6 ms·

Just as important as recycling these batteries is making it possible for older EVs to have their batteries replaced years down the road with 3rd party batteries

by danans 5y ago

Just as important as recycling these batteries is making it possible for older EVs to have their batteries replaced years down the road with 3rd party batteries. In 2031, it should be possible to by a long-past-warranty 2021 EV, replace the battery pack (with one made from recycled EV batteries!), and have it just-work. Just like you can replace the engine of a classic car today if you are so inclined. It should be possible because the electrical connection of the batteries to EV drivetrains are relatively simple - although I'm sure that will take a lawsuit (like was launched against Nespresso to allow 3rd party coffee pods) for EV manufacturers to release the specs required for this to happen. It would be unfortunate if EV batteries were non-serviceable except by the manufacturer after they were out of warranty, like phones are today. Instead, battery replacement would potentially allow the tertiary used EV market to flourish, and make them more accessible to people of modest means.

csours 5y ago
Just got to make sure the DRM server is up.
SECProto 5y ago
> It should be possible because the electrical connection of the batteries to EV drivetrains are relatively simple While this could be true, I certainly wouldn't assume it to be so. I dunno how integrated the battery pack is to the system - when you press the gas, does the car do things like draw more from some cells and less from others based on their degradation and capacity? Certainly on the charge side of the system it's very integrated, with the charge curve changing as individual cells (or at least modules) age/degrade.
- elihu 5y ago
  A battery pack on a modern EV is typically just a bunch of cells wired together in series, or a bunch of parallel groups of cells in series. There isn't anything to cause power to be pulled from one group of cells versus another -- if that happens, it's a problem because it would cause the cells to get out of balance. (You'd typically have a "battery management system" whose job is to monitor cell voltages and bleed off little power from cells that are reading too high to keep everything properly balanced. But that happens very slowly, and at low voltages and current.) As far as the motor controller is concerned, the battery might as well just be a single cell. If you change to a different kind of battery, you might need to change some of the motor controller's parameters (like maximum current limit) if those were designed around the limits of the old battery. edit to add: when it comes to the charger and BMS, that stuff might or might not have to be replaced depending on the extent to which it can be made to work with a different configuration. And just like replacing an engine in a modern gas-powered car, there's probably a host of sensors that will trigger a whole host of warnings if they aren't reconnected to equivalent new sensors or spoofed in some way.
- adrianN 5y ago
  The question is whether the necessary brains are part of the pack or part of some other component in the car. But in any case, if we require the specs to be open, third parties can build compatible batteries.
- rcxdude 5y ago
  The part which deals with all this is the battery management system, and it's almost always integrated into the battery itself, for reasons of practicality, safety, and seperation of concerns. Its interface to the rest of the car and charging system is fairly straightforward: mostly it just needs to report state of charge and current limits for charging and discharging (chargers for these packs are rarely anything more than a constant current supply being controlled by the BMS). It can in theory provide more detailed information but this is just diagnostic, not something the user or any other part of the system can really take action on (for example there's no way in current EV packs for the motor to draw from specific cells more than the others). Basically the only way for car manufacturers to make this interface hard to replicate with third-party packs is by introducting some kind of DRM-like signatures on the messages from the BMS.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
waiseristy 5y ago
Unfortunately some OEM's have decided that structural batteries are the way of the future. Real difficult replace something that's a integral structural member of the car
- SECProto 5y ago
  > Real difficult replace something that's a integral structural member of the car If you look at some recent photos [1] of the Tesla Berlin tour, the "structural battery pack" is still a bolt-in part of the car - it just carries some of the loads and has the seats bolted to it. If it's a standardized design, eg used for multiple model years, it should be a fairly standard replacement part in another decade or so. And the more efficient structural will reduce steel consumption by thousands of tonnes per year and reduce curb weight and increase mileage. Win-win-win for the environment. I'm an optimist. [1] https://electrek.co/2021/10/10/tesla-unveils-new-structural-battery-pack-with-4680-cells-gigafactory-berlin/ https://electrek.co/2021/10/10/tesla-unveils-new-structural-...
  - waiseristy 5y ago
    Nice link, looks like they still might have enough meat on the chassis to not require weird temporary structural bracing when unbolting the pack. It's almost like a body-on-pack, like the body-on-frame of old.
- panick21_ 5y ago
  There has been this myth around that 'structural' means 'non replaceable'. This is complete nonsense made up by ignorant people who dislike Tesla. Structural packs are nothing new, even cars like the iPace have structural packs and so do many. Hell even the Model S was structural and that had a swapable battery. Tesla or BYD structural packs are no different. The actual innovation when people talk about 'structural packs' nowdays is that the cell themselves are part of the structure. However, this has nothing to do with how the pack is connected to the car. Sadly the discussion on these topic gets totally confused by people endlessly repeating the same myths without understanding what they are talking about. Just don't get into a car crash without the pack inside.
fy20 5y ago
> Just like you can replace the engine of a classic car today if you are so inclined How this works is usually you would replace/fix individual parts of the engine until it works again. When you buy one ready to swap in, it's because a third party has taken the time to fix up an old engine - usually with no help from the original manufacturer. A lot of car parts you cannot buy new replacements for. Engine parts you usually can, as pretty much everything there is consumable, but I mean things like body panels or interior parts. However a lot of cars end up damaged beyond repair, which means there are usually enough parts in the surrogate market so old cars can be kept running. In this case it's not reasonable to ask manufacturers to be selling new battery packs 10 years after discontinuing that model, but they should make sure it's possible for third parties to make/remake them and have them behave the same as an OEM battery pack.
elihu 5y ago
Interfacing with the existing car's electronics gets into "right to repair" technology, with some manufacturers being more open than others. Unfortunately battery packs are very vehicle-specific. Hopefully we'll eventually see some standardized form factors so you can just install a generic battery. Until then, 3rd parties will have to make a different battery pack for each model they want to support. Most of the problem is just the physical dimensions and shape of the pack, but also there are a bunch of electrical connections, battery-management system (BMS) integration, coolant hoses, and so on that would vary from one vehicle to the next. Hopefully as the technology matures, batteries get physically smaller and lighter, and therefore easier to shoehorn into weird spaces.
coryrc 5y ago
You can put a battery from a crashed 2021 Leaf in a 2015 Leaf. There's little the non-Tesla automakers are doing to stop you. They aren't helping you, but they aren't stopping you. The biggest problem is there's basically no market for it right now. I used to build stuff for this market (more-or-less). Only a tiny fraction of vehicles need anything. It's far cheaper to sell your vehicle to someone who doesn't mind 70 miles range and buy a new one with all the scale advantages of mass manufacturing than paying for the shop labor ($100-300/hr) and amortized cost of a battery few people want.
- mnsc 5y ago
  This makes me more pessimistic that "the markets" will ever fix something related to anything where the negative effects are seen a decade down the road. We will switch to an electric fleet to "save the environment" and in 20 years we will throw our collective hands up in the air and see that "yup, that didn't work".
  - Joeri 5y ago
    Economic activity nearly always has negative externalities. Our economic model is based on ever growing economic activity, and coupled with population growth this produces ever mounting externalities. We treat these externalities separately, as individual problems to solve, first clean air, then clean water, then fixing the ozone hole, now fighting global warming. Every time that we “solve” these problems we cause new externalities to pop up. Even if we “solve” climate change, something else will pop up. Perhaps the impact of chemicals on biological reproduction? That is building up steam and would be even bigger to tackle than climate change. The classic environmentalist solution is to live a smaller life, with fewer things. That is a hard sell and runs counter to innate human instinct to gather resources. On the other hand, economic policy can’t seem to move past fighting symptoms, and does its very best to pretend the growth model isn’t the root cause of all environmental problems. Does anyone have a handle on a real and pragmatic solution I wonder?
    - mnsc 5y ago
      Thank you for being tuned into my pessimism and helping me paint an even bleaker picture! =D No but seriously that was a very thought-provoking reply and I'm personally very aligned with the classic environmentalist solution but equally desoriented on how that could be "sold" on a global scale as a way of living. My political leanings is showing here so it comes as no surprise that my analysis is that the issue is with that sneaky quoted word. "Selling" an idea implies rational actors that could "buy in" to the "small life lifestyle" and reject the options readily available on the market, which would be a (potential) life abundant with short term kicks and a dopamine filled days with an endless supply of various things that are fun and "help" us in our daily life (but in the end will destroy earth). Which indeed is a hard sell, primarily because we aren't rational economical agents that can weight "guaranteed happiness the next decade" vs "my children potentially living in a desert fighting for scrap in 50 years".
hkai 5y ago
Looking at my phone and macbook with built-in batteries, I realize a car with a swappable battery is not something we can achieve as humanity.
- joe_the_user 5y ago
  The thing about phones and laptops is that they have the excuse that miniaturization makes this necessary (it's still an excuse but it's better cover). And current systems essentially have the lifetime of the battery. Cars should be a different story but we'll have to fight for that even.
  - hunter2_ 5y ago
    And ingress protection, which requires excellent seals, which need a bit of know-how (i.e., a shop) to correctly reapply. At least that's what I like to tell myself.
    - BenjiWiebe 5y ago
      My Samsung Galaxy S5 is IP67 rated. I can pop the back cover with my fingernail and swap the battery in seconds.
    - bestouff 5y ago
      Cars too need miniaturisation and sealing. To an extent.
    - richardw 5y ago
      2025: “But the chassis is the battery! Absolutely needs to be disposable”
    - KptMarchewa 5y ago
      Which laptops actually do that? Besides the fanless macbook air, overwhelming majority of laptops ingest and push out air.
  - hoseja 5y ago
tonyedgecombe 5y ago
Third party repairers are already popping up that will do this for old Nissan Leafs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4nS_tSQiVQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4nS_tSQiVQ There is quite a big commercial opportunity, I expect the sector will grow alongside the growth and ageing of EV's.
bserge 5y ago
Classic car as in pre 1980s or so? Because an engine change on a modern ICE car is far from easy. In major part because of the same bullshit with electronics incompatibility caused by manufacturers. Wrong serial numbers on injectors/ECU/sensors? Welp, fuck you, buy compatible original parts or swap the whole engine, every little wire and all. It's like needing to swap the battery+controller+motors on an EV. Then again, government regulations play a part here, at least in Europe. Can't just have you riding around in your now "custom" car.
rjzzleep 5y ago
Gogoro is a taiwanese company that makes scooters where the battery is a power pack that you can just replace in a few seconds[1]. They're apparently expanding into more countries. I really like the concept of these things. It should be possible to make drivein charging stations for cars that do the same. But obviously you wouldn't be able to do that manually and designing such a system is a lot more expensive. [1] https://www.gogoro.com/gogoro-network/ https://www.gogoro.com/gogoro-network/
- hungryforcodes 5y ago
  Most of the Asian electric scooters are like that. This is absolutely not unique to that company. https://www.e-scooter.co/vinfast-klara/ https://www.e-scooter.co/vinfast-klara/ in Vietnam is just one example.
- mdrzn 5y ago
  Such a smart solution, I hope they go global with it! I've been thinking of a similar solution for e-bikes and electric scooters (like Bird and Lime for example). Swapping a battery would be SO MUCH BETTER than having to fully recharge your own battery. If I had to make a prediction for 50 years in the future, I'd guess that Tesla and others would study a way to hot-swap batteries in the car at the "e-Station" in a couple minutes instead of waiting for your own battery to recharge.
nmridul 5y ago
India will start allowing sale of EVs without batteries so user can purchase/ lease batteries including third party batteries... "This will make the upfront cost of the electrical 2 wheeler (2W) and 3 wheelers (3W) to be lower than ICE 2 " https://www.livemint.com/auto-news/indian-govt-to-allow-registration-of-electric-vehicles-without-batteries-11597243630452.html https://www.livemint.com/auto-news/indian-govt-to-allow-regi...

by danans 5y ago

csours 5y ago

Just got to make sure the DRM server is up.

SECProto 5y ago

> It should be possible because the electrical connection of the batteries to EV drivetrains are relatively simple While this could be true, I certainly wouldn't assume it to be so. I dunno how integrated the battery pack is to the system - when you press the gas, does the car do things like draw more from some cells and less from others based on their degradation and capacity? Certainly on the charge side of the system it's very integrated, with the charge curve changing as individual cells (or at least modules) age/degrade.

elihu 5y ago
A battery pack on a modern EV is typically just a bunch of cells wired together in series, or a bunch of parallel groups of cells in series. There isn't anything to cause power to be pulled from one group of cells versus another -- if that happens, it's a problem because it would cause the cells to get out of balance. (You'd typically have a "battery management system" whose job is to monitor cell voltages and bleed off little power from cells that are reading too high to keep everything properly balanced. But that happens very slowly, and at low voltages and current.) As far as the motor controller is concerned, the battery might as well just be a single cell. If you change to a different kind of battery, you might need to change some of the motor controller's parameters (like maximum current limit) if those were designed around the limits of the old battery. edit to add: when it comes to the charger and BMS, that stuff might or might not have to be replaced depending on the extent to which it can be made to work with a different configuration. And just like replacing an engine in a modern gas-powered car, there's probably a host of sensors that will trigger a whole host of warnings if they aren't reconnected to equivalent new sensors or spoofed in some way.
adrianN 5y ago
The question is whether the necessary brains are part of the pack or part of some other component in the car. But in any case, if we require the specs to be open, third parties can build compatible batteries.
rcxdude 5y ago
The part which deals with all this is the battery management system, and it's almost always integrated into the battery itself, for reasons of practicality, safety, and seperation of concerns. Its interface to the rest of the car and charging system is fairly straightforward: mostly it just needs to report state of charge and current limits for charging and discharging (chargers for these packs are rarely anything more than a constant current supply being controlled by the BMS). It can in theory provide more detailed information but this is just diagnostic, not something the user or any other part of the system can really take action on (for example there's no way in current EV packs for the motor to draw from specific cells more than the others). Basically the only way for car manufacturers to make this interface hard to replicate with third-party packs is by introducting some kind of DRM-like signatures on the messages from the BMS.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

waiseristy 5y ago

Unfortunately some OEM's have decided that structural batteries are the way of the future. Real difficult replace something that's a integral structural member of the car

SECProto 5y ago
> Real difficult replace something that's a integral structural member of the car If you look at some recent photos [1] of the Tesla Berlin tour, the "structural battery pack" is still a bolt-in part of the car - it just carries some of the loads and has the seats bolted to it. If it's a standardized design, eg used for multiple model years, it should be a fairly standard replacement part in another decade or so. And the more efficient structural will reduce steel consumption by thousands of tonnes per year and reduce curb weight and increase mileage. Win-win-win for the environment. I'm an optimist. [1] https://electrek.co/2021/10/10/tesla-unveils-new-structural-battery-pack-with-4680-cells-gigafactory-berlin/ https://electrek.co/2021/10/10/tesla-unveils-new-structural-...
- waiseristy 5y ago
  Nice link, looks like they still might have enough meat on the chassis to not require weird temporary structural bracing when unbolting the pack. It's almost like a body-on-pack, like the body-on-frame of old.
panick21_ 5y ago
There has been this myth around that 'structural' means 'non replaceable'. This is complete nonsense made up by ignorant people who dislike Tesla. Structural packs are nothing new, even cars like the iPace have structural packs and so do many. Hell even the Model S was structural and that had a swapable battery. Tesla or BYD structural packs are no different. The actual innovation when people talk about 'structural packs' nowdays is that the cell themselves are part of the structure. However, this has nothing to do with how the pack is connected to the car. Sadly the discussion on these topic gets totally confused by people endlessly repeating the same myths without understanding what they are talking about. Just don't get into a car crash without the pack inside.

fy20 5y ago

> Just like you can replace the engine of a classic car today if you are so inclined How this works is usually you would replace/fix individual parts of the engine until it works again. When you buy one ready to swap in, it's because a third party has taken the time to fix up an old engine - usually with no help from the original manufacturer. A lot of car parts you cannot buy new replacements for. Engine parts you usually can, as pretty much everything there is consumable, but I mean things like body panels or interior parts. However a lot of cars end up damaged beyond repair, which means there are usually enough parts in the surrogate market so old cars can be kept running. In this case it's not reasonable to ask manufacturers to be selling new battery packs 10 years after discontinuing that model, but they should make sure it's possible for third parties to make/remake them and have them behave the same as an OEM battery pack.

elihu 5y ago

Interfacing with the existing car's electronics gets into "right to repair" technology, with some manufacturers being more open than others. Unfortunately battery packs are very vehicle-specific. Hopefully we'll eventually see some standardized form factors so you can just install a generic battery. Until then, 3rd parties will have to make a different battery pack for each model they want to support. Most of the problem is just the physical dimensions and shape of the pack, but also there are a bunch of electrical connections, battery-management system (BMS) integration, coolant hoses, and so on that would vary from one vehicle to the next. Hopefully as the technology matures, batteries get physically smaller and lighter, and therefore easier to shoehorn into weird spaces.

coryrc 5y ago

You can put a battery from a crashed 2021 Leaf in a 2015 Leaf. There's little the non-Tesla automakers are doing to stop you. They aren't helping you, but they aren't stopping you. The biggest problem is there's basically no market for it right now. I used to build stuff for this market (more-or-less). Only a tiny fraction of vehicles need anything. It's far cheaper to sell your vehicle to someone who doesn't mind 70 miles range and buy a new one with all the scale advantages of mass manufacturing than paying for the shop labor ($100-300/hr) and amortized cost of a battery few people want.

mnsc 5y ago
This makes me more pessimistic that "the markets" will ever fix something related to anything where the negative effects are seen a decade down the road. We will switch to an electric fleet to "save the environment" and in 20 years we will throw our collective hands up in the air and see that "yup, that didn't work".
- Joeri 5y ago
  Economic activity nearly always has negative externalities. Our economic model is based on ever growing economic activity, and coupled with population growth this produces ever mounting externalities. We treat these externalities separately, as individual problems to solve, first clean air, then clean water, then fixing the ozone hole, now fighting global warming. Every time that we “solve” these problems we cause new externalities to pop up. Even if we “solve” climate change, something else will pop up. Perhaps the impact of chemicals on biological reproduction? That is building up steam and would be even bigger to tackle than climate change. The classic environmentalist solution is to live a smaller life, with fewer things. That is a hard sell and runs counter to innate human instinct to gather resources. On the other hand, economic policy can’t seem to move past fighting symptoms, and does its very best to pretend the growth model isn’t the root cause of all environmental problems. Does anyone have a handle on a real and pragmatic solution I wonder?
  - mnsc 5y ago
    Thank you for being tuned into my pessimism and helping me paint an even bleaker picture! =D No but seriously that was a very thought-provoking reply and I'm personally very aligned with the classic environmentalist solution but equally desoriented on how that could be "sold" on a global scale as a way of living. My political leanings is showing here so it comes as no surprise that my analysis is that the issue is with that sneaky quoted word. "Selling" an idea implies rational actors that could "buy in" to the "small life lifestyle" and reject the options readily available on the market, which would be a (potential) life abundant with short term kicks and a dopamine filled days with an endless supply of various things that are fun and "help" us in our daily life (but in the end will destroy earth). Which indeed is a hard sell, primarily because we aren't rational economical agents that can weight "guaranteed happiness the next decade" vs "my children potentially living in a desert fighting for scrap in 50 years".

hkai 5y ago

Looking at my phone and macbook with built-in batteries, I realize a car with a swappable battery is not something we can achieve as humanity.

joe_the_user 5y ago
The thing about phones and laptops is that they have the excuse that miniaturization makes this necessary (it's still an excuse but it's better cover). And current systems essentially have the lifetime of the battery. Cars should be a different story but we'll have to fight for that even.
- hunter2_ 5y ago
  And ingress protection, which requires excellent seals, which need a bit of know-how (i.e., a shop) to correctly reapply. At least that's what I like to tell myself.
  - BenjiWiebe 5y ago
    My Samsung Galaxy S5 is IP67 rated. I can pop the back cover with my fingernail and swap the battery in seconds.
  - bestouff 5y ago
    Cars too need miniaturisation and sealing. To an extent.
  - richardw 5y ago
    2025: “But the chassis is the battery! Absolutely needs to be disposable”
  - KptMarchewa 5y ago
    Which laptops actually do that? Besides the fanless macbook air, overwhelming majority of laptops ingest and push out air.
- hoseja 5y ago

tonyedgecombe 5y ago

Third party repairers are already popping up that will do this for old Nissan Leafs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4nS_tSQiVQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4nS_tSQiVQ There is quite a big commercial opportunity, I expect the sector will grow alongside the growth and ageing of EV's.

bserge 5y ago

Classic car as in pre 1980s or so? Because an engine change on a modern ICE car is far from easy. In major part because of the same bullshit with electronics incompatibility caused by manufacturers. Wrong serial numbers on injectors/ECU/sensors? Welp, fuck you, buy compatible original parts or swap the whole engine, every little wire and all. It's like needing to swap the battery+controller+motors on an EV. Then again, government regulations play a part here, at least in Europe. Can't just have you riding around in your now "custom" car.

rjzzleep 5y ago

Gogoro is a taiwanese company that makes scooters where the battery is a power pack that you can just replace in a few seconds[1]. They're apparently expanding into more countries. I really like the concept of these things. It should be possible to make drivein charging stations for cars that do the same. But obviously you wouldn't be able to do that manually and designing such a system is a lot more expensive. [1] https://www.gogoro.com/gogoro-network/ https://www.gogoro.com/gogoro-network/

hungryforcodes 5y ago
Most of the Asian electric scooters are like that. This is absolutely not unique to that company. https://www.e-scooter.co/vinfast-klara/ https://www.e-scooter.co/vinfast-klara/ in Vietnam is just one example.
mdrzn 5y ago
Such a smart solution, I hope they go global with it! I've been thinking of a similar solution for e-bikes and electric scooters (like Bird and Lime for example). Swapping a battery would be SO MUCH BETTER than having to fully recharge your own battery. If I had to make a prediction for 50 years in the future, I'd guess that Tesla and others would study a way to hot-swap batteries in the car at the "e-Station" in a couple minutes instead of waiting for your own battery to recharge.

nmridul 5y ago

India will start allowing sale of EVs without batteries so user can purchase/ lease batteries including third party batteries... "This will make the upfront cost of the electrical 2 wheeler (2W) and 3 wheelers (3W) to be lower than ICE 2 " https://www.livemint.com/auto-news/indian-govt-to-allow-registration-of-electric-vehicles-without-batteries-11597243630452.html https://www.livemint.com/auto-news/indian-govt-to-allow-regi...