Honda targeting 50% weight reduction with EV solid state batteries
thedrive.com
thedrive.com
I love my Honda minivan, but its biggest issue is that 95% of the time I'm doing a short drive which is just killer on the engine and the environment.
Next year there are a bunch of electric minivans coming out, but they are all of the "2nd tier" vans, ie not the Toyota or Honda, which are sort of the gold standard of minivans.
The moment either of them drop an all-electric, I'll be like that meme with Fry shouting "take my money".
If I had to get a new van today, I'd consider it (or their all-electric next year).
The PHEV might be nice, but you lose the underfloor storage and can't fold the middle seats into the floor.
But for some reason the company that basically did hybrid first for some reason won't do it anymore.
Chrysler makes a PHEV version of the Pacifica, but only in FWD and I'm looking for AWD.
Which is actually pretty inline with a typical midsize sedan. People really underestimate how much cars weigh. But EVs are indeed pushing it up even higher. A breakthrough on reducing battery weight would be enormously beneficial all around.
Honda currently has 0 EVs for sale.
These guys dont give af about EVs... touting Panasonic's research while they twiddle their thumbs and do the bare minimum.
Currently Honda is planning to have solid state batteries at the same time as the rest of the industry. So they make a lot of noise about this, but they're exactly as far behind as it appears.
The reality is they’re a fairly small automaker and 99% of their current sales are IC cars. They believe they will do more for the environment to keep spending a large portion of their R&D budget getting gains out of their existing cars than completely pivoting to something people aren’t currently buying. In the meantime, a lot of the fundamental issues with EV cars will iron themselves out.
Westerners want results tomorrows but the Japanese will take incremental steps that maximize the chance of success over an incredibly long time horizon. Very different mindsets.
Trouble is that all automakers selling in North America seem to have no interest in making EVs that ordinary people can afford, it is all about luxury and behemoth vehicles.
When Chinese manufacturers reach our shores I think domestic, Euro and Japanese carmakers will get an unpleasant surprise.
European and Japanese manufacturers are already getting that nasty surprise in European markets competing with Chinese EVs like the MG4 etc.
I suspect that most Europeans buyers have no idea that MG is now owned by a Chinese company. No native Chinese brand sell above 1% in the EU.
Certainly very few customers think they are buying a British product! It also hasn't prevented the MG4 from picking up a lot of critical acclaim/car of the year awards in Europe too, and virtually every review of the car mentions its Chinese origin, usually in the context of it offering more EV for less money in several regards than a European ID3 etc.
EVs that do or almost do make sense without strong subsidization by investments, such as Nissan Leaf, Toyota bZ4X, Honda e[1] are still ignored and/or trivialized for disappointing product value propositions.
1: Why is the e sometimes considered a compliance car? There's no gas variant or shared platform or body panel, it's all-custom all-new ... garbage. But not a factory engine swap like MX-30 EV or e-Golf.
This may be true, but unfortunately the timeline we have created for ourselves with regards to climate change is unyielding. The scale of the problem is that we need to take as many IC cars off the road as fast as possible and put as many electric cars on the road as possible if we want to avoid disastrous climate scenarios.
It really seems like Japan went all in on fuel cell technology.
In the early 2000s Toyota and Honda did hybrids right while the US OEMs sat out the first 10 year. Japan OEMS are doing that failed US OEM stragegy now for EVs... and they'll unfortunately pay for it.
https://hondanews.com/en-US/releases/honda-announces-next-st...
That one joint venture battery plant for instance will at some point do 40GWH output a year while Tesla's Reno plan does 100 GWH a year -- right now.
This is a compliance car.
"Simply, the energy density would be doubled. So same energy, same volume base, kind of half [the weight]," Aoyama said.
Although the author himself confuses the matter, suggesting volume is also reduced: "If Honda's solid-state batteries truly do cut weight and size in half without reducing performance, there could be quite a bit more space in the floor of future Honda vehicles."
I'm still angry at discontinuation of the Honda Fit in the USA.
It's not just Honda of course, the subcompact hatchback is largely gone from the US market. Cars are more efficient such that larger heavier 2023 cars are nearly as fuel efficient as (eg) a 2013 Fit... but obviously a 2023 Fit would be even more efficient (and _is_ in other markets, where it's sold as a jazz). In the US we take advantage of greater efficiency to make bigger and heavier cars with the same mileage, instead of actually more efficient cars.
This is not news, but whatever USA regulation and legislation is trying to do encourage actual increases in fuel efficiency aren't working.
A giant car is a status symbol in America, and basically necessary if you don't want to be made fun of by your more conservative friends, oddly, seeing as the EPA and other environmental regulation was explicitly a conservative effort.
It is interesting that literally the opposite of solid-state batteries is happening. More cars are being sold with LFP batteries which have lower density but are cheaper and have longer life cycles.
The reason manufactures like you to charge to 100% semi-frequently is because LFPs have a fairly flat voltage curve. There's not a lot of difference in voltage between 20% and 80% which means predicting how full the battery is can be tricky for the charge controller. (nothing worse than seeing your car go from 40% to 17% in a heart beat because the controller was off).
Charging the car to 100% is the best way to calibrate the charge controller.
This all remains to be seen though. CATL I think is one of the only manufactures signalling mass production of solid state batteries but it's sort of a "believe it when I see it" situation. (Ditto with sodium batteries).
[1] - https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/12/heres-why-electric-vehi...
The energy does not need to go back into the battery. It offsets the energy needed from the battery to keep the car going at speed.
Regen efficiency makes no difference in most hills, because you probably won't be using the regen for it.
The best Tesla model 3 uses 25 kWh / 100 miles and weighs two tons. A top of the line cargo bike like the Tern GSD is capable of carrying passengers and luggage using only ~1 kWh / 100 miles, because it weighs only 75 pounds.
Slightly reducing the weight of the battery pack in a full sized car is missing the forest for the trees when it comes to lowering transportation emissions. As long as we're supply constrained for lithium battery cells, those 50 kWh of batteries going into the Tesla would be better going into 50-100 e-cargo bikes that each take a car off the road.
Anyway, you can't compare a bike going much slower than a vehicle. If we were riding bikes, at much lower speeds than 70, then no doubt we'd be getting vastly more distance for energy used. But that's a separate argument from the impact of weight on energy usage.
Beyond the obvious stuff like reduced braking distance and improved handling, a lighter car means less energy to dissipate during a collision which allows safety products and features to work more effectively.
AFAIU the good thing about regular aircrafts is that as it burns fuel, it becomes lighter. That doesn't happen with batteries, obviously.
But I'm no battery expert, maybe someone knows better.
In special relativity, the conservation of mass does not apply if the system is open and energy escapes.
And furthermore, there are more things to consider than just the energy itself, if we want to deploy it widely. Things like charging time, changing existing infrastructure, costs for R&D and development and finally all the regulatory approvals you'd have to go through. Of course not impossible but I think we're still really far away from making it happen.
For most flights, you are looking to anywhere from 1 to 2 hours to get a plane ready for the next flight. Plenty of time to plug it in and charge it up.
The bigger problem would be delivering the massive amount of juice needed to charge a plane up in that time frame. For that, maybe it would make sense to swap batteries and have some on reserve.
So the problem is that, with current battery technology, the total weight of a battery electric plane is around 3x that of a fossil plane[2]. Taking into account typical efficiency, that means a battery plane requires more energy to move a given amount of cargo a given distance.
And that’s with using relatively ancient fossil fuel engines. Unless batteries get markedly better, you’re better off just synthesizing liquid hydrocarbon fuel from atmospheric CO2 and solar panels.
[1] https://www.withouthotair.com/cC/page_274.shtml
[2] I’ve seen battery conversions of a Cessna 208 and a Cessna 337. After conversion, they have roughly the same payload of a Cessna 182 and Cessna 172, respectively. The gross takeoff weight of the battery plane ends up about 2.5-3x that of the smaller fossil plane, assuming same payload and fuel to fly equivalent distance. In both instances range drops from ~800 miles to ~200.
For another example, look at the Pipistrel Velis Electro: with daytime VFR reserves, range is less than 70 miles (my estimate, because Pipistrel actually doesn’t quote a range estimate, stating that endurance for training sorties is “the appropriate parameter to quote”). A Cessna 162 has the exact same gross weight (both are LSAs), but a 38% higher rate of climb, and roughly 5x the range with same payload. Pipistrel also had to make other compromises: 162 has a 20% shorter takeoff roll and 20% lower stall speed, too.
Electric will never replace jet fuel. It simply can't compete for long haul heavy airliner flights. But we only need ~1000wh/kg (cheaply, mass produceably) for general aviation to go electric. A 50% increase from current average LiPo specific energies gets us about half way there.
I live up North and the winter obliterate the range, so it would be nice if that was another improvement.
I mean we already have LiFePo4 but the energy density is too low?
There may be a solid-state battery chemistry I am unaware of, but the vast majority of them do not burn.
That's not strictly true, ANYTHING can burn. But on a human scale using reasonable metrics, solid state batteries are less flammable than the plastic in the interior of the car they are powering.
https://www.nasa.gov/aeroresearch/nasa-solid-state-battery-r...