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So yesterday Audi/Porsche/VW announced a new v6 engine that will be used in variations across all their vehicles. Further down the line, they said that engine w

So yesterday Audi/Porsche/VW announced a new v6 engine that will be used in variations across all their vehicles. Further down the line, they said that engine would include an electric drive component as well, incorporating a battery, effectively making all their cars "hybrids". This seems to be the trend, see racing tech (Formula 1, WEC, etc.). We will probably see this in all new consumer cars sometime soon. Once every car has a battery, wouldn't the standard car battery that's most common today be obsolete? At your price point, performance/luxury cars seem to be your only market, which are also the cars that will electric drive before mid to low end cars. These are also the owners who will replace their cars every 3-5 years anyway. Either from a 3 year lease or the 4 year warranty is out and they want something new. I don't mean to be discouraging but, it seems your market viability, if there is any to begin with, is already limited to 5 years at the most. I do love the idea of saving 30 lbs weight, it's negligible for most of my driving in my sports coupe, but I like to feel like it's making a difference!

thaumaturgy 11y ago
> Once every car has a battery, wouldn't the standard car battery that's most common today be obsolete? That day is still a long way away, and once it arrives, there will still be large numbers of classic and modern hot rods on the road. That's not a small market. > At your price point, performance/luxury cars seem to be your only market The US automotive aftermarket was around $300 billion in 2013. > ...already limited to 5 years at the most. I seriously doubt that even the majority of vehicles on the road will be EVs within 5 years. And 5 years is plenty of time to develop other innovative automotive products.
smeyer 11y ago
>At your price point, performance/luxury cars seem to be your only market Is this really true? It sounded from the article like they're only about $50 more than a typical battery, unless I missed something. I could see some people with normal cars shelling out $50 for the longer life and features to avoid a dead battery, even if the reduced weight doesn't matter much to them.
- nacs 11y ago
  > I could see some people with normal cars shelling out $50 for the longer life Most people will take their car to a repair shop when they have problems with their battery and will take whatever battery the tech/shop suggests (as long as its in their price range). Unless this company starts pitching their batteries really well to these repair shops, they're not going to see much business.
- trhway 11y ago
  >I could see some people with normal cars shelling out $50 for the longer life and features to avoid a dead battery, even if the reduced weight doesn't matter much to them. my current BMW battery cost $130 and rated for something like 6 years - the car is 14.5 years old, had batteries replaced at 6.5 and 12.5 years (both times it wasn't dead yet, just on suggestion by the shop).
Sanddancer 11y ago
A lot of hybrids, like the Prius [1] have a second battery designed for turning over the engine that are designed for different usage cases than the drivetrain batteries; it's also why this battery has a supercapacitor for starting, and lithium polymers for the rest of the time. Additionally, there are a lot of people who like older cars, think hotrodders, etc, where a battery like this would also be useful. It's definitely more of a niche product, but I do see a market for more than five years. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Optima-Batteries-8171-767-DS46B24R-YellowTop/dp/B006VFEJJQ http://www.amazon.com/Optima-Batteries-8171-767-DS46B24R-Yel...
- tomkinstinch 11y ago
  Slight correction as a Gen II Prius driver: In the Prius, the 12V battery only runs the control electronics of the car (and a few small motors like the wipers); the engine is turned over by a high-voltage motor running from the main "traction" battery. The smaller 12V battery is charged from the high-voltage battery which is itself charged from the gasoline engine via the hybrid transmission. All that is to say that the 12V battery doesn't see huge load spikes like a regular starter battery (even the air conditioning compressor runs off the high-voltage pack). It would be GREAT to have a supercapacitor bank backing the traction battery in parallel though, particularly for storing the energy recovered from regenerative braking.
  - Sanddancer 11y ago
    Thanks. Should have known not to trust a battery vendor's page touting its superior cold cranking amps for a hybrid. Though for the hybrid battery pack, you'd want to stick with more traditional batteries. Supercapacitors are better when you need to provide a lot of current at once, but they don't have nearly the energy density of lithium, or even lead, batteries. It is possible, though, that a supercapacitor bank could be useful in the frontend to serve much like this battery does. I could see it being potentially useful to have the supercapacitor get the motors turning to provide torque as fast as possible, with the regular batteries providing the lower current to keep things going.
nacs 11y ago
> At your price point, performance/luxury cars seem to be your only market, I'm not sure even that will be a market they can cater to as newer performance/luxury cars have a massive amount of electronics and computers inside that put a heavy continuous drain on the battery (and continue to drain even when the car isn't running). Considering this new battery can't even hold the amount of power that a normal car battery can, I don't see it being used in high-draw luxury vehicles.
- conjecTech 11y ago
  We don't think this will be a major issue. One of the nice things about LiFePo4 batteries is that it has an enormous cycle life compare to lead-acid and can provide a really high level of power throughout its entire discharge range. The power of lead-acid degrades pretty quickly and you can have significant trouble cranking your car even if it still has half of its energy available. If the electronics were using high enough amounts of energy to be a concern for our design, it would also likely mean that the cars would have trouble starting with a lead-acid.
CHY872 11y ago
Current electric cars and hybrids still all have 12V lead acid batteries in them (Teslas, Leafs, Priuses etc). These are typically used to drive the lights, windscreen wipers etc but also to bootstrap the charging process. I think in some states it's required by law, and although this is probably an artifact of history (you must be able to run your hazards even if you're out of petrol etc) it still means that cars will all have such batteries for the foreseeable future. I would seriously doubt the market viability being five years. Car manufactures like homogeneous models where possible - so you'd expect to see batteries until every model in the range was a hybrid. It's otherwise additional complexity, and I'd imagine a right pain to get restarted when flat.

thaumaturgy 11y ago

> Once every car has a battery, wouldn't the standard car battery that's most common today be obsolete? That day is still a long way away, and once it arrives, there will still be large numbers of classic and modern hot rods on the road. That's not a small market. > At your price point, performance/luxury cars seem to be your only market The US automotive aftermarket was around $300 billion in 2013. > ...already limited to 5 years at the most. I seriously doubt that even the majority of vehicles on the road will be EVs within 5 years. And 5 years is plenty of time to develop other innovative automotive products.

smeyer 11y ago

>At your price point, performance/luxury cars seem to be your only market Is this really true? It sounded from the article like they're only about $50 more than a typical battery, unless I missed something. I could see some people with normal cars shelling out $50 for the longer life and features to avoid a dead battery, even if the reduced weight doesn't matter much to them.

nacs 11y ago
> I could see some people with normal cars shelling out $50 for the longer life Most people will take their car to a repair shop when they have problems with their battery and will take whatever battery the tech/shop suggests (as long as its in their price range). Unless this company starts pitching their batteries really well to these repair shops, they're not going to see much business.
trhway 11y ago
>I could see some people with normal cars shelling out $50 for the longer life and features to avoid a dead battery, even if the reduced weight doesn't matter much to them. my current BMW battery cost $130 and rated for something like 6 years - the car is 14.5 years old, had batteries replaced at 6.5 and 12.5 years (both times it wasn't dead yet, just on suggestion by the shop).

Sanddancer 11y ago

A lot of hybrids, like the Prius [1] have a second battery designed for turning over the engine that are designed for different usage cases than the drivetrain batteries; it's also why this battery has a supercapacitor for starting, and lithium polymers for the rest of the time. Additionally, there are a lot of people who like older cars, think hotrodders, etc, where a battery like this would also be useful. It's definitely more of a niche product, but I do see a market for more than five years. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Optima-Batteries-8171-767-DS46B24R-YellowTop/dp/B006VFEJJQ http://www.amazon.com/Optima-Batteries-8171-767-DS46B24R-Yel...

tomkinstinch 11y ago
Slight correction as a Gen II Prius driver: In the Prius, the 12V battery only runs the control electronics of the car (and a few small motors like the wipers); the engine is turned over by a high-voltage motor running from the main "traction" battery. The smaller 12V battery is charged from the high-voltage battery which is itself charged from the gasoline engine via the hybrid transmission. All that is to say that the 12V battery doesn't see huge load spikes like a regular starter battery (even the air conditioning compressor runs off the high-voltage pack). It would be GREAT to have a supercapacitor bank backing the traction battery in parallel though, particularly for storing the energy recovered from regenerative braking.
- Sanddancer 11y ago
  Thanks. Should have known not to trust a battery vendor's page touting its superior cold cranking amps for a hybrid. Though for the hybrid battery pack, you'd want to stick with more traditional batteries. Supercapacitors are better when you need to provide a lot of current at once, but they don't have nearly the energy density of lithium, or even lead, batteries. It is possible, though, that a supercapacitor bank could be useful in the frontend to serve much like this battery does. I could see it being potentially useful to have the supercapacitor get the motors turning to provide torque as fast as possible, with the regular batteries providing the lower current to keep things going.

nacs 11y ago

> At your price point, performance/luxury cars seem to be your only market, I'm not sure even that will be a market they can cater to as newer performance/luxury cars have a massive amount of electronics and computers inside that put a heavy continuous drain on the battery (and continue to drain even when the car isn't running). Considering this new battery can't even hold the amount of power that a normal car battery can, I don't see it being used in high-draw luxury vehicles.

conjecTech 11y ago
We don't think this will be a major issue. One of the nice things about LiFePo4 batteries is that it has an enormous cycle life compare to lead-acid and can provide a really high level of power throughout its entire discharge range. The power of lead-acid degrades pretty quickly and you can have significant trouble cranking your car even if it still has half of its energy available. If the electronics were using high enough amounts of energy to be a concern for our design, it would also likely mean that the cars would have trouble starting with a lead-acid.

CHY872 11y ago

Current electric cars and hybrids still all have 12V lead acid batteries in them (Teslas, Leafs, Priuses etc). These are typically used to drive the lights, windscreen wipers etc but also to bootstrap the charging process. I think in some states it's required by law, and although this is probably an artifact of history (you must be able to run your hazards even if you're out of petrol etc) it still means that cars will all have such batteries for the foreseeable future. I would seriously doubt the market viability being five years. Car manufactures like homogeneous models where possible - so you'd expect to see batteries until every model in the range was a hybrid. It's otherwise additional complexity, and I'd imagine a right pain to get restarted when flat.