That's a hack, not a solution.
> Given CATL is scaling sodium-ion production to to GWh scale next year, it sounds like they are betting for a much shorter timeframe.
Wanna bet? LFP is ~1,000 GWh scale right now. GWh scale is 0.1%.
By the time I had finished my coffe, SoC had gone from 30-ish to 90-ish percent.
LFP tech anno 2023 is perfectly good enough for road tripping in large cars in severe winter conditions. For almost everyone.
Let’s not pretend better batteries shouldn’t exist.
This can’t be more than single digit days per year? This is the case where people in for example Sweden have 230V engine block and passenger compartment heaters for their car.
It’s like the definition of an edge case.
It’s -30C and the heat pump doesn’t really work. Is there any advantage to heating the cold side with, say, a resistive heater?
Conservation of energy says no, but what if it’s also being heated by waste heat from charging the batteries?
(Maybe the answer is “if that’s the case, you are actively cooling the batteries with the heat pump!”, but I’d like to think someone more clever than me could make the scheme work.)
Now imagine there's battery technology that solves that + removes equipment required for battery preheat...
I'm not against further progress, I'm just stating that using current gen LFP in cold climate for large cars driving long distances is not a problem. It is more than fine. At least Tesla's implementation of LFP, I can't speak to any others on the market.
Why do you say that? It sounds like a simple solution to me.
You are driving a giant killing machine around... it isn't too much to ask that you have some foresight to avoid the situation you describe.
In my friend group, if you run out of gas you get made fun of. You forget to flip your kill switch and can't crank your motorcycle, we all laugh and call you a dipshit.
Getting stranded isn't always harmless, and proper adults don't get stranded. Proper adults manage their vehicle safely. That's my point. Yes, exceptions are allowed, but we need to make sure everyone knows they are exceptions. Don't leave 5% on your battery when in the freezing seasons, it's improper.
TBH that's majority of people. And it's a good thing since tyres got so good.
I get it tho. It's obvious. But it's better when things work better.
It’s not to say a hack/workaround isn’t useful, and I would say that it’s perfectly acceptable to simply use a battery heater in the winter. But calling it “solved” confuses solutions and workarounds, and that’s an intellectually dishonest thing to do.
Now, we can go into the weeds as to what constitutes solved and we might agree or disagree.