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>How are the environmental effects ofthe production of the huge batteries, their disposal or recycling evaluated. Very easily. Batteries are very simple and h

by hwillis 10y ago

>How are the environmental effects ofthe production of the huge batteries, their disposal or recycling evaluated. Very easily. Batteries are very simple and have about a dozen input materials, usually from single sources. They are some of the most easily analyzed products in the world. There's a steel jacket with a plastic gasket, a cathode material (in Teslas this comprises lithium, nickel, cobalt and aluminum), an electrolyte mixture (common, safe liquids like ethylene carbonate or dimethyl carbonate), a separator (one of many common plastics), and an anode mixture (around 55%/45% natural and synthetic graphite, possibly with a few percent silicon). Every one of those materials is extremely common, readily available, and highly recycled or recyclable. Almost all steel and aluminum is recycled, and plastic can easily be recycled. The electrolytes are just small carbonates, used in a ton of industries. Nickel is the biggest threat by far- per pound cobalt is slightly worse, but there is 5.3x[1] as much nickel in a battery. If we switched to 100% electric cars using Tesla sized batteries, they still wouldn't use as much nickel as the stainless steel industry does. There is no comparing the byproduct during manufacture. Lithium battery production is just great. For recycling the worry is solely that the nickel and cobalt will leech from broken batteries into the water supply. This doesn't happen with stainless steel because well, it's stainless. Luckily nickel and cobalt are also the most valuable part of the battery, and are quite valuable to recover through shredding and incineration. The scrap value of nickel alone in the battery is more than the scrap value of steel in the car, so recycling is virtually guaranteed. >I've seen only some very dishonest ones like "once the batteries are not usable in cars we'll sell them" where the worth of the used batteries was immensely overblown. Are you sure you have your facts right? A battery is "used" when it's maximum capacity is 80% of it's original capacity. It continues working long after and can even degrade slower. The only problem is that it's much heavier for it's capacity- 25-50% heavier. For permanent storage that isn't a problem. Their value could easily be 50% of the original price or more, for well kept batteries- recycling wouldn't even be an issue in that case. At that price buying used batteries would be almost as cheap as buying gasoline for generators. [1]: http://neicorporation.com/specs/NANOMYTE_BE-45_NCA_Spec_Sheet.pdf http://neicorporation.com/specs/NANOMYTE_BE-45_NCA_Spec_Shee...

acqq 10y ago
> A battery is "used" when it's maximum capacity is 80% of it's original capacity. The only problem is that it's much heavier for it's capacity- 25-50% heavier. For permanent storage that isn't a problem. Their value could easily be 50% of the original price or more The above claim is exactly what made me skeptical: the greater availability of something reduces its price, so 50% of the price of a new one just doesn't sound right, unless there's some identified other immense need for them: the number of "used" batteries available to the market would be huge if the number of the buyers of the electric cars would significantly increase. That can only pull down the price of the used ones and increase the price of the new ones. The real question is where the ultimate prices would be, considering these effects. Also, Tesla claims that their lithium batteries last extremely long, that is so if the battery's not completely discharged, but every lithium battery in every notebook I have had was the first to die or degrade very fast, even if I surely never "deep" discharged it. And it's so small compared to the ones in the car. So there is some significant difference somewhere between what's claimed and what I've personally experienced. And what's the market for the used up consumer electronics lithium batteries? Also in 2013 Musk's company claimed the Model S makes 176g CO2 per mile, controlling their claim gives "346g per mile - more than the 312g per mile the EPA says the Toyota Highlander emits." https://seekingalpha.com/article/1430161-in-summary-the-tesla-model-s-is-a-dirty-car https://seekingalpha.com/article/1430161-in-summary-the-tesl... My main argument stays -- there's no reason to believe Musk, and every for an independent careful control of his claims.
- hwillis 10y ago
  >The above claim is exactly what made me skeptical: the greater availability of something reduces its price, so 50% of the price of a new one just doesn't sound right, unless there's some identified other immense need for them: the number of "used" batteries available to the market would be huge if the number of the buyers of the electric cars would significantly increase. On the one hand there is something to your intuition: 50% is a near-maximum price that basically assumes people will be buying batteries for the grid/home. This could be for solar, or people could want stationary batteries at home to keep a quick top-up charge for their car. Alternately companies could buy extra batteries to top up their electric fleet, or to supplement solar, or to take advantage of off-peak demand. On the other hand the actual resale price is basically irrelevant. The scrap price of a car is a few hundred dollars, so a battery would have to fall to like 5% of it's own value to not be worth recycling. At that price you wouldn't be able to sell the things fast enough. The volume isn't a real problem. There's a 20+ year lag time before enough cars are being recycled to make this an issue. IF used battery supply ever exceeds demand -very unlikely, given the always falling cost of solar- there is pleeeeeenty of time for recycling to start. The short and long term problems are very different. The absorption mechanisms that seem insufficient at high volume are a bridge to the recycling that seems immature. >That can only pull down the price of the used ones and increase the price of the new ones. The real question is where the ultimate prices would be, considering these effects. It would pull down the price of used and other secondary batteries. Normally this would increase the price of a new commodity, but batteries are supply-constrained and their price is set by the number we can make. It would also pull down the price of new batteries, since they would have fewer buyers at the higher price point. More likely the lower demand would have no effect at all. >Also, Tesla claims that their lithium batteries last extremely long, that is so if the battery's not completely discharged, but every lithium battery in every notebook I have had was the first to die or degrade very fast, even if I surely never "deep" discharged it. And it's so small compared to the ones in the car. So there is some significant difference somewhere between what's claimed and what I've personally experienced. I dearly love this stuff, and explaining it (I'm an electrical engineer). There are a bunch of reasons for the difference! The biggest one is actually heat- your laptop gets super hot in use and uses the batteries as a heat sink, but an electric car very carefully cools its battery (unless it's a Leaf). A battery at 60C can drop to 60% of its original capacity after just 3 months. This kills laptops dead after just a few years even if you keep them plugged in every second you own them. The second biggest is depth of charge. The average daily drive is around 30 miles, or 10-20% of an electric car's battery. Most trips are just short errands or commutes, not long drives. You may not deep discharge your laptop, but a battery will do 5,000 cycles if you discharge it to 85%, and 1,000 if you discharge it to 50%. The best results are with normal discharges under 20%, which nobody does with a laptop but almost every single electric car does. A <10% DoD will last for tens of thousands of cycles. I really can't overstate how dramatic the difference is. Batteries as we currently use them are very badly mistreated, and when they are kept in <90 F conditions they last 2-3 times longer. When used lightly they last 3-4x longer. Both situations happen naturally in a car. Even in very hot climates the hot days never get anywhere near to the temperatures in a laptop or phone. >And what's the market for the used up consumer electronics lithium batteries? Currently more lithium is used to make ceramic glazes than batteries. Collecting and reselling the hundreds of different kinds of batteries from junked laptops is a healthy, profitable business in Asian countries. There simply aren't enough batteries to warrant real recycling though.

by hwillis 10y ago

acqq 10y ago

> A battery is "used" when it's maximum capacity is 80% of it's original capacity. The only problem is that it's much heavier for it's capacity- 25-50% heavier. For permanent storage that isn't a problem. Their value could easily be 50% of the original price or more The above claim is exactly what made me skeptical: the greater availability of something reduces its price, so 50% of the price of a new one just doesn't sound right, unless there's some identified other immense need for them: the number of "used" batteries available to the market would be huge if the number of the buyers of the electric cars would significantly increase. That can only pull down the price of the used ones and increase the price of the new ones. The real question is where the ultimate prices would be, considering these effects. Also, Tesla claims that their lithium batteries last extremely long, that is so if the battery's not completely discharged, but every lithium battery in every notebook I have had was the first to die or degrade very fast, even if I surely never "deep" discharged it. And it's so small compared to the ones in the car. So there is some significant difference somewhere between what's claimed and what I've personally experienced. And what's the market for the used up consumer electronics lithium batteries? Also in 2013 Musk's company claimed the Model S makes 176g CO2 per mile, controlling their claim gives "346g per mile - more than the 312g per mile the EPA says the Toyota Highlander emits." https://seekingalpha.com/article/1430161-in-summary-the-tesla-model-s-is-a-dirty-car https://seekingalpha.com/article/1430161-in-summary-the-tesl... My main argument stays -- there's no reason to believe Musk, and every for an independent careful control of his claims.

hwillis 10y ago
>The above claim is exactly what made me skeptical: the greater availability of something reduces its price, so 50% of the price of a new one just doesn't sound right, unless there's some identified other immense need for them: the number of "used" batteries available to the market would be huge if the number of the buyers of the electric cars would significantly increase. On the one hand there is something to your intuition: 50% is a near-maximum price that basically assumes people will be buying batteries for the grid/home. This could be for solar, or people could want stationary batteries at home to keep a quick top-up charge for their car. Alternately companies could buy extra batteries to top up their electric fleet, or to supplement solar, or to take advantage of off-peak demand. On the other hand the actual resale price is basically irrelevant. The scrap price of a car is a few hundred dollars, so a battery would have to fall to like 5% of it's own value to not be worth recycling. At that price you wouldn't be able to sell the things fast enough. The volume isn't a real problem. There's a 20+ year lag time before enough cars are being recycled to make this an issue. IF used battery supply ever exceeds demand -very unlikely, given the always falling cost of solar- there is pleeeeeenty of time for recycling to start. The short and long term problems are very different. The absorption mechanisms that seem insufficient at high volume are a bridge to the recycling that seems immature. >That can only pull down the price of the used ones and increase the price of the new ones. The real question is where the ultimate prices would be, considering these effects. It would pull down the price of used and other secondary batteries. Normally this would increase the price of a new commodity, but batteries are supply-constrained and their price is set by the number we can make. It would also pull down the price of new batteries, since they would have fewer buyers at the higher price point. More likely the lower demand would have no effect at all. >Also, Tesla claims that their lithium batteries last extremely long, that is so if the battery's not completely discharged, but every lithium battery in every notebook I have had was the first to die or degrade very fast, even if I surely never "deep" discharged it. And it's so small compared to the ones in the car. So there is some significant difference somewhere between what's claimed and what I've personally experienced. I dearly love this stuff, and explaining it (I'm an electrical engineer). There are a bunch of reasons for the difference! The biggest one is actually heat- your laptop gets super hot in use and uses the batteries as a heat sink, but an electric car very carefully cools its battery (unless it's a Leaf). A battery at 60C can drop to 60% of its original capacity after just 3 months. This kills laptops dead after just a few years even if you keep them plugged in every second you own them. The second biggest is depth of charge. The average daily drive is around 30 miles, or 10-20% of an electric car's battery. Most trips are just short errands or commutes, not long drives. You may not deep discharge your laptop, but a battery will do 5,000 cycles if you discharge it to 85%, and 1,000 if you discharge it to 50%. The best results are with normal discharges under 20%, which nobody does with a laptop but almost every single electric car does. A <10% DoD will last for tens of thousands of cycles. I really can't overstate how dramatic the difference is. Batteries as we currently use them are very badly mistreated, and when they are kept in <90 F conditions they last 2-3 times longer. When used lightly they last 3-4x longer. Both situations happen naturally in a car. Even in very hot climates the hot days never get anywhere near to the temperatures in a laptop or phone. >And what's the market for the used up consumer electronics lithium batteries? Currently more lithium is used to make ceramic glazes than batteries. Collecting and reselling the hundreds of different kinds of batteries from junked laptops is a healthy, profitable business in Asian countries. There simply aren't enough batteries to warrant real recycling though.