11 ms·

Toyota's game-changing solid-state battery en route for 2021 debut

146 points by mardiyah 6y ago

dmitrygr 6y ago
Let us try some napkin math. How thick does a cable need to be to move that much energy in that amount of time without overheating or being too heavy for a user to carry and plug into their car. Let's say 100KWh battery, to be charged at 99% efficiency via a 99% efficient DC-DC converter in 10 minutes. That is a rate of 600 KW. Current HV chargers use 600volts, so that is 1000A current. 0000 gauge wire is rated for 302 amps, so we'll use four such wires for VCC and four for GND, thus 8 total. That is eight wires, 0.46 inches diameter each. Must be heavy and unbendable, but let's persevere. Copper's density is 8.96 g/cm^3. This cable assembly will thus weigh 11.7 kilograms (and that is without insulation) Given copper's resistance (0.046 ohms per 1000 feel of length) at 0000 gauge, our cable assembly will be shedding ~24W of heat simply conducting this power. Toasty for user hands... I cannot even fathom the kind of connector required to allow for this current AND specced for thousands of insertion/removals. Contact areas in connectors are a constant issue, and here it will be even more so. You'll also need to bend 8 half-inch-thick copper wires to plug/unplug this... I am not sure many people are ready for the force that will require. Also copper tends to break if you bend it a lot, so you'll need some other kind of conductor that bends, which means it will conduct less well, which means it will be thicker and heavier... The alternative is a lighter cable with active cooling and higher losses. This has issues too (failure of cooling can snowball into a fire quite fast, coolant leaks are no fun, etc) Now, back to our 99% efficient DC-DC converter. It will be shedding 6KW of heat, good luck cooling this, the battery charging at 99% efficiency will also be shedding 6KW of heat...same issue... Basically, i am sure a small such battery can indeed charge in 10 minutes in the lab (~a 6C charge rate), and that is VERY cool, but moving 100KHw safely in ten minutes from anywhere to anywhere near live humans is a nontrivial engineering difficulty. EDIT: why not higher voltage? arcing, insulation material limits, cracking, rain, costs
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- germinalphrase 6y ago
  Cable weight seems irrelevant if the user is not handling it. For instance, the cable is raised and attached to the vehicle from below while the user remains seated inside.
  - dmitrygr 6y ago
    that is an option, but that is not how things operate now. this introduces other difficulties. We do not have space for 30 different charging stations which each has a different plug for bottom of 30 different cars. This will not scale.
    - r00fus 6y ago
      Think MagSafe for cars (but physically connected), but industry-standardized.
    - DennisP 6y ago
      So standardize the plug. Any electric car capable of high capacity and fast charging will have similar requirements.
    - andromeduck 6y ago
      If the bottom of the car is going to be armoured anyhow can't we use plates there to transfer the charge? the problem there would probably be dealing with dirt and other contaminants. What about doubling the voltage?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- mrfusion 6y ago
  What are the issues with moving to a higher voltage?
- mardiyah 6y ago
  Yup, it's merely with assumption the electric PS network is solidly built guaranteeing availability in most places
- throwaway189262 6y ago
  It's easily doable if you increase the voltage. 600kw is easy if you're using 10kv, only 60 amps
  - dmitrygr 6y ago
    then insulation cracks + rain become a problem, as does arcing
    - sudosysgen 6y ago
      10kV is indeed a lot, but say 1kV 600amps or 1.5kV 400amps is much more doable.
    - foobarian 6y ago
      Let's consider for a second though. With the size savings of HV wire you now have room for a _lot_ of nice insulation that could last a long time. Arcing would not be a problem if you don't do live disconnects/reconnects. Rain would not be a problem with extra insulation. If arcing does occur this could be detected and power interrupted for safety, and a faulty cable replaced.
    - throwaway189262 6y ago
      High speed satefy mechanisms could mitigate this. Put a grounded pad under the car and cut power if anything flows for more than a microsecond. I think it's doable
- r00fus 6y ago
  This is Toyota. I doubt they'll target 100KWh batteries to start (though that's probably table stakes for when this will actually debut beyond prototypes). If we reduce to something small but prototype ready (20KWh) and walk back their 10m to be "10m to 80% SOC" then the numbers are surely doable with our current tech.
- mediaman 6y ago
  What happens if you move to, say, 2kV? Higher differences in potential create bigger risks of arcing, and need thicker insulation. Can this be mitigated in connector design? Or is this just considered too risky to be anywhere near people? I realize this doesn't address the heat shedding of the converter or battery.
- maxerickson 6y ago
  They are borderline commercialized already (searched one up): https://www.phoenixcontact.com/online/portal/us/?uri=pxc-oc-itemdetail:pid=1101642&library=usen&pcck=P-29-03-01-01&tab=1&selectedCategory=ALL https://www.phoenixcontact.com/online/portal/us/?uri=pxc-oc-... The power level is in active use on electric transit buses (using a charger that drops down onto contacts on the roof). The video here shows it: https://new.abb.com/ev-charging/products/pantograph-down https://new.abb.com/ev-charging/products/pantograph-down
  - dmitrygr 6y ago
    That is a very expensive (almost 4 kilodollars: https://www.alliedelec.com/product/phoenix-contact/1101642/71870106/ https://www.alliedelec.com/product/phoenix-contact/1101642/7...) cable (with ACTIVE COOLING) that can only do half the current. We need 2x that
    - maxerickson 6y ago
      It's 500 kW, you started at 600kW, not 1000 kW. They are absolutely going to have active cooling. $4,000 is high enough I guess, but it matters more how much it costs per charge delivered (which depends on how much it is used and how long it lasts and so on).
- jbay808 6y ago
  Such a connector can certainly be made, and might look like this: https://globetech.jp/products/standard-high-current-connectors https://globetech.jp/products/standard-high-current-connecto... They aren't very cheap though.
- ggreer 6y ago
  Current Teslas can charge at up to 250kW using 480V DC at 520 amps. Efficiency is somewhere between 90-95%, so that's around 10kW of heat that the car has to dump. The car's cooling system runs through the battery pack, allowing it to pump liquid through the battery, then run it through the radiator to get rid of waste heat. IIRC, Tesla plans to increase charging rates in the future by using liquid cooled charging cables. They also have a Megacharger in the works for their semi truck. Charging at 600kW doesn't sound easy, but it seems possible with current technology.
- gkfasdfasdf 6y ago
  Wow, really nice to see it broken down like that. What if there was some inductive solution with a giant plate (or plates) that would center itself under the car?
- pippy 6y ago
  American Superconductor sells wire for $200 per kiloamp per metre. It would worth it getting a lighter superconducting cable given it wouldn't need cooling.
  - mrfusion 6y ago
    Remember superconductors are the epitome of needing cooling.
- conjecTech 6y ago
  I've worked on very high current automotive applications in the past. While you raise some valid points, there are generally solutions to them. I've found its best to think of these things on a unit level - which is why so many battery characteristics are quoted in that way. If you can think of solutions for how to get around these issues for a single battery on a bench, there tend to be tractable ways to scale them. Heat dissipation is one of the only things that doesn't scale linearly. 6kw sounds like a lot of power, but over 10 minutes, you are only talking about 1kwh of energy - about enough to boil 10 liters of water. Given the mass of the 100kwh battery, a large fraction of that could just be absorbed as temperature gain. If you assume the specific heat of iron (which is an underestimate) and the weight of the current 100kwh batteries, its about a 13 degree C change.
  - apcragg 6y ago
    You're confusing energy and power which is leading you to the wrong conclusion. 6KW is 6KW of power. Over 10 minutes it's 1KWh of energy but typically you only care about instantaneous heat dissipation, which is power.
    - conjecTech 6y ago
      I think all of my units are correct. The primary point of the second paragraph was that the kind of analysis you are pointing to is inappropriate here. Thinking of this from a server heat-sinking perspective isn't helpful because the car side of the system doesn't have to operate indefinitely in steady state and is a large thermal mass.
- SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
  Why assume this has to be a traditional cable. I'm imagining something in the middle of the car park that latches on to the bottom of the car. Maybe it could be 10 charging cables in a base that rises up which gives you the amp rating without massive copper strands.
- nine_k 6y ago
  Let's not charge the whole battery via a single point. Real batteries tend to charge groups of cells, or individual cells, separately anyway. Let's have 4 cables, or maybe 6 cables, charging separate sub-batteries. Since the surface to mass ratio grows as mass decreases, passive cooling becomes more viable. The mass of each cable also becomes manageable. Of course, now you need to have several connectors on the car, likely under a dedicated retractable panel. Cars aside, I'd apprentice a phone that can charge in 10 minutes, even if it needed to be under a fan during that.
  - Kirby64 6y ago
    The only thing that solves is the cabling issue, which quite frankly is the easy part of charging. You can always throw a larger connector, liquid cooling, etc at the problem. You're still going to charge them all the same way. The amount of heat generated by charging the battery would remain exactly the same, which is the biggest limitation.
    - nine_k 6y ago
      I suppose batteries already have cooling. During charging, it could run at top performance. Likely air cooling with ambient air would be enough.
      - Kirby64 6y ago
        Yeah, that's absolutely not true. Ambient air cooling for batteries is not enough when you're talking about ridiculously fast charging. Tesla's implementation has the AC running full blast (with radiator fans going full tilt) when supercharging even at the 140kW rate. Getting the heat out of batteries is the hard part. And if you can, then keeping up with the heat generated is hard too.
sp332 6y ago
I get nervous just thinking about the amperage necessary to add 300 miles of range in 10 minutes.
- msandford 6y ago
  As long as the voltage is high enough the amperage can be made entirely bearable. 10MW (about 14000 hp) can be moved with just 100 amps at 100kv. Most houses have something like 100 amp service from the power company. At 1000kv that's only 10 amps. 10MW for 10 min is about 1500kwh or enough to charge some 15 teslas approx to full. The power levels you're talking about are big compared to household stuff, but kind of a joke compared to industrial processes.
  - eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 6y ago
    > 100kv [...] 1000kv Don't those voltages leak like crazy across things which a normal person would consider as a safe insulator? E.g. might some regular dirt on a plastic charging cable leak it into your hands?
    - XorNot 6y ago
      If you're considering those sort of voltages you might as well look into just using liquid nitrogen cooled cables and super-conducting cables. Liquid nitrogen can be made from the air on-site if needed, and is a hell of a lot easier to handle then hundreds or thousands of volts.
    - meowster 6y ago
      I've never heard of "leaking", but higher voltages are more likely to cause arc blasts. Usually that only happens when a switch is thrown.
  - SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
    Is it possible to make a cable safe enough for people to be holding at 100kv?
runawaybottle 6y ago
Japan’s 20 billion subsidy seems very low for the entire industry. I also don’t know if Toyota’s serious about mass production infrastructure needed to ship EVs (seriously). Tesla is serious, and they are having trouble ramping up. These companies are not as serious, so how do they ever expect to ramp up when things get super serious? Will wait and see, but these companies are in jeopardy of getting dusted unless they start shipping something this year, like the Ford Mach E.
- KLexpat 6y ago
  Toyota is in a much better position than E.U. or U.S. manufacturers, except for Tesla. In the early 00's, the EU introduced emmissions regulations focused on Carbon, which didn't take sulphur into account. That's why Volkswagen and others like Mercedes focused so heavily on small diesel turbo engines, and explains the 2005-2010 or so diesel vehicle boom. American manufacturers mostly just made big gas sonking vehicles running on petrol Japanese manufacturers developed the Prius and other hybrid-electric products and were early to the game. Remember that the Toyota Prius Hybrid Electric vehicle was released in 1997. 1997! They currently sell four million units a year of Prius alone, and definitely have the knowledge + capacity to mass produce EV's
  - r00fus 6y ago
    Explain Toyota's fascination with hydrogen fuel-cells. I loved my 2000s era Prius for what it was. I have lost any hope Toyota can catch up with Tesla now.
    - KLexpat 6y ago
      Battery tech wasn't that good back then. I think the consumer electronics battery boom (i.e. putting batteries in cellphones, laptops, etc) has advanced the tech considerably. Not my area of expertise though
  - Gustomaximus 6y ago
    I think the bigger risk is in the self driving component. If Tesla or another company pull this off, catchup could take 10+ years for other companies. All else remaining equal who will buy a car you have to drive when you can avoid it, not least to add taxi, trucking and delivery service fleet purchases. In addition as this market progresses I imagine accidents per km will become a huge purchase decision when self driving is more commonplace so quality of system will be huge. Not many are going to buy the cars that have 3x the accidents or too many famous mess ups. Batteries are important but if I was an auto manufacturer the self driving component would keep me up at night.
Animats 6y ago
It's a fluoride-ion battery. Here's a 2018 article on that.[1] [1] https://techxplore.com/news/2018-12-battery-concept-based-fluoride-ions.html https://techxplore.com/news/2018-12-battery-concept-based-fl...
- ipsum2 6y ago
  Thank you! All that filler and no talk about the actual tech.
- mastazi 6y ago
  I'm not sure. From the article you linked: > In the 1970s, researchers attempted to create rechargeable fluoride batteries using solid components, but solid-state batteries work only at high temperatures, making them impractical for everyday use. In the new study, the authors report at last figuring out how to make the fluoride batteries work using liquid components—and liquid batteries easily work at room temperature. But OP mentions solid state batteries. This is not my field so I might just be misunderstanding what I'm reading.
  - Animats 6y ago
    Here's an announcement from Toyota last year with claims of a major battery breakthrough Real Soon Now™[1] "It is still unclear just how far the prototype tested in Kyoto is from series production." I hope this works. Toyota has a good reputation. But the history of battery announcements is so disappointing. If this came with "and you can order the development kit battery now", it would be more convincing. I'd like to see a 1, 5 and 10 years ago in battery announcements column somewhere that publishes battery announcements. [1] https://www.electrive.com/2020/08/14/toyota-developing-flouride-ion-battery-with-1000-km-range/ https://www.electrive.com/2020/08/14/toyota-developing-flour...
  - rhodozelia 6y ago
    A battery that works at high temps would be great! Most batteries degrade with temperature
f430 6y ago
Tesla is screwed.
- sixQuarks 6y ago
  lol. ok
  - f430 6y ago
    look Tesla's battery factory in China is in complete shambles. Porsche, hyundai, samsung, apple (hyundai collab), honda, toyota, vw, mercedes, audi are ALL after Tesla's pie and now the automotive cartel are going to push out Tesla. I'm sorry this rustles the jimmies of Tesla shareholders and Elon Musk's fanboys. I got nothing against him but no early mover in automotive industry have ever survived in the long run: Ford, GM. You know which company bet the farm on the continued generosity of low interest rates and government grants? Porsche in the 1970s. They eventually suffered a huge setback when the capital markets dried up. Tesla has had a good run but you can't downvote away reality, SWOT analysis, and the fact that they have never made a profit on the cars they sold if you discounted tax credit and loan relief. Jim Chanos is always right but not always profitable.
    - r00fus 6y ago
      Man straight out of TSLAQ fanfic. Auto cartel has been gunning for Tesla for 10+ years now without landing any hits. I doubt Tesla keeps it's margins or perhaps even valuation, but no one has a viable alternative that's not vapor.
      - f430 6y ago
        > no one has a viable alternative that's not vapor. you underestimate the manufacturing capabilities of automtotive giants with far longer history at mass scale production of cars. look theres' nothing special about electric cars. they are mostly just battery + chasis + motor. It's just not 2016 anymore, they've all been quietly acquiring the know how and waiting for the battery before making their end game chess move. Let's keep the personal attacks to a minimum please. I can't even have a conversation on HN anymore without getting flagged by people who can't handle criticisms or fear their narrative coming under attack. I get it. You bought Tesla stock, you made money, you are smart and everybody who drives ICE car are dumb. However, that still has nothing to do with how Tesla has never made a profit on its cars. Jim Chano is NOT wrong on this and lots of people overlook at this simple accounting trickery.
r00fus 6y ago
I wonder about the timing of this with Apple's announcement of 2024 entrance into EV market "with a next-level battery".
- pvg 6y ago
  Apple hasn't made such an announcement.
  - xedeon 6y ago
    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-autos-exclusive/exclusive-apple-targets-car-production-by-2024-and-eyes-next-level-battery-technology-sources-idUSKBN28V2PY https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-autos-exclusive/exc...
    - turtlebits 6y ago
      "Apple declined to comment on its plans or future products."
      - xedeon 6y ago
        That goes without saying. Since when did Apple discuss future plans? It's well known since 2014 that they have been working on Project Titan for a while and even hired former Ford, Tesla, and Mercedes-Benz employees.
        whimsicalism 6y ago
        It goes without saying that Apple declines to comment on its "announcement"?
        xedeon 6y ago
        Look, I posted the article for context. Not to support the OP. Notice how I didn’t even say anything. I have no idea nor pretend to know the timeline. I just know that Apple is working on Project Titan for a while now. Take your issue with the authors who wrote the articles.
monk_e_boy 6y ago
When these get put in phones, people will upgrade far less often... that'll put more pressure on the smaller phone companies. Anecdotal - all my friends upgrade for more batter life or better camera. CPU / OS updates don't really bother them.
- dheera 6y ago
  > people will upgrade far less often Good! We need to stop manufacturing so much disposable shit. Yes, the economy will take a hit. We need new ways of defining progress than "money spent" and "shit manufactured". There are other ways to define and provide value in a post-modern society.
  - alisonkisk 6y ago
    A phone every 3 years is barely a blip in the "disposable stuff" department
    - fomine3 6y ago
      They uses rare metals.
      - zdragnar 6y ago
        They use an utterly insignificant amount compared to an EV though...
        datameta 6y ago
        So if we have 7.2 millions PEVs (all-electric + hybrid)[0] how does that compare to the 4.8 billion phone users (smart + feature)[1]? If we assume only 1 phone per person (and ignore how many are in landfills) that's 667 phones per electric vehicle. I wonder how that compares in terms of rare earth metal usage. The lifecycle of a vehicle is probably ~2-20 times that of a phone so let's say a single magnitude. That gives us 6600 phones per vehicle lifetime. Granted - the smartphone market will stay within a magnitude (not everyone can be an HK taxi driver with 7 phones) Now global EV adoption will increase by ~3 magnitudes by the time the market saturates and there might be a magnitude separating phone count from EVs. [0] https://evstatistics.com/2020/06/global-electric-vehicle-stock-reaches-7-2-million/ https://evstatistics.com/2020/06/global-electric-vehicle-sto... [1] https://www.bankmycell.com/blog/how-many-phones-are-in-the-world https://www.bankmycell.com/blog/how-many-phones-are-in-the-w...
jseliger 6y ago
The fine print involves no direct timeline for a commercially available vehicle: "Nissan Motor plans to develop its own solid-state battery which will power a non-simulation vehicle by 2028." "The production site, located at a research and development center in Saitama Prefecture, will be able to produce dozens of tons of solid electrolyte annually staring next year, enough to fulfill orders for prototypes." "Toyota plans to be the first company to sell an electric vehicle equipped with a solid-state battery in the early 2020s. The world's largest automaker will unveil a prototype next year." Solid state batteries will be great, but we might not see them in vehicles on the street for many years.
williesleg 6y ago
Solid state is at minimum 10 years off.
mcot2 6y ago
This is spin. Toyota is very late to EV’s having bet a lot on Hydrogen. As you will see this “next-gen” battery will be in development for at least another 5 years and probably much longer before the $/kwh is at parity with lithium ion. Thats also comparing against todays Lithium Ion batteries forget about any advancements happening in the next several years.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  > Toyota is very late to EV’s Huh? Didn't Toyota define EVs in the 2000s with the hybrid Prius? It became iconic, broke into practical use and the mass market, and led the way for things like the Tesla. They were innovators and disrupters, not late to it. Toyota worked on EVs when they were unfashionable, impractical, and unlikely. And they made them work in spite of all that. Now people are talking about them like they're EV laggards. Madness.
  - ianai 6y ago
    Agree. They just didn't build it solely around one big battery without any ICE engine. Look, if you live in an apartment it most likely is impossible to charge and own an EV. That’s a huge market segment to not address. They can all comfortably buy hybrids though.
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      I don't get why range extenders aren't more popular. A little motorbike-size engine that you can fuel from any petrol station on the planet that can charge the battery overnight, not connected to the drive train and running at optimal RPM for the alternator.
      - toomuchtodo 6y ago
        Because electricity is ubiquitous. It’s literally everywhere. Some states have mandated apartment complexes accompanied EV owners, and with the Biden administration, I expect federal standards in short order. It’s a policy problem, not a technology problem. Tesla has deployed an enormous fast charging network on their own dime, so it’s reasonable more can be done faster with government support (including mandating and funding EV chargers for apartment dwellers). No one wants to charge their EV from a Honda generator at their apartment complex. If you’re a Tesla owner in an apartment with no apartment parking EV charger access, you pop over to a Supercharger once a week (which, while suboptimal, is equivalent to gas stations until EV chargers are more widely available).
JBiserkov 6y ago
Let's hope solid-state batteries are such a game-changer for electric vehicles as solid-state disks (SSD) are for computers.
- fomine3 6y ago
  I bet for Solid State Wheel.
peteretep 6y ago
> The government is putting together a fund of about 2 trillion yen ($19.2 billion) that will support decarbonization technology. Policymakers will consider using those funds to provide subsidies of hundreds of billions of yen that will fund the development of the new batteries. As an aside, being able to do this kind of thing is one of the very few alleged benefits of Brexit. Will be interesting to see if they can actually execute on it.
- ahmedalsudani 6y ago
  The EU is more likely to put together something of the sort than Global Britain :)
  - peteretep 6y ago
    Why?
dang 6y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25381889 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25381889 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25400725 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25400725
- stetrain 6y ago
  Thanks. It's a strange article in general, especially given that it keeps popping up here. The article makes a lot of claims (500km, 10 minute charge from 0-100%, reduced battery size/footprint) but it doesn't back up those claims or even say who is claiming them. Is it Toyota? A manufacturing partner? "people familiar with the matter"? The authors themselves based on general industry knowledge?

146 points by mardiyah 6y ago

Let us try some napkin math. How thick does a cable need to be to move that much energy in that amount of time without overheating or being too heavy for a user to carry and plug into their car. Let's say 100KWh battery, to be charged at 99% efficiency via a 99% efficient DC-DC converter in 10 minutes. That is a rate of 600 KW. Current HV chargers use 600volts, so that is 1000A current. 0000 gauge wire is rated for 302 amps, so we'll use four such wires for VCC and four for GND, thus 8 total. That is eight wires, 0.46 inches diameter each. Must be heavy and unbendable, but let's persevere. Copper's density is 8.96 g/cm^3. This cable assembly will thus weigh 11.7 kilograms (and that is without insulation) Given copper's resistance (0.046 ohms per 1000 feel of length) at 0000 gauge, our cable assembly will be shedding ~24W of heat simply conducting this power. Toasty for user hands... I cannot even fathom the kind of connector required to allow for this current AND specced for thousands of insertion/removals. Contact areas in connectors are a constant issue, and here it will be even more so. You'll also need to bend 8 half-inch-thick copper wires to plug/unplug this... I am not sure many people are ready for the force that will require. Also copper tends to break if you bend it a lot, so you'll need some other kind of conductor that bends, which means it will conduct less well, which means it will be thicker and heavier... The alternative is a lighter cable with active cooling and higher losses. This has issues too (failure of cooling can snowball into a fire quite fast, coolant leaks are no fun, etc) Now, back to our 99% efficient DC-DC converter. It will be shedding 6KW of heat, good luck cooling this, the battery charging at 99% efficiency will also be shedding 6KW of heat...same issue... Basically, i am sure a small such battery can indeed charge in 10 minutes in the lab (~a 6C charge rate), and that is VERY cool, but moving 100KHw safely in ten minutes from anywhere to anywhere near live humans is a nontrivial engineering difficulty. EDIT: why not higher voltage? arcing, insulation material limits, cracking, rain, costs

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
germinalphrase 6y ago
Cable weight seems irrelevant if the user is not handling it. For instance, the cable is raised and attached to the vehicle from below while the user remains seated inside.
- dmitrygr 6y ago
  that is an option, but that is not how things operate now. this introduces other difficulties. We do not have space for 30 different charging stations which each has a different plug for bottom of 30 different cars. This will not scale.
  - r00fus 6y ago
    Think MagSafe for cars (but physically connected), but industry-standardized.
  - DennisP 6y ago
    So standardize the plug. Any electric car capable of high capacity and fast charging will have similar requirements.
  - andromeduck 6y ago
    If the bottom of the car is going to be armoured anyhow can't we use plates there to transfer the charge? the problem there would probably be dealing with dirt and other contaminants. What about doubling the voltage?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
mrfusion 6y ago
What are the issues with moving to a higher voltage?
mardiyah 6y ago
Yup, it's merely with assumption the electric PS network is solidly built guaranteeing availability in most places
throwaway189262 6y ago
It's easily doable if you increase the voltage. 600kw is easy if you're using 10kv, only 60 amps
- dmitrygr 6y ago
  then insulation cracks + rain become a problem, as does arcing
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    10kV is indeed a lot, but say 1kV 600amps or 1.5kV 400amps is much more doable.
  - foobarian 6y ago
    Let's consider for a second though. With the size savings of HV wire you now have room for a _lot_ of nice insulation that could last a long time. Arcing would not be a problem if you don't do live disconnects/reconnects. Rain would not be a problem with extra insulation. If arcing does occur this could be detected and power interrupted for safety, and a faulty cable replaced.
  - throwaway189262 6y ago
    High speed satefy mechanisms could mitigate this. Put a grounded pad under the car and cut power if anything flows for more than a microsecond. I think it's doable
r00fus 6y ago
This is Toyota. I doubt they'll target 100KWh batteries to start (though that's probably table stakes for when this will actually debut beyond prototypes). If we reduce to something small but prototype ready (20KWh) and walk back their 10m to be "10m to 80% SOC" then the numbers are surely doable with our current tech.
mediaman 6y ago
What happens if you move to, say, 2kV? Higher differences in potential create bigger risks of arcing, and need thicker insulation. Can this be mitigated in connector design? Or is this just considered too risky to be anywhere near people? I realize this doesn't address the heat shedding of the converter or battery.
maxerickson 6y ago
They are borderline commercialized already (searched one up): https://www.phoenixcontact.com/online/portal/us/?uri=pxc-oc-itemdetail:pid=1101642&library=usen&pcck=P-29-03-01-01&tab=1&selectedCategory=ALL https://www.phoenixcontact.com/online/portal/us/?uri=pxc-oc-... The power level is in active use on electric transit buses (using a charger that drops down onto contacts on the roof). The video here shows it: https://new.abb.com/ev-charging/products/pantograph-down https://new.abb.com/ev-charging/products/pantograph-down
- dmitrygr 6y ago
  That is a very expensive (almost 4 kilodollars: https://www.alliedelec.com/product/phoenix-contact/1101642/71870106/ https://www.alliedelec.com/product/phoenix-contact/1101642/7...) cable (with ACTIVE COOLING) that can only do half the current. We need 2x that
  - maxerickson 6y ago
    It's 500 kW, you started at 600kW, not 1000 kW. They are absolutely going to have active cooling. $4,000 is high enough I guess, but it matters more how much it costs per charge delivered (which depends on how much it is used and how long it lasts and so on).
jbay808 6y ago
Such a connector can certainly be made, and might look like this: https://globetech.jp/products/standard-high-current-connectors https://globetech.jp/products/standard-high-current-connecto... They aren't very cheap though.
ggreer 6y ago
Current Teslas can charge at up to 250kW using 480V DC at 520 amps. Efficiency is somewhere between 90-95%, so that's around 10kW of heat that the car has to dump. The car's cooling system runs through the battery pack, allowing it to pump liquid through the battery, then run it through the radiator to get rid of waste heat. IIRC, Tesla plans to increase charging rates in the future by using liquid cooled charging cables. They also have a Megacharger in the works for their semi truck. Charging at 600kW doesn't sound easy, but it seems possible with current technology.
gkfasdfasdf 6y ago
Wow, really nice to see it broken down like that. What if there was some inductive solution with a giant plate (or plates) that would center itself under the car?
pippy 6y ago
American Superconductor sells wire for $200 per kiloamp per metre. It would worth it getting a lighter superconducting cable given it wouldn't need cooling.
- mrfusion 6y ago
  Remember superconductors are the epitome of needing cooling.
conjecTech 6y ago
I've worked on very high current automotive applications in the past. While you raise some valid points, there are generally solutions to them. I've found its best to think of these things on a unit level - which is why so many battery characteristics are quoted in that way. If you can think of solutions for how to get around these issues for a single battery on a bench, there tend to be tractable ways to scale them. Heat dissipation is one of the only things that doesn't scale linearly. 6kw sounds like a lot of power, but over 10 minutes, you are only talking about 1kwh of energy - about enough to boil 10 liters of water. Given the mass of the 100kwh battery, a large fraction of that could just be absorbed as temperature gain. If you assume the specific heat of iron (which is an underestimate) and the weight of the current 100kwh batteries, its about a 13 degree C change.
- apcragg 6y ago
  You're confusing energy and power which is leading you to the wrong conclusion. 6KW is 6KW of power. Over 10 minutes it's 1KWh of energy but typically you only care about instantaneous heat dissipation, which is power.
  - conjecTech 6y ago
    I think all of my units are correct. The primary point of the second paragraph was that the kind of analysis you are pointing to is inappropriate here. Thinking of this from a server heat-sinking perspective isn't helpful because the car side of the system doesn't have to operate indefinitely in steady state and is a large thermal mass.
SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
Why assume this has to be a traditional cable. I'm imagining something in the middle of the car park that latches on to the bottom of the car. Maybe it could be 10 charging cables in a base that rises up which gives you the amp rating without massive copper strands.
nine_k 6y ago
Let's not charge the whole battery via a single point. Real batteries tend to charge groups of cells, or individual cells, separately anyway. Let's have 4 cables, or maybe 6 cables, charging separate sub-batteries. Since the surface to mass ratio grows as mass decreases, passive cooling becomes more viable. The mass of each cable also becomes manageable. Of course, now you need to have several connectors on the car, likely under a dedicated retractable panel. Cars aside, I'd apprentice a phone that can charge in 10 minutes, even if it needed to be under a fan during that.
- Kirby64 6y ago
  The only thing that solves is the cabling issue, which quite frankly is the easy part of charging. You can always throw a larger connector, liquid cooling, etc at the problem. You're still going to charge them all the same way. The amount of heat generated by charging the battery would remain exactly the same, which is the biggest limitation.
  - nine_k 6y ago
    I suppose batteries already have cooling. During charging, it could run at top performance. Likely air cooling with ambient air would be enough.
    - Kirby64 6y ago
      Yeah, that's absolutely not true. Ambient air cooling for batteries is not enough when you're talking about ridiculously fast charging. Tesla's implementation has the AC running full blast (with radiator fans going full tilt) when supercharging even at the 140kW rate. Getting the heat out of batteries is the hard part. And if you can, then keeping up with the heat generated is hard too.

sp332 6y ago

I get nervous just thinking about the amperage necessary to add 300 miles of range in 10 minutes.

msandford 6y ago
As long as the voltage is high enough the amperage can be made entirely bearable. 10MW (about 14000 hp) can be moved with just 100 amps at 100kv. Most houses have something like 100 amp service from the power company. At 1000kv that's only 10 amps. 10MW for 10 min is about 1500kwh or enough to charge some 15 teslas approx to full. The power levels you're talking about are big compared to household stuff, but kind of a joke compared to industrial processes.
- eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 6y ago
  > 100kv [...] 1000kv Don't those voltages leak like crazy across things which a normal person would consider as a safe insulator? E.g. might some regular dirt on a plastic charging cable leak it into your hands?
  - XorNot 6y ago
    If you're considering those sort of voltages you might as well look into just using liquid nitrogen cooled cables and super-conducting cables. Liquid nitrogen can be made from the air on-site if needed, and is a hell of a lot easier to handle then hundreds or thousands of volts.
  - meowster 6y ago
    I've never heard of "leaking", but higher voltages are more likely to cause arc blasts. Usually that only happens when a switch is thrown.
- SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
  Is it possible to make a cable safe enough for people to be holding at 100kv?

runawaybottle 6y ago

Japan’s 20 billion subsidy seems very low for the entire industry. I also don’t know if Toyota’s serious about mass production infrastructure needed to ship EVs (seriously). Tesla is serious, and they are having trouble ramping up. These companies are not as serious, so how do they ever expect to ramp up when things get super serious? Will wait and see, but these companies are in jeopardy of getting dusted unless they start shipping something this year, like the Ford Mach E.

KLexpat 6y ago
Toyota is in a much better position than E.U. or U.S. manufacturers, except for Tesla. In the early 00's, the EU introduced emmissions regulations focused on Carbon, which didn't take sulphur into account. That's why Volkswagen and others like Mercedes focused so heavily on small diesel turbo engines, and explains the 2005-2010 or so diesel vehicle boom. American manufacturers mostly just made big gas sonking vehicles running on petrol Japanese manufacturers developed the Prius and other hybrid-electric products and were early to the game. Remember that the Toyota Prius Hybrid Electric vehicle was released in 1997. 1997! They currently sell four million units a year of Prius alone, and definitely have the knowledge + capacity to mass produce EV's
- r00fus 6y ago
  Explain Toyota's fascination with hydrogen fuel-cells. I loved my 2000s era Prius for what it was. I have lost any hope Toyota can catch up with Tesla now.
  - KLexpat 6y ago
    Battery tech wasn't that good back then. I think the consumer electronics battery boom (i.e. putting batteries in cellphones, laptops, etc) has advanced the tech considerably. Not my area of expertise though
- Gustomaximus 6y ago
  I think the bigger risk is in the self driving component. If Tesla or another company pull this off, catchup could take 10+ years for other companies. All else remaining equal who will buy a car you have to drive when you can avoid it, not least to add taxi, trucking and delivery service fleet purchases. In addition as this market progresses I imagine accidents per km will become a huge purchase decision when self driving is more commonplace so quality of system will be huge. Not many are going to buy the cars that have 3x the accidents or too many famous mess ups. Batteries are important but if I was an auto manufacturer the self driving component would keep me up at night.

Animats 6y ago

It's a fluoride-ion battery. Here's a 2018 article on that.[1] [1] https://techxplore.com/news/2018-12-battery-concept-based-fluoride-ions.html https://techxplore.com/news/2018-12-battery-concept-based-fl...

ipsum2 6y ago
Thank you! All that filler and no talk about the actual tech.
mastazi 6y ago
I'm not sure. From the article you linked: > In the 1970s, researchers attempted to create rechargeable fluoride batteries using solid components, but solid-state batteries work only at high temperatures, making them impractical for everyday use. In the new study, the authors report at last figuring out how to make the fluoride batteries work using liquid components—and liquid batteries easily work at room temperature. But OP mentions solid state batteries. This is not my field so I might just be misunderstanding what I'm reading.
- Animats 6y ago
  Here's an announcement from Toyota last year with claims of a major battery breakthrough Real Soon Now™[1] "It is still unclear just how far the prototype tested in Kyoto is from series production." I hope this works. Toyota has a good reputation. But the history of battery announcements is so disappointing. If this came with "and you can order the development kit battery now", it would be more convincing. I'd like to see a 1, 5 and 10 years ago in battery announcements column somewhere that publishes battery announcements. [1] https://www.electrive.com/2020/08/14/toyota-developing-flouride-ion-battery-with-1000-km-range/ https://www.electrive.com/2020/08/14/toyota-developing-flour...
- rhodozelia 6y ago
  A battery that works at high temps would be great! Most batteries degrade with temperature

f430 6y ago

Tesla is screwed.

sixQuarks 6y ago
lol. ok
- f430 6y ago
  look Tesla's battery factory in China is in complete shambles. Porsche, hyundai, samsung, apple (hyundai collab), honda, toyota, vw, mercedes, audi are ALL after Tesla's pie and now the automotive cartel are going to push out Tesla. I'm sorry this rustles the jimmies of Tesla shareholders and Elon Musk's fanboys. I got nothing against him but no early mover in automotive industry have ever survived in the long run: Ford, GM. You know which company bet the farm on the continued generosity of low interest rates and government grants? Porsche in the 1970s. They eventually suffered a huge setback when the capital markets dried up. Tesla has had a good run but you can't downvote away reality, SWOT analysis, and the fact that they have never made a profit on the cars they sold if you discounted tax credit and loan relief. Jim Chanos is always right but not always profitable.
  - r00fus 6y ago
    Man straight out of TSLAQ fanfic. Auto cartel has been gunning for Tesla for 10+ years now without landing any hits. I doubt Tesla keeps it's margins or perhaps even valuation, but no one has a viable alternative that's not vapor.
    - f430 6y ago
      > no one has a viable alternative that's not vapor. you underestimate the manufacturing capabilities of automtotive giants with far longer history at mass scale production of cars. look theres' nothing special about electric cars. they are mostly just battery + chasis + motor. It's just not 2016 anymore, they've all been quietly acquiring the know how and waiting for the battery before making their end game chess move. Let's keep the personal attacks to a minimum please. I can't even have a conversation on HN anymore without getting flagged by people who can't handle criticisms or fear their narrative coming under attack. I get it. You bought Tesla stock, you made money, you are smart and everybody who drives ICE car are dumb. However, that still has nothing to do with how Tesla has never made a profit on its cars. Jim Chano is NOT wrong on this and lots of people overlook at this simple accounting trickery.

r00fus 6y ago

I wonder about the timing of this with Apple's announcement of 2024 entrance into EV market "with a next-level battery".

pvg 6y ago
Apple hasn't made such an announcement.
- xedeon 6y ago
  https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-autos-exclusive/exclusive-apple-targets-car-production-by-2024-and-eyes-next-level-battery-technology-sources-idUSKBN28V2PY https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-autos-exclusive/exc...
  - turtlebits 6y ago
    "Apple declined to comment on its plans or future products."
    - xedeon 6y ago
      That goes without saying. Since when did Apple discuss future plans? It's well known since 2014 that they have been working on Project Titan for a while and even hired former Ford, Tesla, and Mercedes-Benz employees.
      - whimsicalism 6y ago
        It goes without saying that Apple declines to comment on its "announcement"?
        xedeon 6y ago
        Look, I posted the article for context. Not to support the OP. Notice how I didn’t even say anything. I have no idea nor pretend to know the timeline. I just know that Apple is working on Project Titan for a while now. Take your issue with the authors who wrote the articles.

monk_e_boy 6y ago

When these get put in phones, people will upgrade far less often... that'll put more pressure on the smaller phone companies. Anecdotal - all my friends upgrade for more batter life or better camera. CPU / OS updates don't really bother them.

dheera 6y ago
> people will upgrade far less often Good! We need to stop manufacturing so much disposable shit. Yes, the economy will take a hit. We need new ways of defining progress than "money spent" and "shit manufactured". There are other ways to define and provide value in a post-modern society.
- alisonkisk 6y ago
  A phone every 3 years is barely a blip in the "disposable stuff" department
  - fomine3 6y ago
    They uses rare metals.
    - zdragnar 6y ago
      They use an utterly insignificant amount compared to an EV though...
      - datameta 6y ago
        So if we have 7.2 millions PEVs (all-electric + hybrid)[0] how does that compare to the 4.8 billion phone users (smart + feature)[1]? If we assume only 1 phone per person (and ignore how many are in landfills) that's 667 phones per electric vehicle. I wonder how that compares in terms of rare earth metal usage. The lifecycle of a vehicle is probably ~2-20 times that of a phone so let's say a single magnitude. That gives us 6600 phones per vehicle lifetime. Granted - the smartphone market will stay within a magnitude (not everyone can be an HK taxi driver with 7 phones) Now global EV adoption will increase by ~3 magnitudes by the time the market saturates and there might be a magnitude separating phone count from EVs. [0] https://evstatistics.com/2020/06/global-electric-vehicle-stock-reaches-7-2-million/ https://evstatistics.com/2020/06/global-electric-vehicle-sto... [1] https://www.bankmycell.com/blog/how-many-phones-are-in-the-world https://www.bankmycell.com/blog/how-many-phones-are-in-the-w...

jseliger 6y ago

The fine print involves no direct timeline for a commercially available vehicle: "Nissan Motor plans to develop its own solid-state battery which will power a non-simulation vehicle by 2028." "The production site, located at a research and development center in Saitama Prefecture, will be able to produce dozens of tons of solid electrolyte annually staring next year, enough to fulfill orders for prototypes." "Toyota plans to be the first company to sell an electric vehicle equipped with a solid-state battery in the early 2020s. The world's largest automaker will unveil a prototype next year." Solid state batteries will be great, but we might not see them in vehicles on the street for many years.

williesleg 6y ago

Solid state is at minimum 10 years off.

mcot2 6y ago

This is spin. Toyota is very late to EV’s having bet a lot on Hydrogen. As you will see this “next-gen” battery will be in development for at least another 5 years and probably much longer before the $/kwh is at parity with lithium ion. Thats also comparing against todays Lithium Ion batteries forget about any advancements happening in the next several years.

chrisseaton 6y ago
> Toyota is very late to EV’s Huh? Didn't Toyota define EVs in the 2000s with the hybrid Prius? It became iconic, broke into practical use and the mass market, and led the way for things like the Tesla. They were innovators and disrupters, not late to it. Toyota worked on EVs when they were unfashionable, impractical, and unlikely. And they made them work in spite of all that. Now people are talking about them like they're EV laggards. Madness.
- ianai 6y ago
  Agree. They just didn't build it solely around one big battery without any ICE engine. Look, if you live in an apartment it most likely is impossible to charge and own an EV. That’s a huge market segment to not address. They can all comfortably buy hybrids though.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    I don't get why range extenders aren't more popular. A little motorbike-size engine that you can fuel from any petrol station on the planet that can charge the battery overnight, not connected to the drive train and running at optimal RPM for the alternator.
    - toomuchtodo 6y ago
      Because electricity is ubiquitous. It’s literally everywhere. Some states have mandated apartment complexes accompanied EV owners, and with the Biden administration, I expect federal standards in short order. It’s a policy problem, not a technology problem. Tesla has deployed an enormous fast charging network on their own dime, so it’s reasonable more can be done faster with government support (including mandating and funding EV chargers for apartment dwellers). No one wants to charge their EV from a Honda generator at their apartment complex. If you’re a Tesla owner in an apartment with no apartment parking EV charger access, you pop over to a Supercharger once a week (which, while suboptimal, is equivalent to gas stations until EV chargers are more widely available).

JBiserkov 6y ago

Let's hope solid-state batteries are such a game-changer for electric vehicles as solid-state disks (SSD) are for computers.

fomine3 6y ago
I bet for Solid State Wheel.

peteretep 6y ago

> The government is putting together a fund of about 2 trillion yen ($19.2 billion) that will support decarbonization technology. Policymakers will consider using those funds to provide subsidies of hundreds of billions of yen that will fund the development of the new batteries. As an aside, being able to do this kind of thing is one of the very few alleged benefits of Brexit. Will be interesting to see if they can actually execute on it.

ahmedalsudani 6y ago
The EU is more likely to put together something of the sort than Global Britain :)
- peteretep 6y ago
  Why?

dang 6y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25381889 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25381889 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25400725 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25400725

stetrain 6y ago
Thanks. It's a strange article in general, especially given that it keeps popping up here. The article makes a lot of claims (500km, 10 minute charge from 0-100%, reduced battery size/footprint) but it doesn't back up those claims or even say who is claiming them. Is it Toyota? A manufacturing partner? "people familiar with the matter"? The authors themselves based on general industry knowledge?