en/newsroom/corporate/34827717.html && https://youtu.be/p-9X8Z2kJt8 in advertisement while in practice are more like https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/19/why-greeces-ex... witch essentially means padronal factories where 99% live to work at the owner conditions, and only few will profit from the new society because with such tech only few can profit.
Economically I can count myself in such few's, I built my house with modern insulation, VMC, heat-pumps, p.v. etc and I can afford actual EVs, I WFH so potentially I can recharge them via p.v. etc BUT there is a thing I know: divided society does work only if divisions are not much strong, otherwise they do not last longer and end up in deep unrest and disasters. Also no quick revolution end up well, things that last happen at a certain point in time, but spread slowly. Quick fires end quickly, with much damages.
That's is.
I'm deeply convinced that a new society have to born since the actual one is untenable and dying, that's not a matter of neoliberal's Great Reset or Xi new society etc, that's a fact now. I'm deeply convinced that the new society must have a far reduced environmental footprint. I'm deeply convinced that we are simply too much in numbers for our planetary resources and that's end up as always in unrest, wars, calamity of various kind to simply makes a big reduction in population by an extraordinary number of deaths (and that's NOT "green" at all in general). Simply the actual new society we see from propaganda can't work IMVHO. I can understand the idea of a mass guided disaster and genocide, really, it's not a moral question, but I can't understand the optimism and enthusiasm hypocritically sold and spread by any means.
BEVs are extremely heavy and rely on lightweight hard to recycle plastic and alloy body components to lighten kerb weight. Tires produce far more pollution than 'tailpipes' (BEVs just move the pollution somewhere else of course, they are wonderful for affluent cities). https://www.tiretechnologyinternational.com/news/regulations...
The other worrying aspect of BEV battery module recycling is fire risk- as the current generation of BEVs age we can expect to see more trapped energy thermal runaway events from faulty batteries.
I'd say we have a way to go solving these realities before increasing BEV volume manufacture - hybrid cars are the best solution IMO for the foreseeable future especially given the perilous state of western world electric grid reliability
> fig leaf of 'recyclability'
It's not a fig leaf if it's 95% recyclable for profit?
> Tires produce far more pollution than 'tailpipes' (BEVs just move the pollution somewhere else of course, they are wonderful for affluent cities).
ICEs have tires too? And BEVs -- even those powered by coal, will clean up as the grid cleans up. ICEs will never clean up.
> as the current generation of BEVs age we can expect to see more trapped energy thermal runaway events from faulty batteries
It's been a decade. We see very little of this.
> hybrid cars are the best solution IMO
The complaints you list are non-issues or already solved. Hybrid cars also have batteries and many also plug in and so would be subject to exactly the same complaints you list.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/dec/08/the-curse-of-wh... The curse of 'white oil': electric vehicles' dirty secret
https://electrek.co/2022/03/21/heres-what-the-future-of-batt...
'EV batteries have a 10–13 year lifespan, so while they may not be ready to be recycled in large volumes just yet, we know they’re on the way. Companies worldwide are already investing in recycling plants to meet this demand. From our perspective, the biggest hurdle is figuring out how to create a system of shared collections across multiple original equipment manufacturers and recyclers for both cost and environmental efficiencies.'
Lithium-Ion Battery Fires in Electric Vehicles - Safety Risks to Emergency Responders https://youtu.be/J6eS6JzBn0k
We are just beginning to grapple with some of the core issues should the BEV political sales onslaught and incentives succeed.
This BEV bus blowing up in RATP Paris this month should give you some pause for thought, fortunately it wasn't full of people https://youtu.be/5r-yN8SugWM
Multiple buses burnt as a result of a charging fire in Germany https://www.sustainable-bus.com/electric-bus/sbb-stuttgart-f...
https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/news/2022...
ICEs are literally carrying explosives too. It also took time for them to become “safe”, and it’s still a work in progress.
Doesn’t seem like you’re trying to really learn anything here. Maybe you think you already know everything. The world is moving on.
Doesn't matter. If it's your responsibility, you pay. If it's the automaker's responsibility, the automaker pays, and then carries that cost forward into the price of the cars, so you pay.
Whose primary responsibility for making it happen? I mean, only the manufacturers can make it happen [redesigning batteries to be easily recyclable], but they won't, so someone has to make them, but customers won't, so the government will have to. This is one of those things the government is for, like banning trans fats and ozone-depleting refrigerant. Making all batteries more recyclable should be top of the list for this decade.
It’s cheaper to make new batteries than to create a return program and recycle the lithium.
So, no one pays (money) and the batteries go to the landfill.
It’s not necessarily about battery design. It’s that the cells need to be opened, the foil and layers removed and scrapped for lithium. It’s just always going to be a pain to rework than create new.
I was always under the assumption that apple actually recycles them because they want them in good condition, but maybe not? I also wonder if this is a program whose cost is factored in the final price of every iPhone (and therefore a cost that is distributed across the entire customer base), regardless if they are returning their old phones or not.
I was at an open air mall in Borneo (Kutching) and saw all manner of new/used iPhones in official-ish Apple packaging.
It makes sense anyway, there’s a lot of material of value even in a dead pack.
Something like PodBike except much cheaper would also be appreciated.
As electric cars keep getting cheaper and the ubiquity of rapid charging keeps improving, I think for a lot of people the PHEV concept won't work out as well as it sounds. It will be just as easy to rapid charge a mid-range EV for long trips and you get the benefit of all your day-to-day driving being nicer as well.
If anything once we can make carbon neutral synthetic fuel out of renewables what would be the purpose of BEV environmentally?
• PHEVs have (pretty much by definition) smaller batteries, so they discharge/cycle more of their capacity, wearing down batteries quicker. They're also less convenient, because they have to be plugged in more often and charge slower (if you don't plug them in daily, they're just overcomplicated ICE cars).
• A pure electric drive train is pretty energy-efficient (80%+ Well-to-Wheel efficiency). Combustion engines are only about 35% efficient (and it won't get better: there's no room to use the heat, and you can't avoid generating heat in a combustion engine). It's already bad even if you have perfectly efficient fuel synthesis. We're not near having too much electricity to waste.
• There's still an engine and a gearbox to maintain. These are mechanically much more complex and inherently more fragile than an EV power train.
• Most PHEVs on the market have weaker/laggier performance than BEVs due to having a smaller battery that can't deliver high peak power, and having only one electric motor due to sharing a power train with ICE.
Modern fast-charging BEVs already work great. They have effectively infinite range if you charge 20 minutes per 2-3 hours of driving. That's entirely within reason, and only about 10% slower than pee-in-a-bottle road trips.
I do wish more folks with PHEVs would ensure they're plugged in as much as possible, but I'm still of the position that they have a reasonable usecase while the world transitions.
Regen improves overall efficiency by 3%-10%. It has a relatively small effect even in BEVs. Majority of the energy is lost to rolling resistance and drag (otherwise you could just turn your engine off and coast to your destination…), so there isn't that much to capture. I'm not sure if it even cancels out the extra weight and inefficiency of PHEVs having two power trains. It makes less of a difference than variability between ICE models, so you could be better off driving a smaller pure ICE car.
Is that how you would also describe a non-plugin hybrid?
If you don't plug them in daily, they're very fuel efficient ICE cars, with nice acceleration from a stop, and the opportunity to get free charging at some locations, rockstar parking at others (sometimes for a small fee), and maybe carpool stickers.
> • A pure electric drive train is pretty energy-efficient (80%+ Well-to-Wheel efficiency). Combustion engines are only about 35% efficient (and it won't get better: there's no room to use the heat, and you can't avoid generating heat in a combustion engine). It's already bad even if you have perfectly efficient fuel synthesis. We're not near having too much electricity to waste.
You're right about efficiency, but Texas often has overnight periods with too much electricity, and the California solar peak is close too (to the point where time of use rates have changed and there's an off peak price during the middle of the day). That's likely not enough to make fuel synthesis viable, of course.
> • There's still an engine and a gearbox to maintain. These are mechanically much more complex and inherently more fragile than an EV power train.
> • Most PHEVs on the market have weaker/laggier performance than BEVs due to having a smaller battery that can't deliver high peak power, and having only one electric motor due to sharing a power train with ICE.
Most PHEVs (and most HEVs) on the market are using a ICE + two electric motor + gears power system. Early Honda hybrids had a different system, but afaik, everyone else adopted the system that Toyota pioneered, sometimes called an e-CVT. There's no gear selection mechanism and it's relatively simple. (Apart from manufacturing errors, but if Ford can make a hybrid transmission that fails early, they can make BEV gearing that fails early too; hopefully my replacement transmission outlasts the rest of the components)
My PHEV has a two year maintenance interval for the engine, and sure, that's more than an engineless car, but modern engine maintenance is fairly painless. Change the oil when the minder tells you, make sure the drive belt or chain gets changed on times. Spark plugs when they need them. Fiddle with the emissions control when the light turns on.
Performance seems more than adequate, I can spin the tires from a stop, and it goes faster when I push the pedal down more. The only time there's significant lag in response is if you put it in EV only mode and try to get up to free flowing freeway speeds to merge. But, that's a silly thing to do; the battery evaporates at freeway speeds, and the gas engine gets best mileage at freeway speeds, using the whole car will get you the best results.
Poor interior space is a real issue, especially in mine (Ford didn't take the time to find a good place for the batteries, they just shoehorned them into an already small cargo area)
People keep saying this but is this true? Modern ICE is pretty well understood. We’re not taking about a Honda beater from the 80s. Not to mention in the context of a PHEV you still wouldn't have exhaust for most trips anyway.
That's not to say EVs aren't complex or hard to build. There are a lot of parts inside the battery pack. But they aren't moving parts and they don't need the same kind of regular maintenance. Electric cars don't have oil to change and they almost never need brakes replaced because of regen. They don't have O2 sensors that fail, they don't have spark plugs to change, they don't have timing belts to replace, etc. If you look at a list of the top 10 most frequent car repairs, maybe 9 of them can't happen on an electric car. It is just a simpler system of moving parts. The complexity is in a different place.
The problem with PHEV is you have the different types of complexity of both systems combined just in an effort to boost range.
True, ICE car are more complicated but its pretty clear that build and maintain is cheaper than BEV. ICE cars are half the price of EVs. Maintenance of good Japanese cars is cheap, I spend like $30/yr on oil changes.
When I need to do a long trip I'll just have the power pack thrown on the back at the neighborhood depot next to the propane tanks at the gas station. It can have a fossil fuel powered generator, or just be batteries, I don't care.
What I do care about is not having to cart around an ICE 100% of the time for the sake of trips I do <=10% of the time. Maintaining ICE garbage is not something I see in my future, and I'm an experienced graybeard grease monkey.
On the other hand, if you truly only need 50 miles, you don't want to be lugging around the extra battery weight. On the other-other hand, you don't seem concerned about lugging around the polluting gas engine when batteries would do the job just as well if not better. Charging time at the top of the range is one factor that many advocates of low-range vehicles are not aware of. What ends up happening with PHEVs is the gas engine gets used way more than you expect.
Also, PHEVs stink, so there is that. And before you mention long tailpipe, it is a fallacy, as has been explained.
We've had a BEV for three years now. Last Christmas we had a loaner as it was for repair, and the loaner was a regular ICE. One of the first things that struck me was the smell of fuel and exhaust. The next thing was how noisy it was.
Hope I don't have to get another ICE, BEVs are just so much nicer to drive overall.
I plug my prius PHEV into a 110v socket at night and it serves my 25mi daily driving just fine.
Charging speed is directly proportional to the size of the battery. But yes with high voltage DC chargers on a small battery you'll reach 80% at the same rate as a larger battery, but the 80% is much smaller, so the mile gain rate is also much smaller.
I also just installed solar at home. I expect the next family car would also be PHEV suv to replace the 16 years old minivan. Other than long trip, I don't expect to use gas much, maybe just once a week to oil up the engine for a few minutes.
Even for commuting, having an oversized battery extends lifespan because of the reduced charge cycle per cell (and battery will generally last much longer than any engine).
I do like the range boost of the engine though. Especially when exploring new areas and not having a consistent route and supercharge routine. Although going back to the pump always reminds me why pure electric is the future.
(I've had both a Tesla and a Volt).
What? Have you been driving GMC cars or something? Change the oil on schedule and engines last for decades.
The secret to having the machinery last on a car is (as you said) oil changes, and I'll add suspension lube, too.
1. Say your 300 mile battery loses 30% in 5-10 years. So now you're down to about 200. In the winter in some areas you might lose another 30 to 50%. So now you're conservatively down to 100 miles. This still can be enough, but it's low enough where it's a hinderance.
2. The equivalent smaller battery as you've stated would drain faster, but it would also be substantially cheaper to replace to begin with. As a result the cost of the battery relative to the car is cheaper and the economics if buying a new battery makes more sense.
Not to mention that only Tesla's have the super charger network, so it makes even less sense for non-Tesla EV owners.
A battery range longer than the average trip distance * 2 is unnecessary. Ideally you'd have "just enough" + infrastructure to charge at said locations + gas to go further if necessary.
But this is way, way more degradation than actually happens.
> Not to mention that only Tesla's have the super charger network, so it makes even less sense for non-Tesla EV owners.
This isn't true anymore in much of Europe, and in not too long it won't be true anywhere.
> A battery range longer than the average trip distance * 2 is unnecessary.
About half of your trips are longer than average.
Not really, it’s in line with the battery warranty with more or less all EV manufacturers
> This isn't true anymore in much of Europe, and in not too long it won't be true anywhere.
We’ll see.
> About half of your trips are longer than average.
Sure but I’m talking about PHEV, obviously with BEV you have to be conservative.
https://www.geotab.com/blog/ev-battery-health/
Approximately 15% per 6 years, in line with my estimate and the warranty offered by all manufacturers sans Hyundai.
1. It says very little about how the data is collected. Just "Geotab developed the tool based on an analysis of 6,300 fleet and consumer electric vehicles." that's not a lot of transparency.
2. It appears to be based largely on commercial vehicles (although see point 1, it's hard to tell). Consumers drive way less than commercial, which makes analysis by year less than useful.
3. It has a sample size of 6000 vehicles. That might sound like a lot, but since it is broken down into 21 different types of vehicle with about 3 models per type, that's only 100 vehicles per model+year. This would be less of a problem if they disclosed how many vehicles of each type they had, but they don't.
4. They also don't disclose how they have averaged vehicles.
5. The data they have that is easy to cross check (i.e. vs Tesla) shows that their numbers are way different from other sources https://electrek.co/2018/04/14/tesla-battery-degradation-dat... and https://www.evchargerreviews.net/should-you-worry-about-ev-b... that are much more transparent about their data.
All in all, it's very unclear with that source where the data is coming from, how it is analyzed, and it's conclusions differ dramatically from much better analysis.
I’m also involved in the electric Smart community and those batteries have phenomenally low degradation, often being above 92% at 8 years, due to excellent thermal and charge management.
The only manufacturer that seems to put their money where their mouth is in Hyundai with a lifetime length and mileage battery warranty.
Another example: iPhones have a 1-year warranty but usually last much longer than that.
iPhones are irrelevant to the discussion, lol.
No, it's not. That's why some manufacturers offer much longer warranties than others despite having similar reliability numbers. Warranty terms are driven by the business and encompass a lot more than mean time to first failure.
> iPhones are irrelevant to the discussion, lol.
If warranties were a good approximation of how long things last without repair, why would that only apply in the car world?
What's an example of this controlled for the price of the car?
> If warranties were a good approximation of how long things last without repair, why would that only apply in the car world?
Warranties are a good approximation in the context of cars. Virtually all other consumer devices have a 1 year warranty so it's not really a distinguishing feature.
In any case, warranty aside the reason I even brought it up is because many manufacturers warranties imply potential for up to 30% degradation after about 8 years which is why I used the numbers I used (https://www.recurrentauto.com/research/how-long-do-ev-batter...)
> needing any repair
But for the battery, you were talking about when it needed replacement.
Any decision to offer a warranty beyond that is driven by whether it will entice new car buyers to buy the car or to pay more for it.
CCS cars get the benefit of all charging networks combined, including (gradually) Tesla's:
https://electrek.co/2022/05/18/tesla-expands-supercharger-pi...
My BMW i3 battery warranty was 80% remaining capacity after 8 years.
I checked the raw data, and they actually did he 80/20 rule, so when it reported 100% charged in the user interface, the battery was 80% full. Based on this I think it would have lasted a long time (it got totalled by some dofus, entirely unrelated).
I also believe manufacturers should be required to offer replacement batteries for sale for a certain number of years. It's mind-boggling that some companies have stopped selling replacement battery packs within 5 years of selling that vehicle.
Doesn't seem like folks are in a hurry for that, and then, there's the old "A camel is a horse that was designed by committee" joke...
I think it might be too early in the game to standardize the interface let alone the volumetric characteristics of car batteries. Do we require all battery connectors to be able to carry 1600 amps just to support Plaid?
While USB has issues, the EU basically standardising mobile phone chargers was brilliant.
The bureaucrats shouldn't define a technical spec. They should define a social requirement and let the techs solve it best they can.
I'm starting to see a lot of non-Tesla EVs around. I saw my first F-150 Lightning, the other day, as well as a Hyundai Ioniq Electric, yesterday.
But I am seeing a lot of Teslas. Part of it might be, because I live in a relatively affluent area.
Now imagine if you can only fill up at an Exxon. Not because the fuel is different but because the pump nozzle size is different. Only a true libertarian capitalist would come up with such an idea.
It took to long but we’re there.
At this point I think China may be the only country with its own standard. US, EU, and I believe the rest of Asia are on the CCS train.
*The holdout, of course, is Tesla. They had good reason at the time (CCS didn’t exist), and their connector is better, but here we are.
They’ve gone CCS in Europe I believe due to regulations. If they did so here to it would all be solved. They have to add CCS anyway to Superchargers to open their network as Elon has promised.
But is that a big problem? It’s not exactly common to move a car between America and Europe/Asia. If you had to I’d imagine the dealer could swap the plugs on the car.
I don't think it'll happen, nor am I even sure it's a good idea, but there's nothing special about this one product.
Calling for legislation to recycle batteries without regard to the order of the 3 R's seems quite wasteful and likely to inhibit innovation with small scale solar and smaller electric transportation. Reduce, reuse, then recycle seems like a better idea than skipping the first two steps.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29110314
about a wired article according to which some car manufacturers (at the moment) are just storing them (in Oklahoma City).
https://www.toyota.com/mirai/2022/
Maybe this also helps lower quantities of "dead batteries", if hydrogen filling stations become prevalent?
Hydrogen fuel cell seems to be a failed dream, at least for normal people. I don’t know enough to know of it may be viable for fleet vehicles. But they tend to be known now as FCVs or FCEVs - Fuel Cell (Electric) Vehicles.
For long trips, take a train (if in Europe / Asia / etc), or rent a hydrogen car.
Sort of, but they still have batteries (though less). And now you have a hydrogen fuel cell disposal problem, and it's not clear to me whether that is better or worse, and if it's better, whether it is worth the greater complexity and inherent inefficiency of H2 production, whether it is grey H2 or green H2
> if hydrogen filling stations become prevalent?
That's a big if considering that we already have an electric vehicle charging infrastructure and that can charge your vehicle in a zero carbon way in many places.
95% recyclable [1]. And there are 3 separate companies I know of working on it, Li-Cycle, Northvolt, and Redwood Materials. That article lists many more.
1. https://spectrum.ieee.org/amp/lithiumion-battery-recycling-f...
https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/04/lithium-costs-a-lot-...
You can check the prices of new cars online quickly.
For the energy the maths are simple because the efficiency ratios are on Wikipedia.
About the rarity of hydrogen pumps, online maps will do, and for their prices I don’t really have a source because my company had a hygrogen fuelling station for some years and it was just mentioned in the small talks. That can probably be found online and I assume that the complexity has a cost, especially compared to a fast electric charger simply connected to the grid.
A lot of people are getting 10 years out of a pack down to about 80% capacity.
With careful management that same pack can run at around 80 percent for.. a long time. Cells start becoming dangerous and getting cut out of the circuitry, a 60% lithium battery isn't really a thing, they come in full, worn out, and dead.
20 years maybe? So after 30 years we recycle them.
Edit to add: a use pattern like this is ideal from the perspective of recycling. When you're taking a hundred tons of battery out of commission at once, there's incentive to be thorough.
My EV has an 8 year battery warranty, and warranty claims on the ones sold 8 years ago were never a common thing (to the point that no one knows what a replacement battery would cost).
I'm guessing the rest of the car will fall apart around the battery pack, which will then be repurposed for grid storage or something.
Carlos Tavares, president of the Stellantis automotive group:
“We will have around 2025 or 2026 a short supply of batteries, and if there is no short supply of batteries then there will be a significant dependence of the western world vis-à-vis Asia.”
Source: https://www.ft.com/content/e64179ec-f84c-40ff-9e8a-f85bd5994...
Edit: See the chart on the following website if you discount the effect of increased weight from electric vehicles.
https://streets.mn/2016/07/07/chart-of-the-day-vehicle-weigh...
Whether personal vehicles are 2x as heavy, or 50% lighter, it will not impact your neighborhood roads significantly.
https://truecostblog.com/2009/06/02/the-hidden-trucking-indu...
[0] https://streets.mn/2016/07/07/chart-of-the-day-vehicle-weigh...
https://streets.mn/2016/07/07/chart-of-the-day-vehicle-weigh...
Sedans:
- BMW 3 series: 1,445 kg
- Tesla Model 3 SR: 1,617 kg
Δ: 12%
SUV:
- BMW X3 series: 1,875 kg
- Tesla Model Y SR: 1,929 kg
Δ: 2.88% !! Not so significant, is it?
https://streets.mn/2016/07/07/chart-of-the-day-vehicle-weigh...
If you're willing to not have a front trunk, you can get a smaller, nimbler car with similar safety and legroom.
With the price of lithium is this currently a problem?
I am not entirely convinced EV cars will have a watershed effect on emissions as much as people think they will. I worry that, although they're likely to reduce emissions over lifetime ownership and use, they are a big distraction in terms of how much people are presumably betting on them saving us from climate change.
Unless disposing of batteries can seem "free" and very easy, I expect that to happen. Somewhat similar to used auto oil. I suspect in various places used oil is either burned for heat or dumped in an undeveloped area.
The catch is that for grid storage, capacity along these lines doesn't matter to the same extent, as much as cost and retention. As long as we have cheap wind and solar, and they are able to manage fire risk, those batteries would just be sitting around.
/s
A battery at 50% can be bad for a car, but perfectly useful for solar panel balancing, like Tesla sold in Australia.
Sell them at a discount, pile them up in the desert, where weight and volume don't matter.
Sheesh.
I doubt it. I don't think electric vehicles will help as much as we think. I think true long term economic and ecologic solutions require less dependence on cars and their infrastructure.
Why are we transporting our bodies around so much?
But why do we mostly use vehicles so tall, wide, long and 20x our body weight? When the large % of use cases are to carry 1 or 2 people at 60 or less?! It could be fulfilled with a fancy go kart, like a Smart Car. And I would argue for even smaller/lighter.
There are many historical reasons for this but we need something to influence purchasing habits towards smaller cars.
In my car, I have an extremely good chance of survival if I hit something or lose control.
Small light cars would fall somewhere between an average car and a motorbike, but still going to be less safe for the occupants than a larger vehicle.
Everything is a damn "SUV" now despite it not being for Sports or Utility. What they are is taller and heavier which gives people reassurance. But once people see other vehicles are taller and heavier, well now they want something to match to protect their family in the event of a crash.
I don't know how to stop this cycle.
See guys like www.batteryhookup.com who are recovering batteries in the US
In terms of slingshot or catapult type constructions, I recall that the main hurdle is that the payload usually doesn't survive the huge forces applied during the acceleration phase and rips apart. You have to accelerate the payload to about 40'000km/h for it to escape Earth's orbit.