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Comment by simondotau | Hacker News Reader

It seems there's news of a battery breakthrough every week. I've learned to temper expectations, because so many "breakthroughs" turn out to be dead ends. Because it's not enough for a battery to be incredibly light, or made of abundant materials, or last for ten thousand cycles. It needs to be good at many things and at least okay at most things.

E.g.—

• How much capacity per dollar?

• How much capacity per kilogram?

• How much capacity per litre?

• How quickly can it be charged?

• How quickly can it be discharged?

• How much energy is lost between charging and discharging?

• How predisposed is it to catching fire?

• How available are the materials needed to manufacture it?

• How available are the tools/skills required to manufacture it?

• How resilient is it to mechanical stress, e.g. vibration?

• How much does performance degrade per cycle?

• How much does performance degrade when stored at a high state of charge?

• How much does performance degrade when stored at a low state of charge?

• How much does performance drop at high temperatures?

• How much does performance drop at low temperatures?

• How well can it be recycled at end-of-life?

A sufficiently bad answer for any one of these could utterly exclude it from contention as an EV battery. A battery which scores well on everything except mechanical resilience is a non-starter, for example. Though it might be great for stationary storage.

I'm only a layperson and this list is what I came up with just a few minutes of layperson thought. I'm sure someone with more familiarity with battery technology could double the length of this list. But the point is, when you daydream about some hypothetical future battery tech, you need to appreciate just how well today's lithium chemistries score in so many areas.

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> I'm sure someone with more familiarity with battery technology could double the length of this list.

Actually, not really. For one, no serious manufacturer currently even proposes a battery technology if it doesn't meet the most basic of the mentioned criteria.

Secondly, some of these, like storing at a low/high state of charge or high/low temperature performance are nowadays managed by the BMS - models that don't have that are already not competitive. The reason is that energy density already crossed the threshold at which some of the capacity can be spared for this purpose.

To me the more important question to ask than any of these is: is there a process in place to manufacture the batteries at scale?

That is what ultimately makes or breaks an emerging battery technology.

> Secondly, some of these, like storing at a low/high state of charge or high/low temperature performance are nowadays managed by the BMS - models that don't have that are already not competitive. The reason is that energy density already crossed the threshold at which some of the capacity can be spared for this purpose.

No - this is dishonesty by some battery/car manufacturers. They say "Our car can drive 300 miles", and "our car battery will last 10 years/100,000 miles", but the reality is that if you actually drive it 300 miles on each charge, you'll only be doing about 30,000 miles before it no longer meets your needs.

Instead car manufacturers say things like "only charge to 85% to prolong battery life" and "under 15% charge is for 'reserve capacity' use only".

An honest manufacturer would only advertise the amount of capacity you can actually use day to day, rather than the capacity that is there but you really shouldn't use unless you want your battery to die young.

> An honest manufacturer would only advertise the amount of capacity you can actually use day to day, rather than the capacity that is there but you really shouldn't use unless you want your battery to die young.

Toyota do this. In fact, all PHEV manufacturers seem to do this: they keep their batteries between 15% and 85% and only advertise this range.

Insofar as they advertise it at all: the battery size in eg a Prius prime is buried in a footnote, and the range - miles/km - is what’s advertised, and is real, and corresponds to the 15-85.

I guess it is more important in a PHEV to never fully charge not discharge their batteries: most cycle from full-ish to empty-ish much more than a BEV. And so it is more logical for them to publish their 15-85. But the honesty is refreshing; BEV numbers feel disingenuous to me.

I ignore all breathlessly excited battery “breakthrough” headlines, but I ignore any from Toyota less!

As a layperson when it comes to batteries, this whole 15-85% thing seems like a silly detail that should be handled by computers. Like, at 85% the readout should say “100%”, and at 15% it should say “0%”.

Is that something they do, or do they expect users to be aware of these thresholds?

Depends on the company and product.

Traditional hybrids hide all these details. Most plug in EV’s only show 15-85% as 0-100 because you have a fall back for range extension. Many EV show the close to full range because you might daily drive just fine on 15-85% while charging at home and want to take the occasional long trip or use 0-15% capacity if a charging station is down etc.

Also, charge cycles become less important as range increases an EV with a 220 mile range is noticeably worse at 180 mile range where a 440 mile EV sees 1/2 as many charge cycles and is still perfectly useable with a 360 mile range.

But then Tesla decides to be different, advertises full 0-100% capacity and range, and Musk brags on Twitter how other EV manufacturers can't keep up.

And then builds a level 2 driver assistance system that doesn’t meet any SAE criteria of “self driving”, and brags how other manufacturers can’t keep up.

The Silicon Valley style of “fake it till you make it” business is dishonest.

>The Silicon Valley style of “fake it till you make it” business is dishonest.

And is lapped up by all the mass media contributing to Musk building a brand to rival Mercedes while spending $0 on advertising.

It's quite something, isn't it? You don't have to like it either. Seems that a lot of the USA really does. P.T.Barnum and all that.

Yet to see other auto manufacturers come anywhere near Tesla’s driver assistance system.

> Yet to see other auto manufacturers come anywhere near Tesla’s driver assistance system.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsb2XBAIWyA

There is nothing more to say about the 'glorious Tesla driver assistance system'. It can't even do basic tasks with super slow speed, no moving objects and all time in the world.

Saying what a Tesla can't do, or do well, doesn't really respond to the parent. There are people using Tesla to drive on city streets in traffic. It'd be fair to say it doesn't always work, and it isn't reliable, but are there other consumer cars that drive themselves through a town?

There aren't any consumer cars that drive themselves through a town. Tesla has a system that assists a human driver through town. This is an important distinction and hand-waving it away is exactly the dishonest and dangerous business practice I was referring to above. Industry academics and practitioners everywhere (including Tesla's rank and file) make the distinction.

https://www.sae.org/blog/sae-j3016-update

Which criteria of the level 3 does FSD fail? I don’t understand since it seems perfectly capable of driving by itself under many, many circumstances, many towns being among those. I just looked at the graphic behind your link, and FSD fulfills all of the requirements, and frankly basic autopilot does as well. Many automakers offer level 3 currently, Tesla of course having been first, but you’re right in saying that none offer level 4.

To me, the distinction between level 4 and level 5 seems abysmally stupid as well - how could you leave out the pedals and steering wheel if the car can’t operate by itself under all conditions, meaning level 4 = level 5. Maybe I just don’t have the IQ to understand what the industry academics and practitioners are conveying here.

Tesla does not offer a level 3 system. When using Tesla FSD, the driver is still responsible for supervising the operation of the system at all times and must intervene when and if the system makes an incorrect input. See the second row in the above-linked graphic.

Also see Tesla's site (buried in the support pages, rather than the marketing copy):

> FSD Beta is an SAE Level 2 driver support feature that can provide steering and braking/acceleration support to the driver under certain operating limitations. With FSD Beta, as with all SAE Level 2 driver support features, the driver is responsible for operation of the vehicle whenever the feature is engaged and must constantly supervise the feature and intervene (e.g., steer, brake or accelerate) as needed to maintain safe operation of the vehicle.

https://www.tesla.com/support/recall-fsd-beta-driving-operat...

> how could you leave out the pedals and steering wheel if the car can’t operate by itself under all conditions, meaning level 4 = level 5.

The graphic gives an example of how this can be offered: local driverless taxi. Waymo's Firefly is an example of this. It had no steering wheel or pedals. It would only operate when, where, and under the conditions where it was capable of doing so.

> Is that something they do

Pretty much. There's a catalogue of EVs here:

https://ev-database.org/

Where nominal and usable capacity is stated. Currently even Tesla includes a few kWh of buffer capacity.

State of charge in li-ion batteries isn't a straightforward thing anyway. 4.2V used to be considered 100%, but nowadays some chemistries allow for going up to 4.35V safely - doesn't sound like much, but it translates to ~15% more capacity.

My VW PHEV does this. It doesn't use the HV battery below 20% and the range calculator knows this.

So I can die on the road with enough energy to drive another 50 km?

No. The computer in the car will say you can drive 0km but you can actually drive another 50km. How well you can drive that remaining 50km will be a separate question: the battery most likely cannot discharge fast enough for highway driving.

Thanks, that makes sense.

> So I can die on the road with enough energy to drive another 50 km?

My gas car has a 42 litre tank, if i wait until the light has come on and the gauge is on (and then drive another 20km past that), I can only get 38.5 litres in.

I'll do you one better: mine has a 45 litre tank, light goes on at 5 litres left, gauge stops indicating at half of that, but there's an unmentioned anywhere buffer of 5 litres, which is there so that the fuel pump doesn't overheat or pick up any contaminants at the very bottom the tank.

I only know this because a motoring journalist filmed himself riding the same model dry.

> but the reality is that if you actually drive it 300 miles on each charge, you'll only be doing about 30,000 miles before it no longer meets your needs.

False. Nowadays manufacturers include a capacity buffer, so you're not actually fully charging/discharging. Teslas used to have no buffer whatsoever - exactly like smartphones - but they dropped the practice a few years ago.

Case in point: the battery in the Mercedes EQS 450+ has a nominal capacity of 120kWh, while usable is 107.8kWh - that's a 10% buffer - likely on the top end because that's where most of the wear happens.

You can reasonably expect 200,000 miles out of that before range degrades to 80% of the original figure. And no wonder - that's less than 600 cycles assuming highway driving. Consumer-grade batteries last this much, and the ones in EVs are anything but consumer-grade.

> An honest manufacturer would only advertise the amount of capacity you can actually use day to day

Why? It's not common to use your cars full range every day. Most people I know drive <100km on most days, and use the full range of their car maybe twice a year when they go on vacation.

Why would manufacturers advertise worst case numbers if they are not representative of the average consumers needs?

If they advertise their cars for business use, they probably should put some more detailed info somewhere. But if you advertise your car to commuters, it makes sense to use numbers that the average commuter can expect.

What's stopping them from advertising exactly that? Usable everyday range being 200km and occasional max range 500km for prolonged life of the battery pack?

Just inform the customer instead of doing the advertising mumbo-jumbo.

50% of the time I use my car, I drive more than 150 miles on a trip.

However, I do not commute with my car. And most people should press their local authorities to develop infrastructure so that they don't have to either :)

The convenient truth of the matter is that you don't want to drain your battery "to 0" regardless of whether or not it increases wear and tear on the battery, because you don't want to be stranded. As such giving lifetime aspects under that assumption that people won't do that regularly is fairly reasonable.

On the flip side, I agree that the "100%" mark should be the mark that people regularly charge to, people don't leave empty space in the tank for fun.

Is it dishonest when an IC car manufacturer advertises a range, but the fuel light comes on before that?

If you use a tank full of petrol each day, your car may not last 10 years. If you only do 1 mile a day, every day, it may not last 100k miles.

All mechanical things have usage patterns that are worse than others. You just get used to the tradeoffs.

Except for the Nissan Leaf, most EV car batteries do great at managing heat even in adverse conditions (high heat, fast charging, etc).

I have a 5 year old EV which is always charged to 100% and it’s lost maybe 5% of its range capacity so far. Perhaps it was over provisioned (undersold the actual capacity) but it’s unlikely as it’s a cheap compliance car (that I still love to drive).

Deception in marketing doesn't mean that there haven't been significant improvements in battery management systems.

an honest manufacturer would advertise the fuel economy you can expect day to day, rather than the fuel economy of a perfect test scenario.

car manufacturers have been overstating range/fuel economy since the dawn of time. people are tuned to look at those numbers and think "in perfect lab conditions." and no one expects these numbers to be their day to day numbers

> For one, no serious manufacturer currently even proposes a battery technology if it doesn't meet the most basic of the mentioned criteria.

I don't think Toyota would qualify as a serious manufacturer of battery cells. Has Toyota ever manufactured battery cells before? Not battery packs, but battery cells.

AFAIU Toyota is the main owner of Primergy EV Energy, together with Panasonic. They have been manufacturing both battery cells and packs for the Prius and other hybrids. They used to mainly make NiMH cells, but I think nowadays mostly Li-ion.

This new battery tech is done in another subsidiary that is also co-owned by Toyota and Panasonic.

This is the mostly the same kind of partnership as Tesla and Panasonic and people never stopped saying Panasonic is actually making the cells. The actual cell technology is Panasonic and the partnership is about manufacturing.

For Toyota to build up its own end to end manufacturing of battery cells is something quite different.

Its doable, as Tesla has shown, but its not easy. Specially with a new technology.

Toyota group company started making Ni-MH since 2021 https://www.toyota-industries.com/news/2022/08/30/005417/ https://www.toyota-industries.com/products/automobile/batter...

It is this manufacturing question that Toyota is claiming to have a solution to here, but afaik we don’t have details yet so it’s hard to say. But they claim to be able to mass produce these and bring them to market within ~4 years.

The problem is that 'within ~4 years' the avg improvement that everybody else has at that time makes these claims much less interesting.

> Actually, not really. For one, no serious manufacturer currently even proposes a battery technology if it doesn't meet the most basic of the mentioned criteria.

Until you realize that Toyota is peddling hydrogen as the future which makes about the least sense of anything you could choose.

Hydrogen could have made sense in an alternate timeline where government and industry cooperated on standardizing form factors for fast tank-swapping... but then, that would have made even more sense for batteries, and it didn't happen. People would whine about not "owning" their hydrogen tanks, just as they do when someone brings up the advantages of swappable batteries.

There is no world where hydrogen would ever work for cars.

It takes 50% more energy to generate hydrogen than to just use electricity itself. It takes million dollar facilities to generate that hydrogen and turn it into electricity.

Then, it has to be stored at a very high pressure in your car, which has a number of risks. Then, if you have an accident and it doesn't completely blow you up, there can be a fire, in which case you are now on fire but people just think you are a crazy person running around because hydrogen has an invisible flame.

Or, you just use electricity.

You are repeating pure FUD. This is pretty much what BEV companies want people to believe so that they never consider any alternatives.

In reality, fuel cell cars are literally just EVs, no different than BEVs. There are no fundamental downsides. But since FCEVs don't have the huge need for raw materials that BEVs do, they will be a far cheaper solution. Once you understand the unsustainable nature of BEVs, you'll realize that nearly all cars will have to switch to hydrogen eventually.

And hydrogen is safer than gasoline. This is just more FUD, and is of the fearmongering variety.

Car makers like BEVs because (a) no new infrastructure other than electricity which is available almost anywhere already and (b) none of that energy lost to compression or fancy cryogenic compression tanks to keep the hydrogen in the car or at the gas station. Lastly, most people don't want to go from $5/gallon gas to $10/gallon hydrogen.

Car makers are just following the subsidies and the hype. It is not even a sustainable idea and it will eventually die.

Hydrogen will eventually be nearly free. It is just going to be made from excess wind and solar energy and will follow the same cost reduction curve.

> Hydrogen will eventually be nearly free. It is just going to be made from excess wind and solar energy and will follow the same cost reduction curve.

How is that different from charging a battery at a super charger? Because it can be delivered via more expensive pipeline or trucks rather than cheaper wires? Heck, it doesn't even store well, you need to keep those tanks cold so the hydrogen stays compressed, you are going to be using more electricity for that.

Because you can't always have electricity available at super chargers. How do you power your car if the wind is not blowing and it is not daytime? You will need energy storage, something hydrogen provides in spades. That ensures hydrogen will be needed and be very cheap since it is made from wind, solar and water alone.

A pipeline is cheaper than a wire at moving energy around. About 10x cheaper in fact. This is just another example of BEV FUD. BEV companies just make shit up to demonization the competition, and often times the exact opposite is true.

I’d love to see a peer reviewed paper or even a report on a project that’s already been built showing that a hydrogen pipeline is cheaper to run per kWh final electricity, much less 10x cheaper.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S258900422...

You are an account that is a couple hours old and has only talked about how bad electric is and how good hydrogen is.

My account is older than yours...

Not in terms of posting it isnt

It's time to stop digging...

It's bad form to accuse people of being shills on here, but you do seem rather... well, religious about hydrogen tech at the consumer level, including making some downright-silly arguments. Either you're being paid or you really do see a serious technical injustice in the trend toward BEV adoption.

In the latter case I sympathize; I feel the same about the failure of swappable-battery tech, which would have given us the best of both worlds. Charge at the point of generation or at least at a point of efficient distribution, deploy instantly at the point of use.

And either way, I envy your ability to generate an enormous quantity of posts without getting rate-limited.

He literally thinks I’m a new account, which is wrong.

And FYI, the anti-hydrogen argument is a generic anti-green, anti—progress viewpoint. It is easily described as outright Ludditism. It’s pretty obvious the critics are totally wrong, and likely just Tesla fanboys or investors.

Hydrogen is absolutely NOT safer than gasoline. This is a ridiculous claim. For starters, it’s an explosive gas rather than a flammable liquid.

The hydrogen cells in production and used in motorsport are literally bulletproof. The type of accident that results in your tank exploding would have to be so severe you would be dead before the gas had time to ignite.

Since I can’t edit my last comment, here’s the newest disaster in the news[0]. No need to go through the tank walls when there’s another weaker link.

[0]: https://www.hydrogeninsight.com/transport/exclusive-hydrogen...

Whether the tank is bulletproof is irrelevant.

Again, whether or not your dead doesn’t change the fact that the tank will explode, not just burn.

The system as a whole is not leak-proof. All you need is a leak in a contained area, like a garage.

It is much lighter than air. Any hydrogen leaks will float away a lot faster than gasoline.

This is not even wrong.

On the other hand, it burns almost invisible.

Hydrogen refuels just like gasoline cars. It is the most logical replacement for current cars. It probably will just happen via natural progress without any external desire for CO₂ emissions reduction.

It is not the most logical replacement.

It isn’t the the one with fewest infrastructure changes (that would be biodiesel).

And it is the result of stuck about things in terms of the past: we used to power cars by pumping molecules into it, therefore we need another molecule.

Most of our green electricity will start as electricity. So it makes more sense to keep it as that and pump it directly into the car.

Given the choice, why would people still want to have to take their car to a pump when they can simply charge it at home or at work as much as possible?

If my cellphone lasted 5 days without a charge but needed me to go to a special charging station, I would never buy it. I just charge it overnight, or at work, and forget about it.

Biofuels aren't really a solution.

The problem with electricity is that you can't easily store it. And the only way to do so at large scale will be converting it to molecules. That implies hydrogen.

As a result, green electricity just means a nearly infinite supply of green hydrogen at the same level of cost. That implies nearly free hydrogen for any purpose.

Economically, that all leads to the hydrogen car as the future. You avoid both the weaknesses of ICE cars and BEVs.

This sounds logical, until you find out that the only viable way (make H2 from electrolysis) is wildly inefficient (75% efficiënt), then compressing/chilling it for transport is only (90%) efficiënt, then converting it to electricity with a fuel cell (max 60% efficiënt), followed by powering an electric motor (95% efficiency).

This adds up to: 0.750.90.6*0.95=38% efficiency.

With an electric battery car. Its about 75-80% efficiënt in the whole chain. That means you need twice as many wind turbines to run the same amount of vehicle miles. The math just doesnt hold up.

So unless we cannot produce enough batteries or cannot make the grid stronger. Which both are possibilities. Hydrogen cars will probably be a dream. At this point it just doesnt make sense.

Electrolysis is theoretically up to 100% efficient. So are fuel cells. The whole process is an electrochemical system not much different than what batteries are.

You're reading too much pro-BEV propaganda. They're just spreading FUD and trying to stop people from realizing there are alternatives.

That’s great, but in the real world we care about the actual efficiency.

It is not FUD or propaganda to say that the fuel cell cars you can buy today (or in the next 10 years) are not even close to 100% efficient. Nor is their round trip efficiency better than BEV. Nor or either of those numbers likely to change over that period.

If you cared about actual efficiency, you'd be skeptical of BEVs today. There's no straightforward of powering them directly with renewable energy. You will need vast amounts of energy storage to make that work. That will not be all that efficient. And that's after you accept the huge upfront cost of the batteries and all the problems they entail.

Meanwhile, no one is looking at compromise solutions. Something like a PHEV or even a plug-in FCEV would solve a lot of these complaints right away. There are ways around these issues even in the real world.

Finally, it's not like 10 years is that long in the car industry. If FCEVs end up matching BEVs in efficiency in 10 years, that's means we're pretty much at the verge of FCEVs taking over.

> that implies nearly free hydrogen for any purpose.

Now this is propaganda.

Don't try to argue with this guy. He is in every thread about battery claiming hydrogen is the best thing of all time. He has fully bought in to the hydrogen propaganda and doesn't care that the real world doesn't agree with him.

I’m well aware. My comments aren’t for him, they’re for everyone else who is reading them.

It's a simple extrapolation of the cost reduction in wind and solar energy. If you have an issue with that, then you are basically denying that wind and solar energy have become very cheap.

> Hydrogen refuels just like gasoline cars. It is the most logical replacement for current cars.

You should talk to this other guy who's currently arguing that the current paradigm doesn't matter and we should focus on what will make sense.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36839960

> Until you realize that Toyota is peddling hydrogen as the future which makes about the least sense of anything you could choose.

Wrong. It is the only technology in current existence that actually makes sense. Everything else is unsustainable and eventually has to be abandoned.

It makes 'sense' according to you and not 99.9% of actual costumers. But you do you.

Then the future is ICE cars because it makes sense to "actual costumers." But that isn't the topic at hand. It is what will make sense, and that can only be hydrogen cars in the long run.

ICE market is getting smaller fast and EV market is growing fast. This is a reality. Of course it doesn't happen in a year, but the trend is clear.

Just like the trend with hydrogen, where things are going absolutely no where and the waste majority of car makers who just 5 years ago were still betting on hydrogen have systematically dropped it.

Even the most hydrogen crazy Toyota expects its global hydrogen sales to be about Tesla production in a month in 2030. And those are optimistic numbers.

But don't let the real world prevent you from believing in easy to produce 100% efficient cars that can be fueled for free. Just keep living in a fantasy world, just stop spreading the lies in HN.

EVs are still a tiny niche. The resource requirements will mean it will be a long time before than can grow beyond that.

Note that BEVs were selling in the thousands only about a decade ago. FCEVs could easily reach the level of sales of BEVs in a short period of time.

The other point is that FCEVs don’t have the resource limitations of BEVs. They can easily exceed current levels of BEVs without serious trouble.

Your problem is that you are closed-minded and stuck in the past. You think that EVs are the future, but that it can only be one type of it. That the world will shift towards a 100% BEV monopoly and that no other type of EV can sell in any number. You can’t even make a coherent argument why this even is. If you want see an example of a person brainwashed by propaganda, that is it.

> like storing at a low/high state of charge or high/low temperature performance are nowadays managed by the BMS

What a BMS can do, depends on what the underlying cell alows or doesn't.

most battery tech dies at the "can it be manufactured en mass" stage.

Next you're going to tell me you don't believe in the carbon nanotube fairy. :)

There has been so much money and time spent on battery research. We are in the incremental phase of battery evolution. There will not likely be any major leap in battery cost or performance.

A battery is a box of minerals with electrochemical reactivity, i.e. it can catch on fire if something goes wrong. More energy from the battery means more minerals, which means higher cost. More reactive chemistries can reduce mineral inputs, but tend to be more expensive or less stable.

Tldr; there are no quantum leaps available for batteries. If Toyota has a giant range EV it's either really expensive or it's a research vehicle staying far away from consumers.

> More energy from the battery means more minerals, which means higher cost.

This is a fundamentally false understanding of battery innovation.

> More reactive chemistries can reduce mineral inputs, but tend to be more expensive or less stable.

Less stable, sometimes but not more expensive.

There's an even bigger issue that noone seems to get apart from Tesla: Is there actually a market for such a battery? Today's EVs can already be used for normal daily commutes without even thinking at all about range anxiety. That covers 95% of all drives for normal people. And the remaining 5% can be covered with some slightly more sophisticated route-planning. Tesla has already come out and said they could make cars that drive twice as far, but there is no real market for that. And since battery resources are a limiting factor that pretty much grow linearly with range, they rather make twice as many cars.

Places like Australia has some seriously large distances, with some of the most isolated populations on earth.

Sure it's a small market (most Australians live in their state's capital city), but there needs to be some consideration for those that need serious range. The issue is frequently mentioned when talking about banning ICE vehicles.

Toyota Landcruiser's with auxiliary fuel tanks (over 240 litres) are the workhorses in outback Australia.

Stuff like this is always brought up. And while it is true in principle, it doesn't change the above statement. Almost 90% of Australians live in cities and average distance driven per day by Australians is 30-40km. There will always be a small, single digit percentage market for long haul transport that needs alternatives. But the mass market doesn't need better EVs. That's why range has stagnated over the past years. Noone is willing to pay twice as much for slightly less inconvenience once every 6 months. Sure, if we had a working breakthrough battery that could deliver twice the performance for the same price it would be great, but in reality it would only be great for about 5% of personal traffic.

Yeah, more importantly: until cities are 100% EV, I wouldn't worry about rural. Realistically, we can probably just never worry about it: there are far more cars used in cities then in the country.

In a case where you're trying to get emitted CO2 to zero, you'd probably prefer to just subsidize ethanol and renewable diesel to manage super-long haul to get their - too many tractors and other equipment we also need to run.

In Mexico and Singapore, Nissan introduced the Epower technology which is a hybrid in which the combustion part only serves as generator. All the driving machinery is electrical, and both the mpg and range are great.

In hindsight I think it's an obvious technooogy: the conplexity of the combustion generator is pretty low, doesn't need gearbox, pistols, cylinders and whatnot. And the fuel tank still gives good range NY recharging the battery.

Got a Kicks with this tech, and so far it has been pretty good for both city and the road (5 hr drives to the beach!)

Every other manufacturer calls this a series hybrid or electric with range-extender.

They have cost challenges - because if you want to drive one at a constant 80 mph on the freeway, you need at least ~50 horsepower of gasoline generator, ~50 horsepower of generator ~ 50 horsepower of generator inverter, ~50 horsepower of motor, ~50 horsepower of motor inverter.

Turns out all of that costs and weighs a lot more than just 100 horsepower of gasoline engine for a similar size car.

Cars like the BMW i3 with range extender undersize their gas engine and generator to save money and weight, yet are getting sued because in worst case conditions (driving up a mountain heavily laden), sometimes the car runs out of battery power and has to rely on gasoline alone, leading to a top speed of only 20 mph - not really usable!

California has bizarre regulations regarding range extenders.

I also don’t see why 50 hp is a good target. The oldest Model S cars can drive on the freeway (at moderate speed) using maybe 25 kW (33 hp). So a 25 kW generator would allow indefinite freeway driving at moderate speed. But almost no one does this except maybe long haul trucks that trade drivers.

IMO the right way to think of it is: a 25 kW generator will almost fully recharge the battery in under 4 hours. If you drive uphill or fast for two hours, and you run that generator, you have an extra 50 kWh. If you want to drive 10 hours (shudder), that’s an extra 250kWh — you should avoided about three long charging stops, so maybe one actual level 3 stop gets you there even if you drive moderately fast.

And you can stop for the night (or sightseeing or whatever, as long as you park outdoors), and you’ll be fully recharged afterwards. I would appreciate a 5kW onboard generator for this purpose!

Tiny engines (ie. sub 20 horsepower) have pretty poor efficiency, and tend not to meet modern emissions requirements (since they haven't been developed with automotive use in mind).

Nobody is putting much R&D into new engine designs.

Lots of countries have laws saying an engine in a car can't be running without a driver present.

For all those reasons, tiny range extenders on large batteries don't tend to exist.

Instead you get moderate or large range extenders paired with smallish batteries (ie. total range 50 miles). And they still have trouble if you drive fast, heavily laden, up a hill, on a hot day for more than the battery capacity.

the conplexity of the combustion generator is pretty low

To add: you can always run the engine at its most efficient rpm, getting the most out of every liter of fuel.

Yes, but you also have the extra weight of the second engine - and you have to transform that mechanical energy to electricity before the electric engine transforms it back to mechanical energy again, which is lossy. So all in all I think it makes sense for long range/remote areas, but I rather would have a fuel cell as a range extension. (which has its own downsides of course)

Or why can’t an EV drive up to a gas station and pick up a towable battery to get to the next stop. I’ve heard it’s done in China.

I like the idea of one-way rentals of towable generators. Think a U-haul like model, where you pick one up at a gas station near your origin, and drop it at your destination. Now if EV makers would just allow charging while driving..

It's probably more trouble and cost than it's worth. How many thousands of dollars are you willing to deposit for the use of the battery?

You can rent a pretty near CDL sized truck from UHaul/etc for little trouble. This would represent less than the upfront cost of a truck from the companies POV. They’d only need to worry about the chance people don’t reuturn the batteries. That seems unlikely given the same people would have given all their info up front and are highly likely to need a battery in the future. Vehicle rentals are far more risky and still a daily occurrence.

I’m 100% certain the market could exist. Probably the difficult part is car manufacturers supporting it and possibly some engineering problems (low probability of problems I think).

Pretty sure the engine still has pistons and cylinders :)

Here's a nice page explaining the system -- a serial hybrid. https://www.nissan-global.com/EN/INNOVATION/TECHNOLOGY/ARCHI...

According to the page, you can't plug in these vehicles, is that right?

Chevy Volt was conceptualized as a serial hybrid iirc, but the engine drives the powertrain at higher speeds so it's not a pure serial hybrid. Mazda has a rotary engine based serial hybrid / range extender out or coming out too I believe.

While it’s great to see in a car, this has been the standard technology for locomotives for 70 years.

There are lots of pluses to not having a transmission, and always running your engine in a narrow, tuned, power band

These hybrids totally fail the reason of EVs, to get rid of the CO2 emissions of combustion engines.

If the only ICE vehicles left are in the outback, we're doing okay.

> If the only ICE vehicles left are in the outback, we're doing okay.

Are you sure? That sounds like Mad Max to me :)

Do these long distances require the driver to drive more than say 6 hours without stopping? If so, why?

It’s a problem of charger infra, not range. We’ve already solved range.

Pretending you can logically deduce what the market most desires based on facts about their lives is a theory that is really far out there

1. Do you have any memory of when SUVs went mainstream? Who'd have thought single women would want to pay the vehicle and fuel premium to commute so inefficiently. Of course men as well.

2. Americans are addicted to options that remove limitations out of anxiety over those limitations, even when the extra cost is very low ROI. Look at data plan, buffet, etc. preferences

You know what's extremely cheap to manufacture? A larger fuel tank. How many mainstream passenger cars are being sold with a >80L (>20 gal) fuel tank because prospective car buyers "are addicted to options that remove limitations out of anxiety"?

Americans are addicted to features, lifestyle and luxury (actual or perceived).

> You know what's extremely cheap to manufacture? A larger fuel tank. How many mainstream passenger cars are being sold with a >80L (>20 gal) fuel tank because prospective car buyers "are addicted to options that remove limitations out of anxiety"?

It takes mere minutes to refill a tank, and there are gas stations everywhere throughout the country. It's quick, and incredibly easy. Far faster than EVs, and far more common that EV charging stations.

As a result, there's really no value in tanks that are that much larger, there's no range anxiety because even going long distance cross-country you're never that far away from a place to refuel.

These mythical Toyota batteries can supposedly run 10 minute stops every 700 miles. That's already way beyond what any normal person could handle.

I'm comfortable doing long distances in one day and even I would be taking 20+ minute breaks every 300km (200mi) or so. The current state-of-the-art long range EVs are plenty good enough with range and charging speeds, assuming a reliable charging network.

There is value. One of my cars has a 20 gallon tank and it's nice to go a few extra days without refueling for regular commuting/around town driving, or having the option to go an extra couple of hundred miles on the highway on longer trips.

Larger fuel tank makes the car heavier and thus less fuel efficient

Additonal 10 gallons of fuel is a rounding error to a typical car mass, its effect on fuel efficiency is not detectable without precise lab equipment. Certainly you're not going to notice that when paying for gas.

Well, I dunno if you've ever driven a performance car say around 420hp but having one extra passenger is absolutely noticable and undesirable, it really slows you down. 4 passengers in the car and it's no longer a fun drive. Not a rounding error as you can directly feel it.

I expect dragging around 120 lbs extra fuel for 100k miles does become noticable on the bank book, you'd be surprised.

My diesel car from 2020 has a 40-ish litre tank and a range of around 500 miles. I just drove back from my holidays yesterday, which took nearly six hours, including three stops for loo breaks, lunch, and looking around a very small museum. It still had half the tank remaining when I got home. I have never had range anxiety with this car.

A range of 745 miles means ten hours of driving in the best of circumstances without a stop. I cannot imagine wanting to drive for ten hours without stopping. I cannot understand why EV manufacturers are putting such large batteries into cars, especially when I hear how much heavier they are making them.

The problem isn’t needing to stop, it’s charge time and availability.

When I stop with an ICE car during a road trip it’s for 15 minutes max and I know I can do it basically whenever I want. With an EV, you have to carefully plan your road trip around fueling.

Roadtripping is much nicer in an EV, IMO. You just set your destination, it tells you where and when to stop, you almost always go to the bathroom and eat at those stops anyway. You never deal with gas station bathrooms, you just pop into a Starbucks or whatever. The car is almost always ready to go by the time you are, or maybe you wait 5-10 minutes.

There's an intuition that the minor additional flexibility gas cars give you on a road trip makes the experience better, but in practice I think it's worse.

Is this with a Tesla on their fast charging network? Most companies are standardizing on their plug type and so on, but I don’t want to buy a Tesla for a variety of reasons.

Yes, but the point is it’s not inherent to EVs, regardless of your preferences.

It's only relevant insofar as fast charging stations have a huge impact on how long you have to wait. The fact that basically only the Tesla network offers this is a pretty big limiting factor.

Yes, but it's not really a limiting factor or fair complaint about EVs in general. It is perhaps a limiting factor for people who only consider non-Tesla EVs and don't want to wait for the Tesla Supercharger network to become available to other brands.

I think there are more buyers than you think that don't want a Tesla.

I shouldn't have to say it again but this is not the point.

Outside of few crazy people no normal people drive 5-6h at a time. If you can get out on the highway, plug in and spend 20min doing basic necessities you are find.

The United States is a huge country and lots of people take road trips with 5-6hr drives. If you live in California you can easily do 5+ hours and not even leave the state.

On most people almost never make such drives. This has been pretty well researched. And those that do most of the time stop and make 15min breaks at least.

So the whole issue is that on very, very long drive you might lost 15min. That not the end of the world.

When travelling long distances it's also important to derate the range for safety and comfort.

For example, it's well known that EV range decreases by 20-30% in cold weather and a recent study is claiming about the same loss in hot weather. And on long drives you tend to be more heavily loaded than normal, also cutting a few percent off actual range. Further, you need a reserve in case you get stuck on the road for some reason. Also you need a further reserve to ensure you can make it to the next next charger should the next charger be unavailable for some reason. And the advertised ranges are in better-than-average driving conditions at slower-than-average speeds, so you lose another few percent there as well.

All these derates stack which means if you want to ensure low stress in an EV you might have to derate the advertised range 50% or more depending on charger density for long drives when you decide to purchase. ICEs also need derating, but 25% is usually lots and ICEs tend to have much longer ranges to begin with.

Gas cars also have a 15%-24% range decrease in cold weather, and I'd expect similar results for hot weather. I think it's just more notable in EVs because of the higher average range of a gas car.

https://www.motorbiscuit.com/gas-powered-cars-lose-driving-r...

There are a lot of places in America where you can leave a city and go to a rural place where at best you might have a 120V charge, possibly nothing. An 800-1000 mile range battery takes a lot of the charging anxiety away until the infrastructure for electric catches up to convenience and availability of gas.

The weight issue, however, should be talked about more. I don't think filling highways with 10,000lb minivans with the acceleration speed of a Corvette is an improvement on the whole.

>The weight issue, however, should be talked about more. I don't think filling highways with 10,000lb minivans with the acceleration speed of a Corvette is an improvement on the whole.

But they aren't. The "minivans with the acceleration speed of a Corvette" exist today in the ICE world and are very few and far between because of price. You can buy a Lamborghini Urus that does 190mph, or a Range Rover Sport Turbo, or BMW X5. But those cars are all 6 figures++ so very few people can afford them.

Sure, a Rivian R1S can do 0-60 like a Corvette, but Bob down the corner isn't spending $100k on a car, so the ones that accelerate like a Corvette will be exactly as ubiquitous as a Corvette.

Meanwhile the fastest/heaviest Kia EV9 does 0-60 in 6.0 seconds, and weighs 5,700 lbs. Both a far cry from the numbers you're concerned with. Meanwhile a Chrysler Pacifica weighs 4,300 lbs, so the differences most people imagine are GREATLY exaggerated.

The vast majority of the "the vehicles are too fast and too heavy" are scare tactics by oil companies. The F-150 tips the scales at 5,500 lbs and nobody is worried about them "ruining our roads". Please don't buy into the nonsense.

It's not about ruining roads, it's about how deadly heavy vehicles are for the pedestrians they hit.

The shape of the vehicle has far, far more to do with pedestrians dying than the weight of the vehicle. I would MUCH rather go over the hood of a 4800lbs Tesla model S going 30mph than under the front bumper of a 3900lbs Tacoma.

IIRC average car weight has been stable for ~20 years, not increasing, and also pedestrian deaths have been decreasing over the same period, even as people are buying big weirdo trucks and whatnot. Also, I'd expect increased prevalence of active safety features is more important than the weight of the vehicle for pedestrian safety.

I think neither of these statements are true. Car weight has increased (https://www.capitalone.com/cars/learn/finding-the-right-car/...) as well as pedestrian deaths which have increased 77% in the last 10 odd years (https://www.nbcnews.com/data-graphics/map-pedestrian-fatalit...)

I suppose you are somewhat right, it's a bit muddier than I remembered and I guess I completely mixed up the pedestrian statistics.

In this source, the increase in car weight seems quite minor over the last 10 years:

https://www.epa.gov/automotive-trends/highlights-automotive-... (fig ES-3)

https://www.statista.com/statistics/660493/us-light-duty-veh...

Your link does not support your claim of a 77% increase, but this better source pegs it at 80%, so I suppose that's about right: https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/pedes...

That said, the rate hasn't gone up if you look at a 30-year timeframe, but it's a worrying trend nonetheless. It's a bit confusing though because I think you'd want to look at this per-capita. The absolute numbers show a 10-year upward trend, and the per-capita numbers are only split out by age group and show that same 10-year upward trend except it hasn't gone up at all for people under 20, which seems surprising.

But I remain confused because the 10-year weight increase is very small, less than 10% or so, so it is not clear to me that increasing vehicle weight is the most important factor. IIHS mentions road design and front-end design, but not weight as key factors.

In the case of EV pickups, it’s about towing. Towing a 3 ton trailer at highway speeds roughly triples the energy consumption of a pickup truck, so for 200 mile towing range you need 600 miles of unladen highway range.

> Tesla has already come out and said they could make cars that drive twice as far

You actually believed them? Tesla, that has a long track record of lying about what they can do, when they can deliver etc? That is facing major competition from every established car manufacturer who are all shipping vehicles with similar range to Tesla?

If they could release a car with double the distance/capacity they would. It would be a huge competitive advantage that no other manufacturer (except _possibly_ Toyota, if the article is to be believed) can match.

Actually it wouldn’t be an advantage. It would be a huge sunk cost (and added weight bogging down performance and handling) for a feature that virtually never gets used.

Tesla increases distance ideally by increasing efficiency. Their cars consistently score the best/lowest Wh/mi for their weight, by doing things like designing their own heat pump instead of traditional AC and resistive heating.

Because EV production is virtually always constrained by battery production, the number of cars you can sell is typically your battery production capacity (MWh) divided by your battery capacity per vehicle.

Their inherent efficiency combined with the Supercharger network to support longer trips lets them produce more cars at a lower cost / price.

There are cars like the Lucid Air which actually offer significantly more range than even the long range Teslas, while using the same battery tech (at a higher price point of course). They just recently had to scale down production because demand was waaaay below expectations. Tesla's best selling variants are also not the long range models, so it's not surprising that people won't pay for another 30% premium on something they barely ever need.

> You actually believed them? Tesla, that has a long track record of lying about what they can do

This is just basic physics not a conspiracy theory.

It simply doesn't make sense to massively improve distance.

Of course, there is a market for it. Even if you don't have to have it, charging times and rage are the main arguments gas car owners bring up in discussions as a reason for why they don't buy an electric car.

> I'm sure someone with more familiarity with battery...

I won't claim more familiarity, but...

- How frequent/difficult is required maintenance? Recall that old lead-acid batteries often needed distilled water added to their cells.

- Does it need access to air - either supplied to it, or to vent gasses? That introduces a whole host of issues, even if it's not venting (say) hydrogen gas.

- How much does performance degrade when its only cycled through part of its charge/discharge range? Recall the NiCad batteries of yesteryear.

- What are its waste, OSHA, HAZMAT, and other environmental & safety issues? Those apply all the way from the raw materials mines to the final disposal. Which includes accident scenarios - fire / flood / whatever in a facility with many batteries (or parts thereof), one-off car crashes, and things more interesting. "Disposal" includes cases such as "abandoned in a pole barn".

(BTW - kudos for specifying "How available are ...", which covers a far longer list of real-world supply issues than "What is the (current) price of".)

Indeed, these announcements about a solid state battery have been coming out for years, for example here's one from Toyota in 2017 claiming 2020 availability: https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/25/toyotas-new-solid-state-ba... -> https://www.wsj.com/articles/toyota-nears-major-technologica...

Some of us remember prior generations of battery breakthrough claims like eestor: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EEStor

I followed EESTOR closely for years. Someone should make a documentary about that saga. Amazing mix of inventor hubris, Canadian OTC pump and dump and a rabid online community of true believers mixed with speculators. Hard to believe that Kleiner Perkins invested in it.

Amazingly they are still around although they have rebranded and are now chasing some other unlikely scheme. It seems there is a limitless supply of suckers for these OTC deals, regardless how borderline their claims or history.

It would be nice to mention you are recycling this comment.

Does recycling the comment make it any less relevant?

It does contradict this part:

> I'm only a layperson and this list is what I came up with just a few minutes of layperson thought.

It seems like they've been stewing on the list for the greater part of a week, at least.

• How far can it be discharged and still be able to be recharged.

All I really need to know is

1. What is the 1.0 for distance, and model of car doing it

2. What is the expected multiplier for said new technology

3. What is the life expectancy curve for the new tech

4. is it any worse/better than the old battery on safety. I'm just not that worried about battery fires other than if newer tech is more apt to do it. I've been riding around sitting on gasoline tanks for decades now and it can't be much worse for safety.

// How well can it be recycled at end-of-life?

The fact that the chemistries are changing and diverse is the most difficult thing from an End-of-life perspective. A lot of businesses born around recycling todays battery (lots of lithium and cobalt relatively speaking) are not economical on some of the newer chemistries (looking at you Li-Fe) because they cheapened out the expensive elements.

I think you are missing the most important one. The one that killed Nissan essentially. Degradation from time. Testing for that is the hardest. You simply cannot just accelerate time. We can do all the calculations and maybe do brutal environments and tests, but at the end, we can only wait.

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