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EV batteries with 2-5 times the energy density would completely change the game. Imagine a car with a 900 - 2300 km range on a single charge. The cost savings

EV batteries with 2-5 times the energy density would completely change the game. Imagine a car with a 900 - 2300 km range on a single charge. The cost savings would immediately solve the business case around renewable energy storage, too.

wffurr 5y ago
Aviation too would benefit enormously from this.
- jillesvangurp 5y ago
  Yes a 3x increase would be transformative for general aviation. A lot cheaper to operate. Similar range. Probably will start happening in the next five years. Current models are a bit limited for range. But that should be a solvable problem.
GordonS 5y ago
Or even EVs capable of 500km, but weighing a tonne less than they do today. If this turns out to have the purported benefits at commercial scale, it could have an immense impact on our future!
- altcognito 5y ago
  It is definitely the weight loss and reduction and materials that would make this a big deal. Imagine cutting the cost of the vehicle by 20-30%. Would be massive.
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  > Or even EVs capable of 500km, but weighing a tonne less than they do today. That's not too realistic, a Model 3 battery only weighs half a ton to begin with. So perhaps we could cut the curb weight of the car by 15-20%. I wouldn't complain, but it's not world changing.
foepys 5y ago
Honestly, I'd rather have EV under 2 tonnes than 2,000km range...
- pedrocr 5y ago
  You can have that now. A Tesla model 3 weighs between 1600 and 1900kg depending on version.
jillesvangurp 5y ago
The science says, 2-3x is pretty much a done deal. There are a lot of challenges to productize and that will take time but there are so many independent companies and research groups coming up with different ways to dot this that I feel confident saying at least one of them is probably onto something. I think the real deal is another doubling in energy density to somewhere between 5x and 10x. E.g. solid state batteries might enable that eventually. It's probably a bit further out. 10-20 years at least. But more than probable. The impact of this for EVs would not necessarily be cars with bigger ranges but much lighter/cheaper cars with similar ranges as current high end models with faster charging times that only need a third of the battery weight. Anything beyond a few hundred miles of range is basically irrational and overkill. Normal people have a bladder range of about 200-300 miles at best (I get uncomfortable way before that) and ought to stop for longer than five minutes when they relief themselves eventually. Perfect opportunity to top up a battery. But most people don't actually drive that far more than a few times a year; if at all.
- ridaj 5y ago
  Human bladder range can already be extended 10x by the use of Gatorade bottle technology.
- mrfusion 5y ago
  The problem is a 300 mile range isn’t a true 300 miles. There’s losses for temperature, running the heater, battery reserve, etc. I see 300 possibly being sufficient but I’d want the advertised range to be 400 to make sure I reliably get that.
- phtrivier 5y ago
  > But most people don't actually drive that far more than a few times a year; if at all. Absolutely true, but, until we move to a "usage" rather than "possession" model for cars, this will be the biggest obstacle to massive adoption of EV as the primary car. At this point people get that they probably only run 100km a day at most, and that an EV would perfectly suit their daily commute (small EVs would be the perfect yellow jacket thing.) However, everybody has family to visit on the other side of the country twice a year. The moment you cross the psychological threshold of 1000km on a single charge (or, roughly a full day of highway), the whole game changes. Would it be better if people commuted by train and ebike, visited their family by trains and had small easy to rent EVs for the days they need a car ? Sure. Will it happen before 70 years of cultural impact of personal car change ? Hard to tell.
kkfx 5y ago
Remember that you also need to recharge the car. EV are called environmental friendly, in the sense "they pollute less than ICEs in their life" only if charging is done from renewables.
- DubiousPusher 5y ago
  I would guess that even charging an EV from a "dirty" power source is still better than an ICE, simply due to efficiencies of scale.
  - _0w8t 5y ago
    Indeed efficiency of a modern ICE engine in a car is 25% max in ideal conditions, while a modern industrial turbine powered by natural gas can get 60%. In fact even with coal the amount of CO2 will be smaller per distance driven. The efficiency of the latest coal power stations is about 48%. With this and accounting for significant energy losses to refine gasoline from oil the electrical cars are already greener than gasoline or Diesel engines unless one use the energy from very old coal plants with low efficiency.
  - kkfx 5y ago
    What efficiencies? Those who demand energivore and polluting oil, gas, coal extraction and processing to a moderately near power plant + the energy you loose in transport + the energy you loose in battery and relevant inverter and intermediate transformers of the energy grid? An electrical motor is very efficient, a battery system is moderately efficient and combined with all environmental costs to source needed materials, dispose of end-of-life batteries (witch means 5 to 8 years per battery in mean) are huge. Of course pushing refined oil around the world is not efficient either but such infra is already there, while no country in the world can recharge their potential EVs on scale nor we can produce them in sufficient numbers nor we know how to dispose of them. Costs should be computed in total, not just in the running part. Like cost of trains must take into account the construction of the train network, it's entertainment etc NOT just the energy the train use.
    - 5y ago
impossiblefork 5y ago
I'm personally thinking in a quite different direction-- that 100 kWh is pretty decent and that the advantage might be that an electric car with advanced batteries could be something quite simple, and something possibly quite cheap. The transition from a battery weighing 500 kilograms to one weighing 250 is something which I see as allowing electric cars from being highly specialized constructions to something needing much less care in their design. After all, there are ordinary cars with engines weighing 250 kilograms.
clouddrover 5y ago
> Imagine a car with a 900 - 2300 km range on a single charge. Imagined: https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/mercedes-benz-vision-eqxx-first-ride-radical-626-mile-ev https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/mercedes-benz-vi... The Lucid Air can do 804 km which is pretty close to your target range: https://insideevs.com/reviews/562511/lucid-air-range-test-record/ https://insideevs.com/reviews/562511/lucid-air-range-test-re...

wffurr 5y ago

Aviation too would benefit enormously from this.

jillesvangurp 5y ago
Yes a 3x increase would be transformative for general aviation. A lot cheaper to operate. Similar range. Probably will start happening in the next five years. Current models are a bit limited for range. But that should be a solvable problem.

GordonS 5y ago

Or even EVs capable of 500km, but weighing a tonne less than they do today. If this turns out to have the purported benefits at commercial scale, it could have an immense impact on our future!

altcognito 5y ago
It is definitely the weight loss and reduction and materials that would make this a big deal. Imagine cutting the cost of the vehicle by 20-30%. Would be massive.
rootusrootus 5y ago
> Or even EVs capable of 500km, but weighing a tonne less than they do today. That's not too realistic, a Model 3 battery only weighs half a ton to begin with. So perhaps we could cut the curb weight of the car by 15-20%. I wouldn't complain, but it's not world changing.

foepys 5y ago

Honestly, I'd rather have EV under 2 tonnes than 2,000km range...

pedrocr 5y ago
You can have that now. A Tesla model 3 weighs between 1600 and 1900kg depending on version.

jillesvangurp 5y ago

The science says, 2-3x is pretty much a done deal. There are a lot of challenges to productize and that will take time but there are so many independent companies and research groups coming up with different ways to dot this that I feel confident saying at least one of them is probably onto something. I think the real deal is another doubling in energy density to somewhere between 5x and 10x. E.g. solid state batteries might enable that eventually. It's probably a bit further out. 10-20 years at least. But more than probable. The impact of this for EVs would not necessarily be cars with bigger ranges but much lighter/cheaper cars with similar ranges as current high end models with faster charging times that only need a third of the battery weight. Anything beyond a few hundred miles of range is basically irrational and overkill. Normal people have a bladder range of about 200-300 miles at best (I get uncomfortable way before that) and ought to stop for longer than five minutes when they relief themselves eventually. Perfect opportunity to top up a battery. But most people don't actually drive that far more than a few times a year; if at all.

ridaj 5y ago
Human bladder range can already be extended 10x by the use of Gatorade bottle technology.
mrfusion 5y ago
The problem is a 300 mile range isn’t a true 300 miles. There’s losses for temperature, running the heater, battery reserve, etc. I see 300 possibly being sufficient but I’d want the advertised range to be 400 to make sure I reliably get that.
phtrivier 5y ago
> But most people don't actually drive that far more than a few times a year; if at all. Absolutely true, but, until we move to a "usage" rather than "possession" model for cars, this will be the biggest obstacle to massive adoption of EV as the primary car. At this point people get that they probably only run 100km a day at most, and that an EV would perfectly suit their daily commute (small EVs would be the perfect yellow jacket thing.) However, everybody has family to visit on the other side of the country twice a year. The moment you cross the psychological threshold of 1000km on a single charge (or, roughly a full day of highway), the whole game changes. Would it be better if people commuted by train and ebike, visited their family by trains and had small easy to rent EVs for the days they need a car ? Sure. Will it happen before 70 years of cultural impact of personal car change ? Hard to tell.

kkfx 5y ago

Remember that you also need to recharge the car. EV are called environmental friendly, in the sense "they pollute less than ICEs in their life" only if charging is done from renewables.

DubiousPusher 5y ago
I would guess that even charging an EV from a "dirty" power source is still better than an ICE, simply due to efficiencies of scale.
- _0w8t 5y ago
  Indeed efficiency of a modern ICE engine in a car is 25% max in ideal conditions, while a modern industrial turbine powered by natural gas can get 60%. In fact even with coal the amount of CO2 will be smaller per distance driven. The efficiency of the latest coal power stations is about 48%. With this and accounting for significant energy losses to refine gasoline from oil the electrical cars are already greener than gasoline or Diesel engines unless one use the energy from very old coal plants with low efficiency.
- kkfx 5y ago
  What efficiencies? Those who demand energivore and polluting oil, gas, coal extraction and processing to a moderately near power plant + the energy you loose in transport + the energy you loose in battery and relevant inverter and intermediate transformers of the energy grid? An electrical motor is very efficient, a battery system is moderately efficient and combined with all environmental costs to source needed materials, dispose of end-of-life batteries (witch means 5 to 8 years per battery in mean) are huge. Of course pushing refined oil around the world is not efficient either but such infra is already there, while no country in the world can recharge their potential EVs on scale nor we can produce them in sufficient numbers nor we know how to dispose of them. Costs should be computed in total, not just in the running part. Like cost of trains must take into account the construction of the train network, it's entertainment etc NOT just the energy the train use.
  - 5y ago

impossiblefork 5y ago

I'm personally thinking in a quite different direction-- that 100 kWh is pretty decent and that the advantage might be that an electric car with advanced batteries could be something quite simple, and something possibly quite cheap. The transition from a battery weighing 500 kilograms to one weighing 250 is something which I see as allowing electric cars from being highly specialized constructions to something needing much less care in their design. After all, there are ordinary cars with engines weighing 250 kilograms.

clouddrover 5y ago

> Imagine a car with a 900 - 2300 km range on a single charge. Imagined: https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/mercedes-benz-vision-eqxx-first-ride-radical-626-mile-ev https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/mercedes-benz-vi... The Lucid Air can do 804 km which is pretty close to your target range: https://insideevs.com/reviews/562511/lucid-air-range-test-record/ https://insideevs.com/reviews/562511/lucid-air-range-test-re...