Ford's answer to EV supply chain hell: Cheaper batteries
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Old geezer's perspective: Back in its heyday, Ford Motor was one of the most vertically integrated (large manufacturing) companies in the world. They owned and operated their own fleet of ore carriers (cargo ships), to haul iron ore from the mines to the steel mill that was part of their all-Ford integrated manufacturing complex. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_River_Rouge_Complex - though Wikipedia barely scratches the surface on this. ) Back in the early 90's, I knew a couple guys who had spent their careers working on those iron ore carriers.
Current-day Ford Motor having to go begging to China - for a major, iron-based component needed to produce more cars - that is laughable, and beyond pathetic. In a dark, miserable sort of way, if you care about America or its future.
Sounds similar to Boeing where accounting for personal gain (promotions / raises) of upper managers and executives took effect over the long term advantage of the company.
We’re shifting to a new era where cash is king. That’s why Amazon built their own UPS and Apple will be a bank in a few years.
I think he is one of the "good" Boeing execs, unlike the ones that came in with the McDonnell Douglas merger and mismanaged production of aircraft like the 787 and 737-MAX
He had many stories to tell of engineering non sense there. Supposedly they just trained whomever to be an engineer. They offered to make my dad one since they liked him.
Pray do tell more about that merger!
“Downfall: The Case Against Boeing” is the documentary title.
That opinion is well founded. In the book American Icon by Bryce Hoffman (Detroit News journalist) he chronicles that entire time period.
Mulally pulled off one of the greatest challenges, a bonafide turn around. They had a company culture that was all about individuals protecting their own interests. Mulally changed it to one where they focused on making vehicles people want and thinking about the long-term.
For example, Mulally held a weekly executive meeting and each head would give a color coded report of their domain's status (green for good, yellow for issues, red for caution). For weeks in this meeting every single executive reported their status as "green" for good. This in a fiscal quarter when Ford had a $6 billion loss! Mulally managed to change that culture, which for anyone who has work experience should speak very loudly.
Executive pay is out of control in general in the USA, and performance is equally trash.
So obviously it's not bad _per se_ to rely on China ; but if it's not possible to diversify sourcing, this is begging for a disaster next time whatever geopolitic hits the fan.
What do you even mean, it wasn't them whom started the whole tradewar... It was the US gov
But if they decide to stop trade with Russia tomorrow, I'll reconsider.
IMO the real disaster would be a total de-link between Chinese and American economies. Neither country can currently engage in any kind of meaningful hostilities while 10%+ of their economies are linked in trade. Trade prevents war because war would mean decimation of their economies and lead to likely depressions, although I suppose the results of Russia's invasion and how their economy handles de-linking will inform this logic going forward
1913 is calling and wants its optimism back.
If the fertilizer hits the fan re Taiwan, the CCP will not hesitate to cut off all trade with everyone who supports Taiwan.
Japan continued with their China war in the 1930s, despite sanctions from the US and the West, so didn't they?
As for the "leaked documents", the claim on Taiwan is that it is an inseparable part of China, and not that they want "to make their trade more secure."
And no, the leaked documents don't just claim that Taiwan is an inseparable part of China, that's the public position. The leaked documents detail how control over Taiwan is necessary to be able to project sufficient naval power to break any attempted blockade especially by submarine due to the low depth of waters within the first island chain.
OK, if that's what you want to believe. Seems kinda implausible, though.
In WW I, the Germans didn't move to "unrestricted submarine warfare" until 1917. The fact that the CCP doesn't plan for it now means absolutely nothing.
Edit: you can't "impose an embargo" on another country. That's a misunderstanding of the word. You can "blockade" them. Blockades are a feature of almost every war.
Of the ~780 million Chinese who work, ~200 million support the export economy.
So the CCP will put 25% of their workers out of a job over Taiwan?
Feel free! Their regimes lifespan will be measured in months if they do.
This is why trade prevents wars. China has to solve the "200 hundred million jobs" problem before they can start a war.
They did this because it would cause their economy to collapse and there are social repercussions against the CCP if that were to happen. Had 0 to do with the US or the West or any sort of altruism. They also welded doors of apartments shut so people inside couldn't leave during the initial lock downs. China has a much more robust class system than the US and the lower class/rural people are taken advantage of at an astounding rate because they aren't the right kind of Chinese.
> Or was it how China is actually upholding most sanctions against Russia, despite giving less than 0 f's about Ukraine?
China is essentially the sole reason Russia is still occupying Ukraine and they have been skirting sanctions left and right; even going as far as partnering with Russia on a new inter-banking system. They've also used the Ukrainin War as a way to test the waters in the South China Sea and step up their territorial claims over international waters in violation of international law.
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/china-turns-to-lobsters-wine-and...
China has made it clear that it is an unreliable business partner.
It is a mistake to do business with nations that don't share your values, as Russia is also currently demonstrating.
Yeah that's the point.
- "We must travel to the most-distant place in the world, and the only source of $Thing, which we cannot survive without!" That sounds great, if you're writing epic fantasy quest stories. If you're talking supply chain management...maybe there is something profoundly wrong with your company?
- Even if the CCP would never dream of squeezing Ford's battery life-line...the battery factory there could be shut down for yet another COVID outbreak, or the US could squeeze it (due to domestic politics or "Taiwan Troubles"), or etc.
- The giant mess (huge delays, staggering price spikes, etc.) that global shipping has been in the past few years. Shipping car batteries from China to the US via air freight does not sound like a money-making plan. My old World Atlas suggests that shipping by rail is probably not an option.
Is that the same atlas that says there's not an option for rail from UK to France as well?
Vs. you'd need to build a few thousand miles of freight RR in Siberia, Alaska, and other places "unfriendly to economical RR construction and operation" in order to ship from China to the US via rail.
They're lucky China is answering. They're incredibly late to the EV game; considering that they're doing remarkably well.
When you're not the trailblazer, it's easy to make catch-up progress to those that went before you in much much less time. Why this is constantly a source of amazement is funny to me. By the time Ford got involved, the path was no longer a beaten down path, it was fully paved 8-lane highway. Instead trying to figure out how to make an electrified car, they just took all of the learning before them and then turned it into something fancy. While Tesla is "working" on self-driving and not doing well with it, Ford said, nah, we'll just turn our batteries into a generator for the home. They built an actual truck that looks like the same truck everyone is used to and say here it is as an electric. That's easy to do when you are riding coat tails
This all pre-dated the COVID related supply chain issues, BTW. Lack of battery supply is behind the lackluster inventory (and therefore sales) of all non-Tesla vehicles for over half a decade.
I say all this not as a Tesla fan, but as a GM electric vehicle owner. GM was unable to produce more then a few tens of thousands of Bolts a year -- not because consumers didn't want them, but because there was simply no way for them to get them from LG Chem. VW/Audi group has had the same issue. They're both not late to the game on EV tech or production, but very late to the game on battery production.
Being late to the game in this case has a huge cost. And various governments wasted time and money providing consumer subsidies for EV purchases thinking this would lead the market to magically "solve" the EV supply issue by increasing consumer demand when the issue that really needed solving was volume and cost of battery production.
If we were going to involve public dollars in getting EVs to market we should have invested massively in encouraging battery production. Some governments are waking up to this now at least.
Bloomberg projects VW selling more EVs than Tesla by 2024 and they are planning to have 240GWh/yr of in-house battery production by 2030.
BYD in China is fully vertically integrated on EV production, moreso than Tesla who relies on 3rd party mining and on Panasonic for chemistries/cell production. BYD is now the largest PHEV+BEV manufacturer in the world.
Tesla might have had a head start but There has been a lot of catching up going on, and as we get closer and closer to resource constraints instead of production constraints they aren't in much better of a position than any other manufacturer.
Ford made 30k electric vehicles in 2021, 600k means a growth rate of %1900 in the span of 2 1/2 years (They need to be at the run rate in 2026)?
Battery packs were a problem to Tesla in 2018 and now they've moved onto the bigger problem that no one is talking about.... There isn't enough lithium and nickel production to even make this possible.
That's why Tesla launched its own mining operations in Nevada.
Also, its not like Elon hasn't been screaming about lack of nickel and lithium production since like 2018, just no one seems to be paying attention.
source? all i could find was this https://insideevs.com/news/596347/us-ford-ev-sales-june-2022
> H1 production of nearly 34,000 units is below the level from 2021 in the same period.
which is just talking about mach-e production, not other EVs.
But mainly, they don't need to actually make 600k EVs in 2024 for it to be true that they have contracts in place to purchase that many batteries if needed.
As for Tesla's mining chops, they bought mining rights in 2020 and as of April 2022 they haven't even broken ground, with Elon saying "price of lithium has gone to insane levels! Tesla might actually have to get into the mining and refining directly at scale, unless costs improve."
I guess while Elon has been screaming about it other companies like BYD and CATL have been the ones actually scaling global production.
If you actually look at their guidance, it's "50% growth on average," and they've consistently hit it.
> In October 2016 Tesla said its production timeline was on schedule.[115][116][117] Again in February 2017, Tesla said that vehicle development, supply chain and manufacturing are on track to support volume deliveries of the Model 3 in the second half of 2017.
> As of February 2017, Tesla planned to ramp up production to exceed 5,000 vehicles per week in Q4 2017 and reach 10,000 vehicles per week in 2018.[111]
> By early November 2017, Musk had postponed the target date for manufacturing 5,000 of the vehicles per week from December 2017 to March 2018.
- 100,000/yr in 2017: fail, occurred in 2018
- 400,000/yr in 2018: fail, occurred in 2020/2021
- Volume delivery in in 2H 2017: fail unless you consider 1764 to be volume
- 5000/wk in Q4 2017/March 2018: fail, produced 187/wk, probably first broke 5000/wk Q1 2019 (total quarterly rate was almost 5k/wk)
- 10,000/wk in 2018: fail 4,722/wk Q4 of 2018, probably first broke 10,000/wk at the tail end of Q3 2020 (total quarterly rate was almost 10k/wk) as long as we include model Y production as well
Now I wouldn't call this lying, but its definitely not consistently hitting production goals either
No, that really isn't easy to do when you're running something as large as the Ford Motor Company. In fact it is much easier for a new entrant to make such big changes.
German, Japanese, and American manufacturers were the biggest national security components of WWII. Tesla is a second tier interest of a CEO who prefers to be an online troll than keeping up with the auto industry.
Sorry, this is just absurd. Tesla is the only company designing for massive scale and ruthless simplification from the start. Their entire DNA is based on YAGNI.
Every other legacy automaker is pinned between their dealerships, their dependence on consumer debt, their own massive debt, and the fact that they'll need to cannibalize existing business to pivot to EVs.
No other company owns their own destiny by being more in control of their supply chain than Tesla.
In 2020 GM sold 6.8 million vehicles. The other manufacturers are already operating at massive scale. Or are you arguing the automotive market will suddenly dramatically increase in a way existing manufacturers can't deal with? That consumers will suddenly be flush with cash to buy more brand new cars than they are already buying and Tesla will be the most popular option? This is very hard for me to imagine.
> their dependence on consumer debt
??? Teslas are not cheap. I will not be able to afford a Tesla for the forseeable future. Unless Teslas comes down below 25k, no Teslas are in my future, another ICE car or hybrid will be. How is Tesla not dependent on consumer debt? Or do you mean something else by this?
Maybe you missed the footage of FSD perfectly navigating San Francisco during rush hour [1]. I'd say they're doing pretty damn well.
That sounds logical but it doesn't often actually happen that way, which is why I think there is amazement the few times it does.
For example, Nokia could have just caught up with Apple after they released the iPhone? Motorola etc. could have just caught up with Nokia in the 90s when Nokia made phones people actually wanted? Apple of the 90s could have just caught up with Microsoft and Windows right?
https://www.iea.org/commentaries/electric-cars-fend-off-supp...
They are missing out on the easy part of the S-curve of adoption, and will have a far far harder time securing key competitive tech and supply chains by entering too late
There are currently ~8 major battery manufacturers, and right now a large bevy of battery startups. But right now is probably the last time in history to enter the market, because you can't just innovate on electrolyte or anode or cathode and enter the market, you have to do it all. And the lead times for development of new products, even in wel established companies with solid pipelines, is around five years.
The US did innovate quite a bit in this space, but political interference and strange political beliefs about batteries, like the physics prevents them from being used in all the ways we are currently using them, has significantly held back the US from leading as much as it could have in this space.
This is I n large part because industry leaders like Ford were so anti-scientifically anti-EV.
We kneecapped our future to let current rentiers, masquerading as gigantic industrialists, collect rent.
Batteries at the core are commodities, where you have laser thin margins and supplier model that is pulling R&D costs from many companies is basically only long term way to go.
Electric part of an EV is easy. It’s a car that’s hard part.
I would argue that might have been true 5 years ago, but now it's proving to be the competitive advantage. Batteries and the materials that produce them are no longer selling at 'Razor thin margins' because the 'Commodity' is extremely constrained. No EV manufacturer can get enough batterys to produce the cars they sell.
But please tell me who has that competitive advantage? Tesla? They’re Panasonic/CATL shop, with negligible amount of in house production.
The rest of an EV is pretty simple. Drivetrain is no longer a really hard component, as electric motors are far more straight forward.
> > It’s a car that’s hard part.
Countries that try to kickstart a new car industry often outsource the drivetrain, as it's the most difficult part to build.
With EVs, batteries are by far the touchiest and most difficult part to build. Companies that outsource battery design, or at a bare minimum are not intimated involved with the batteries for their own packs, will be left behind.
[1] Lost cities #10: Fordlandia – the failure of Henry Ford's utopian city in the Amazon https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/aug/19/lost-cities-1...
[2] Wikipedia Entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fordlandia
That title is extremely loaded.
Ford rubber mining operations in the amazon fail when synthetic rubber is invented is the true story.
"Current-day Ford Motor having to go begging to China - for a major, iron-based component needed to produce more cars - that is laughable, and beyond pathetic. In a dark, miserable sort of way, if you care about America or its future."
I could not have summarized it more differently. Vertical integration and monopolies are absolutely terrible in many ways. Globalization and inter-reliance are very good in many ways! The ideal system for everyone (workers, buyers, the business itself, the society it resides in, and the world itself) is probably a healthy middle point.
I'll go so far as to say this: if the US did not inter-rely on China over the past 30 years since they opened up their markets, with multi-national US corporations beginning to rely on various Chinese resources or products, then the US would be at a hot or cold war with China right now, just like they were with the USSR a generation ago.
That was impressive at the time and it made Ford look like solid well-run company that planned ahead.
The truth is a bit murkier. The car division was not bailed out, but the financial arm did accept government assistance like all the other car loan companies.
Let's say GM, Chevrolet and Ford all buy 12V car batteries from BatteryCo at the rate of 1,000,000 a year (each). BatteryCo has fixed annual costs of $3,000,000 and per battery costs of $1. Right now, Ford pays $2/battery. If GM and Chevrolet both go out of business, Ford's 1,000,000 batteries need to absorb the whole fixed operating cost of $3,000,000. Therefore, Ford's per battery cost doubles to $4/battery.
You can imagine other numbers and other parts of the supply chain all working similarly.
Tesla's Cybertruck initial delivery was just delayed another year.[3]
[1] https://www.commercialappeal.com/story/money/business/2022/0...
[2] https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/ford-b...
[3] https://observer.com/2022/07/tesla-cybertruck-production-del...
With respect to range anxiety, pretty much every EV in the 200 to 300-mile range is sold out. (I was looking.) And Ford deploying LFP doesn’t mean it has to go 100% LFP in every vehicle. Just having the extra vehicles will win it market share.
(As to why now, the last of the patents in a critical suite expired in April [1]. Steve LeVine writes excellently to this topic [2].)
[1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1167178/000104746912...
[2] https://subscriptions.theinformation.com/newsletters/the-ele...
https://www.timesnownews.com/auto/car-news/article/toyota-mi...
Of course, you can't readily buy or charge one yet, but you don't have the battery problem (at all).
Japanese car manufacturers aligned on that, but weren’t keen on building the necessary infrastructure.
You could lease a hydrogen fuel cell car in CA. There was even a lot of state incentives if you did. But very few fueling stations (iirc, only two in the whole Bay Area)
Upgrading fueling stations seems much easier than mining all of the copper needed to add all of the extra lines for EV charging, and then upgrading the whole national grid.
Supposedly one company has claimed 95% efficiency on creating hydrogen from electrolysis:
https://newatlas.com/energy/hysata-efficient-hydrogen-electr...
Power that by nuclear energy, and it's a green & clean winner.
Hydrogen is a smart hedge to pursue. But thank goodness it’s mostly Japanese tax dollars doing it.
Why Japan encourages hydrogen is not very related to nuclear (except that the gov want to feed jobs to heavy industry companies that worked on nuclear), but related to lack of every local materials/fuels. I think hydrogen research should be encouraged, but Toyota should release more PHEV/BEVs early.
Their homes were built expecting them to be able to pull 150-200A of power. It doesn't take that much power to charge an EV overnight. Mine charges way faster than it needs to on 32A 240V.
You're wrong.
And claims of energy loss!! Sure, no loss to heat in batteries? And batteries lose charge if they sit idle!
How do I know this? Because you haven't even specified where the h2 came from.
There is power generation from Ng, and there is h2 from Ng. Which do you think is most effective?
Ng -> steam generator -> power transmission -> charging loss
Or, Ng -> h2, delivery, fuel cell (fuel cells are highly efficient)
As an aside:
https://financialpost.com/commodities/energy/electric-vehicl...
Again the scale of hydrogen fueling stations needed would be massive
Larger and more popular gas stations can do about half a million in revenue per month selling gas, which they only have about 2% margin on. Hydrogen has the electric cost eating into margins, but even then it should be pretty profitable and much much higher than 2%.
Although it's a big up front cost commitment, the economics definitely seem feasible if hydrogen fuel cell cars start getting more popular over the next decade or more.
Most of the time it isn't a green fuel at all and is just a way to keep mining coal.
With the added benefit of not requiring an overhaul of the electrical grid to be able to handle everyone charging their cars.
EVs are nice in short term but battery issues like these illustrate their (should be obvious) shortcomings.
WRT to this battery technology, ironically the same sector being targeted by hydrogen might benefit, i.e. rail tech - if you stick a high number of cheap batteries onto a large, heavy motorcar, the energy differential is almost negligible as you make up for it in part through momentum, but also just scale (more passengers transported per watt, more charge available per trip).
Much lower up front investment and none of the huge downsides of nuclear.
https://www.iea.org/reports/the-future-of-hydrogen
See section on production.
The most commonly used process creates a mixture of steam, hydrogen and CO2. The water is condensed and the CO2 removed to purify the hydrogen product. The CO2 is a concentrated stream. This is sometimes captured and sold as a byproduct (eg food grade CO2 for beverages or dry ice).
https://newatlas.com/energy/hysata-efficient-hydrogen-electr...
In the past most catalyst improvements have run into problems with maintenance.
Luckily we have an even better option available for transport so we can focus green hydrogen on replacing all the other uses of fossil fuels.
This is just a start, Hydro Quebec will expand production if demand comes.
Just a single government providing grants for h2 refueling infra can dramatically change things.
As it stands, I will not be buying any EV, you will have a very hard time convincing me otherwise, too many drawbacks to not enough range, ridiculously high charge times, expensive battery repairs, in addition to not being much better than a gasoline vehicle as far as ECO costs.
> you don't have the battery problem (at all).
The Mirai still has a small lithium battery like a hybrid since fuel cells cannot put enough instantaneous power (only 128kw and has start up time) for normal driving they need a buffer battery that is recharged by the fuel cell. Since this battery is so small it can't benefit as much from regen like a normal BEV and has pretty poor performance as well (182hp). All this in a car that weighs more than an equivalent BEV due to heavy 10,000 psi hydrogen tanks and complexity with the fuel cell and buffer battery.
I personally believe hydrogen is a dead end for automobiles, the end to end efficiency is much worse (creating and compressing hydrogen) vs just charging a battery not to mention the issues of storing a transporting hydrogen safely [2].
1. https://electrek.co/2018/05/27/tesla-model-3-range-new-hyper...
2. https://www.volkswagenag.com/en/news/stories/2019/08/hydroge...
But note, they do actually have batteries, similar to ICE serial hybrids.
They key thing of course, is that building lots of batteries is not a 'problem', and it's lack of being a problem is exactly why BEVs are better than fuel-cell hydrogen cars for basically everything, except maybe long distance air transport.
The place where BEVs have yet to prove themselves is when energy density is absolutely critical. Long distance transport of any sort (air, sea, train, semi) is really the next places for them.
Semi is a maybe at this point. Train MIGHT make sense, but, IMO it'll probably make the most sense as an energy capture/getting the train up to cruising speed aid rather than as the sole power source. Heck, for train, it'd make sense to instead electrify the rail system. Sea seems unreachable (Sails make more sense at this point which is sort of wild). Air, IDK, there are definitely projects to hit it, but I don't see a large commercial plane doing BEV. Perhaps for smaller regional hops it'll make sense.
Europe could pull it off due to its density, but the stretches of American highway which would benefit the most from it, would be a huge challenge.
> Rapid battery cost declines accelerate the prospects of all-electric interregional container shipping
But society will disintegrate if we move away from using cars, as opposed to disintegrating if we keep using them.
why?
Personally, I would love if urban planning was structured in a way so that all new development was anti-car, and redevelopment slowly transitioned away from prioritizing automobiles, but that doesn’t appear to be in the cards.
This pattern has emerged in every city that has a bikeshare or other micromobility scheme: Consumers can dip into the waters and try it out without being "cyclists" and worrying about theft or maintenance. They can put up with poor infrastructure in other respects as a result and use it for the subset of trips where they feel it's appropriate to do so. And the operators(who are in a profitable, growing market) can provide the financial muscle to sway City Hall's policy and make the infrastructure better - because the resulting network growth goes right back into their pockets. And with learning effects, it becomes increasingly easy to deploy at a larger and larger scale. The first few years when these companies emerged and spilled e-scooters all over the streets made for disastrous PR, but their execution has improved greatly since then, with sturdier vehicles, better battery lifetimes, and closer working relationships with cities to address safety.
I don't think it's an either-or thing. I think we can have long lasting and high quality electric cars and also build so that we don't have to rely on cars as much or at all. A lot of people think that reducing reliance on cars means building skyscrapers and density like Manhattan, but it actually means building medium density mixed-use development where biking and walking and perhaps a streetcar are how you accomplish 90%+ of your day-to-day mobility needs. Then you have a car for when you need a car. This means you don't take a car to a grocery store that's half a mile away, you walk or bike. It means you don't take a car to a grocery store that's half a mile away because you have a small grocery store in your neighborhood that has everything you need for day-to-day living (you don't need to stock 16 different brands of cereal).
It also has some nice benefits where you can better participate in your local government or other civic institutions. One of the other insidious problems created by automobile-only infrastructure is that it weakens society. You can't protest when you have to figure out where to park first. You can't meet your local representative when you have to pay to park and it's a 30 minute drive each way. Etc.
LFP is also safer with much less chance for thermal runaway. So safer, cheaper, longer lasting, easier material sourcing, only downside is lower energy density (about 20% hit for same weight) but there is a huge effort to improve that.
You can LFP's pretty cheap now for home backup or RV use. I replaced my RV house batteries with LFP for 4 times the usable capacity in half the weight of my old lead acid for about 3 times the cost. You can get 48v 19" rack batteries very cheap for power backup uses. I think LFP's are going to take over most uses in including cheap commuter automobiles.
That said, I'd probably do 90% as the max and 100% on the weekend if I owned an LFP vehicle.
LFP gets 2x the cycle count at 100%-0% as a NMC does at 80%-20%. Due to its lower cell voltage it has less voltage driven aging than NMC.
Elon: "I’d personally slightly opt for iron pack, as it wants to be charged to 100%, whereas nickel prefers ~90%."
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1431040308943364097?lang...
https://insideevs.com/news/514857/mic-tesla-model3-srp-charg...
CATL is releasing some LMFP chemistry that will do 200+ wh/kg into production soon.
200 wh/kg with Tesla efficiencies should enable cheap scalable 400+ mile cars (I believe that current cobalt chemistry Tesla batteries can't break 200 wh/kg at the pack level due to thermals, but don't quote me).
And IF the stories about 140 wh/kg sodium ion are true, that may go into production next year, which means a lithium free 200-300 mile car, although I don't know as much about the endurance and thermals of sodium ion chemistries.
Charging infrastructure is now in "ball is rolling" phase. Demand for EVs is high thanks to the gasoline price spike, and LFP/Sodium Ion should in theory enable the cheaper-than-ICE car (not TCO, retail price).
We really need a new volume-independent subsidy. I'm thinking 10,000$ straight rebate (not tax credit) for two years and then it drops 1,000$ per year.
Solid state batteries should be able to take over in 5-10 years, but the new LFP/sodium ion means that big auto should not be as constrained as they were.
Tesla needs to double down on quality, software, and scaling, but I think they'll be fine. Current stock price fine? Eh.
What American auto makers need to concern themselves with is scaling their operations before the Chinese automakers invade the US like they are in Europe.
Like for example a $20k car with a 10kWh "good enough for now" starter battery that can be bought today. Still good enough for 90% of trips and upgradable to 50kWh with additional after market battery modules should the user decide. As simple as upgrading the RAM on an (old) laptop.
I think when it comes to the car this idea could be viable but I think the risk is potential change with the weight distribution. You could probably have some weights that are replaced with batteries when you upgrade to keep the weight constant but then you are reducing your range.
I’ve owned enough second hand laptops to know what second hand EV ownership is going to feel like.
Also due to their capacity most EVs are charged at about 0.1C whereas phones (especially with rapid chargers) are charged anywhere between 1C and 3C.
Most people don’t buy new cars. Most people buy second hand vehicles. They now risk degraded batteries and a huge incidental cost.
My car cost me £5000 second hand. The cheapest EV battery replacement here is £12,500. I could write that car off twice for the price of a battery and still have enough money to go on holiday.
When you buy the bottom end of the second hand EV market which is realistically what most people will have to spend on, you’re looking at the 160 mile range leaf. With an 80% battery that’s 128 miles of range. Which is near useless for the average user. I couldn’t even drive to see my mother in it without charging twice on the way.
I will not own an EV as the incidental risk trade off is too high and the up front cost of a new EV is too high.
Maybe if that is your only car. As a commuter or grocery car it would be fine.
The main positive factor of vehicle ownership is destination and route flexibility and if you trade that away then the advantage is gone.
Requires parking for two cars though. But since we are talking about an EV it requires a house anyways since most apartments have no charging.
Maybe so, but the average American family has about 2 cars. Lots of sources for that, but here’s one from top of search results:
https://housegrail.com/how-many-cars-does-the-average-americ...
Show me where I said or even implied that? Why must you argue and pick battles with everyone? Maybe time for a break?
An EV to replace the Corolla would be ideal. Perfect spot for this scenario.
That's usually the cause of scrapping a vehicle in places where structural rust didn't get it first.
What would it cost to replace the engine or gearbox of your car?
On my vehicle an engine costs about £1275 to put a refurb in it. Gearbox about £550.
There is no rust anywhere on my 8 year old vehicle.
People run like this out of financial necessity. They don’t have enough income to run an EV.
So someone buying a used EV will presumably buy something with enough range for them to get around, and then over time if they notice the range starting to decline to the point that it might be an issue, they'll have some time to save up & trade in their car for a better one. Their current car won't be worthless on the used market and someone who doesn't have as large of range requirements (e.g. a 2nd car for commuting) will still buy it.
There are other issues that can prevent an EV from charging at all, but they have usually cheaper fixes than a whole battery pack replacement like you're talking about.
From quick check in google: If you are extremely lucky, you’ll get your transmission replacement completed for $2,500 all in. If yours is one of the more expensive types, it could easily range to $6,000 or even more.
My diesel has also done just over 340,000km and it’s pretty shot. Hard to start on cold mornings and I’ve had to sort out some leaky injectors and seized joints on the driveshaft. There’s another couple of hundred thousand kilometres left at best.
The EV is coming up to 100,000km and it stills drives just as spritely as the day I got it. The battery is showing 100% state of health and I’m convinced it’ll happily do a million kilometres or more.
Sounds perfect for the average American as a daily commuter / errands car. Yes, no road trips without inconvenience, but that still doesn’t make it useless, it makes it a great secondary car instead.
i know i am not an average user but that's like a month of driving for me.
That said, 20% degradation after 10 years isn't a huge deal for me. I'm sure in that time, battery replace/refurbishment will be much cheaper. There is a company in Oregan that will replace a 40kwh Leaf pack for $7000 .
Walking!? So 1.5-2hrs each way to get to work? On really hot or cold days, that’s going to be torturous. Had you suggested riding a bike or maybe a scooter/moped I’d have not said anything, but suggesting folks walk that distance felt a bit off the mark.
How long is the rest of the car expected to survive?
I rarely do long range driving, and my commute was short for years (a couple miles each way) for about a decade before we switched to work from home a couple years before the pandemic, and I'm not interested in travel so my usage is not going to up much when I retire in a few years. I anticipate a need for at most 100k over the rest of my life, which almost certainly will be less than 25 years.
Would a current EV be likely be able to handle that with just reasonable maintenance?
I'm currently driving a 2006 Honda CR-V that I bought new and could probably reasonably keep driving another 10-15 years. That's what I want out of an EV.
Maybe I could keep that battery in my house and use it to store solar electricity most of the time. It seems like it should be possible to design a system for slotting it in that doesn’t require me to physically lift its weight.
I’d also be happy to drive into somewhere local that rents me that long range battery and slots it in with machinery designed for the purpose.
Low tech FTW.
Smartrail is still a better soln but we have to be realistic here.
I'm pretty sure Tesla's Rivians get locked into park when the charger is connected.
That’s what I was wondering too. Like you, I’m pretty sure the major EVs don’t let you drive while charge, but I haven’t actually tried it.
I can't see why no one is exploring this gap in the market. It might only appeal to nerds at first but that is true with most technologies in their infancy.
We need what is effectively a giant version of a double AA battery. Yes we also need battery management systems and heating/cooling to go with these things but these are solved problems, just not standardised yet.
Please someone take note and do this!
That would however subject the smaller battery to more charge/discharge cycles for obtaining the same mileage. Wouldn't that shorten its life?
But some companies are also investigating battery swap stations for cars. So, you might not be able to swap a short-range battery with a long-range battery yourself, but I imagine that would be possible with those battery swap stations. See [2]. Battery swap stations means that you have full range again for the same time it takes to fill a car with gas. But obviously, you need to have enough of those stations to make it usable. And if every car brand is gonna create its own mechanism for battery swapping, then that would probably only be interesting in city areas where it's worthwhile for the manufacturer to run those stations.
[1] https://www.electrive.com/2022/01/18/battery-swapping-statio... [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-61310513
Edit: typo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9aEWxexrMI
Just started raising VC this year lol
That's utopian. These things weigh a ton, you'd need a forklift.
That's basically what an electric cargo bike is, functionally.
>I’d also be happy to drive into somewhere local that rents me that long range battery and slots it in with machinery designed for the purpose.
Rent the whole car...
>my car’s weight is low and efficiency high.
...and you don't have the weight the rest of the time.
NIO is:
https://insideevs.com/news/591837/nio-battery-swapping-stati...
https://insideevs.com/news/392660/nio-battery-swap-loved-by-...
https://insideevs.com/news/583809/nio-baas-battery-swapping-...
https://insideevs.com/news/596640/nio-500kw-ultra-rapid-char...
> Like for example a $20k car with a 10kWh "good enough for now" starter battery
10 kWh wouldn't get you very far in a car. In a scooter or quadracycle 10 kWh can be useful.
> 10 kWh wouldn't get you very far in a car.
Tell that to Chevy Volt owners. It's amazing how much all electric driving can be achieved with just a little bit of careful driving. I barely use my range extender now, it's just for the odd long trip.
Lots of companies (even Tesla) have attempted the replaceable battery concept but none have been able to make it work efficiently.
I understand that the structure of the car's body may be suboptimal and require extra reinforcement but if we're really serious about EV adoption and reducing battery cost then perhaps a trade-off worth making?
So assume your vehicle has 3 packs. You normally run it with just one pack because that's all you need to commute and run errands during the week. When you go visit the relatives in Florida, you install the other two packs to get the additional range. The car needs additional structural elements to meet safety standards when the extra packs aren't installed and they add 5% additional weight. That's weight you're carrying around every day, and that has a range cost.
Could it be worth it to swap out the extra structure elements when you install the extra packs, so at least you aren't taking the range penalty while driving long distance? Yes, but the manufacturer isn't going to want the liability of a customer removing what is a passive safety device, and then forgetting to reinstall it when they go back to city travel using only one pack.
NHTSA will also have input to this. From what I can tell - the applicable FMVSS is this one that deals with EV side impact protection, electrolyte spills, and electric shock.
https://www.nhtsa.gov/document/final-rule-occupant-protectio...
They rolled out this service to a couple of spots in California, which was probably sufficient for the the credit regime, but ended up not expanding the program further and terminating it after a few quarters. The official explanation was that it was not widely used.
https://youtu.be/H5V0vL3nnHY?t=57
There may have been other business reasons. I have no idea what was discussed on the executive level but wouldn't be surprised if they considered some tradeoffs of complexity, costs and customer attractivenes to not be worth it. Honestly, it's very rare that you actually need or strongly prefer to have this kind of service rather than just recharging at 150kW for 15 minutes. So if it adds considerable cost or complexity, I could understand the decision to drop it.
A short time later, they started welding an extra metal shield onto the bottom of the Model S, to act as an extra layer of protection against collisions with highway debris that caused some high-profile battery fires. I had the impression that this precluded battery swap, so at that point the business decision must have been made to not expand the program further.
If the regulatory incentives was key in the decision to do this and then later drop it, that's a fundamental property of incentives to do something that might not be a good idea in isolation.
A short summary of the extra government subsidy Tesla got out of the non-existing battery swaps is here: https://seekingalpha.com/article/2724835-after-earning-tens-...
Tesla did a decent market test on batteries, the test failed and they moved on.
I wonder if a good solution is a smaller fixed battery for lower cost then "range extenders" like this for the bike you can swap in for longer journeys or a topup on a busy day type thing.
Compare the Model 3 to a Camry (300k units), Civic, (260k units), Corolla (250k units), or Accord (200k units), and you'll see the lightest model 3 available weighs more than the heaviest trims of all four, and the 3 is on the lighter side of 250+ mile EVs by a pretty decent margin.
Is the BMW causing just as much road damage as a Model 3? yes.
Does the weight of the average sedan go up substantially as we convert to EV? Absolutely
Corporations do not care about the environment, but they do know a good story when they see it. If they can get you to buy the same car multiple times, this is great business for them. If they can lobby governments to encourage the scrapping of old but serviceable cars, eg by fining non-EVs for their emissions, that means you will be forced to buy sooner.
It's all business. Neither corporations nor the governments that service corporations care about either the people or the environment. I wish people would recognise this fact, but corporate-government schooling/science/culture has everyone believing that government is here to help!
You can push batteries harder, but they’ll generate more heat and degrade faster (lower cycle life). This ends up counterintuitively in a higher long term cost of ownership.
Good news is C rates are getting better over time.
So why not just start selling battery cargo trailers which can provide your main car with extended range when needed?
It's also much easier to swap and rent out physically, financially and emotionally than your main car.
Trailer hookups can be legitimately difficult. Even in the simplest case, they can be time-consuming.
Humans are notoriously bad at backing up with a trailer attached.
Heavy trailers (batteries) are extra dangerous -- tail-wagging can be scary!
Cars with trailers don't fit in parking spaces.
...
A replaceable battery has to be in the underpan of a car. Or split across several battery modules, but keeping the center of gravity low, and between the axles.
It charged much slower and had worse performance degradation in winter.
This might be due to the software limitations Tesla put on the BMC, but since then it didn't improve by much.
I wouldn't expect LFP be the panacea, but it should make EVs more affordable and is definetly in the "good enough" range for most families.
Also one could fit cars with rail gear and run them on rail tracks on the highway which would lessen the tire friction roll resistance losses. Technology for allowing cars to run on rail tracks already exists for railway maintenance cars. Self driving on rail track is also much easier to implement.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road–rail_vehicle
Safety from car crashes would also be far safer at 80km/h than higher speeds.
Germany has a short section of highway testing that setup for trucks
https://www.sustainabletruckvan.com/pantographs-for-trucks-s...
If your 90% efficient drivetrain-tyre system uses 20 kWh per 100 km, then improving that to 95% efficient maybe reduces that to 17 kWh.
Pencils and javelins have lower drag coefficients than cars. Unfortunately people don't fit inside them. A javelin-shaped vehicle big enough to fit a person comfortably inside is a train.
or a cybertruck.
And if people cared about efficiency enough to drive at 80 they'd do it now. Low efficiency stsrt/stop driving is the problem to solve.
Probably not with normal-sized cars.
For the Model 3, the theoretical minimum is 13.8 kW. This increases linearly with drag coefficient and area (as seen from the front). You would have to build a significantly smaller (flatter, narrower) car and improve the drag coefficient (0.2 has been achieved) to get there.
Here's a calculator in German (sorry) for experiments: http://spare-benzin.de/Fahrphysik/Luftwiderstand/Luftwiderst...
I guess 10kWh/100km is possible at 90km/h on cruisecontroll behind a big truck.
EVs biggest problem are the inefficiencies in the electric grid, there is like a 50% margin for improvement.
Mercedes did in the Vision EQXX:
https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/mercedes-benz-vi...
https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/mercedes-vision-eqxx-ev-c...
https://lightyear.one/lightyear-0
Initial model is > $300k but they plan a $30k model in the future.
I think the car is a bit slower with the lfp but I really don’t care.
Not unless we can get into small vehicles real quick- and given that the chicken tax has been imposed by executive order since 1964 I don’t see that happening.
What an unbelievable waste. Why hasn't this cold-war relic been long abolished?
Plug in series hybrids might be a good stop-gap, as they're cheaper and solve some of the range and size issues current EVs have. You can have a smaller car, still capable of good speed and range, and at half to a third of the cost of an equivalent performance EV.
For anyone not aware of the term, a series hybrid is an EV drivetrain that has a smaller battery and an auxiliary petrol generator onboard to fill the battery if it gets low, or you demand more power from it. At first thought, that sounds ridiculous, but we're talking about compromises to fit specialty requirements here, and in that context they make a lot of sense. (also good EV conversion potential, since all you do is upgrade the battery and ditch the petrol engine once battery prices make sense)
All diesel trains do this to avoid needing giant gearboxes, mining trucks use it to cut weight, modern ships use it to enable articulating motors.
Now we are slowly reaching the point where it becomes desirable even for car-sized vehicles.
Hybrids have a role in the market for the brief period of time that battery production capacity is not large enough yet to replace them with cheaper EVs. But they are inherently more complex and costly to manufacture and drive. So, that's not going to last long.
How do you make a big car move further? Simple, you put a bigger battery in it. Those nice trucks that Ford is producing now come with enormous batteries. The main issue with that is that it drives up the cost and reduces the market size. So, Ford is doing what Tesla is doing: find cheaper/heavier batteries and offer the same product with less range in the lower price segments and reserve the premium batteries for the more expensive models. That way they can sell big cars to people that want to buy the biggest car they can afford. Never mind it will only go for 150 miles or so. You want 300+? Buy a better car. With a lot of the EVs in the market, you can spend tens of thousands of dollars on extended range versions. The difference is mainly the battery size and weight.
For example, you'll get far far more cycles out of a battery if you only charge up to 80% and discharge down to 20%. Early hybrid cars used this to an extreme - and always kept the battery between 45% and 60%. By doing that you can get 50,000 cycles necessary to recharge and discharge every time you go up and down a hill.
(200 cycles per year would be perceived by an owner as being "every day", because the days she's away on holiday or sick at home or WFH are not remembered. Nor would she remember that she only charges once on weekends.)
100_000 cycles is therefore 20 to (more likely) 50 years' use.
That's a family heirloom, well outlasting the body, suspension, steering and interior of any car. I'd like to have that too.
Edit: Er, that should be 200 to 500 years. Outlasting several chassis and interiors. Definitely heirlooms.
You're asking for a battery with an expected life span of 12.5 million kilometers.
How many cycles does a normal car battery do?
Unless you fast charge to 100% regularly.
It's not peanuts, but getting very close to it.
The main consideration is energy density, but alcohol is easy to make and handle, carbon-neutral, and the exhaust is non-toxic.
This wouldn't make sense for the whole of car traffic because we use way too much fossil fuel to replace it all with e.g. industrial ethanol. But it could work as part of a transitional strategy. Fuel co-op as part of a CSA farm.
It's pretty straightforward to convert existing ICE cars to burn alcohol instead. You don't even have to wait for anybody else, or any new technology to be developed.
A Tesla 3 has gets takes around 25kWH to go 100mi. So about 0.25 KWh per mile.
The ICE engine limitations cause it to use 400% more energy to go the same distance e. So even if gas is more dense, most of the energy is lost to engine thermodynamic limitations in using that gas - and yes mostly wasted energy in the form of heat dumping out the tailpipe.
C6H12O6 (Sugar) -(Enzymes)-> 2C2H5OH (Alcohol) + 2CO2 (Carbon Dioxide)
> The farming and transport also produces emissions and you lose a ton of energy on the way.
Yeah, you have to do it as part of a system that makes sense overall. E.g. small-scale local integrated CSA that also provides N gallons (or liters) per member of fuel per month as well as groceries. Something like that.
"However, an electric vehicle with aluminium batteries has the potential for up to eight times the range of a lithium-ion battery with a significantly lower total weight."
It just needs silver for a catalyst. :-(
[1] https://financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/ford-to-buy-cheap...
> 0 matches
It feels like we are trading one poison for another from a climate change perspective. Just passing down the buck.
Recycling of failing batteries and discarded cells that did not survive quality control in the factory is of course a thing. These don't end up in land fills. The materials inside them are way to valuable for that.
The mantra goes "reduce, re-use, recycle". In that order.
Recycling is a last resort. Please don't jump to it first. That's what people who want to virtue-signal do, not what smart people do.
Electric cars definitely cause less harm to the natural environment and people's health wellbeing than fossil fuel powered cars, so "reduce" is covered, even if not optimally.
People are also definitely re-using lithium batteries.
Since lithium batteries are a new thing, there is not yet a great enough flow of worn-out batteries to justify recycling at industrial scale as yet. Those as exist are being stockpiled for this, though. And a lot of R&D work is being done to set up for recycling.
I'm sure they'll be recycling those batteries in about 25 years when they'll be starting to wear out, but even if they don't we're still leaning hard on the "reduce" in the three R's mantra.
https://brandessenceresearch.com/blog/top-5-lithium-ion-batt...