25 ms·

Ford's answer to EV supply chain hell: Cheaper batteries

147 points by elsewhen 4y ago

adrianN 4y ago
How much room for improvement is left on the consumption side? Electric cars seem to require around 15-20kWh/100km. Can we get that below 10 for regular highway driving, say at 130km/h? What are the numbers for city driving like?
- dbwjxufh7373 4y ago
- acd 4y ago
  You can make a self driving truck/electric vehicle lane where the speed limit is 80km/h. Paint a green line in the middle of the ev-lane and it should make self driving more easy to implement. Reason for slower speed wind resistance is far less at 80km/h. Energy use is quadratic concerning speed. So make a movie streaming ev-lane. Also one could fit cars with rail gear and run them on rail tracks on the highway which would lessen the tire friction roll resistance losses. Technology for allowing cars to run on rail tracks already exists for railway maintenance cars. Self driving on rail track is also much easier to implement. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road–rail_vehicle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road–rail_vehicle Safety from car crashes would also be far safer at 80km/h than higher speeds.
  - wongarsu 4y ago
    Before you put them on rails, it might be easier to add panthographs to charge from overhead wires while driving in electric lane. Germany has a short section of highway testing that setup for trucks https://www.sustainabletruckvan.com/pantographs-for-trucks-siemens-continental/ https://www.sustainabletruckvan.com/pantographs-for-trucks-s...
  - adrianN 4y ago
    If people wanted to travel 80km/h they could do so today. It is well known that going slower improves fuel efficiency. I'm asking for things like improved drivetrain efficiency and better aerodynamics.
    - stavros 4y ago
      I don't mind going at 80 kmh if someone else is doing the driving.
    - tuatoru 4y ago
      The laws of physics inconveniently get in the way. If your 90% efficient drivetrain-tyre system uses 20 kWh per 100 km, then improving that to 95% efficient maybe reduces that to 17 kWh. Pencils and javelins have lower drag coefficients than cars. Unfortunately people don't fit inside them. A javelin-shaped vehicle big enough to fit a person comfortably inside is a train.
      - RustyConsul 4y ago
        > A javelin-shaped vehicle big enough to fit a person comfortably inside is a train. or a cybertruck.
  - nl 4y ago
    Self driving on open roads where 80km/h is possible is basically a solved problem. And if people cared about efficiency enough to drive at 80 they'd do it now. Low efficiency stsrt/stop driving is the problem to solve.
    - bittercynic 4y ago
      I like to drive a little slower to conserve charge/fuel, but it would be too discourteous to all the other drivers on the road, so I just go at the prevailing speed. If there were a separate lane for lower speed driving I would use it.
  - fallingknife 4y ago
    If it's a self driving only lane, the speed limit should be increased, not decreased. Self driving on a highway where all the cars are self driving is already a solved problem.
- lazyjones 4y ago
  > Can we get that below 10 for regular highway driving, say at 130km/h? Probably not with normal-sized cars. For the Model 3, the theoretical minimum is 13.8 kW. This increases linearly with drag coefficient and area (as seen from the front). You would have to build a significantly smaller (flatter, narrower) car and improve the drag coefficient (0.2 has been achieved) to get there. Here's a calculator in German (sorry) for experiments: http://spare-benzin.de/Fahrphysik/Luftwiderstand/Luftwiderstand.html http://spare-benzin.de/Fahrphysik/Luftwiderstand/Luftwiderst...
- ben_bai 4y ago
  15-20kWh/100km is a gasoline equivalent of about 1,5-2l/100km. At 130km/h there is little room for improvement (thinner wheels, better aerodynamics). All the individual electric components in the car are like ~98% efficient. I guess 10kWh/100km is possible at 90km/h on cruisecontroll behind a big truck. EVs biggest problem are the inefficiencies in the electric grid, there is like a 50% margin for improvement.
- clouddrover 4y ago
  > Can we get that below 10 for regular highway driving Mercedes did in the Vision EQXX: 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... https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/mercedes-vision-eqxx-ev-concept-stuttgart-to-silverstone-range-record/ https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/mercedes-vision-eqxx-ev-c... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BS1SBhBjAHY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BS1SBhBjAHY
- danans 4y ago
  The Light-year zero is so efficient that it can gain 70km per day from its rooftop solar panels: https://lightyear.one/lightyear-0 https://lightyear.one/lightyear-0 Initial model is > $300k but they plan a $30k model in the future.
witheld 4y ago
I don’t think heavier batteries with less battery life are gonna do much for Americans. Not unless we can get into small vehicles real quick- and given that the chicken tax has been imposed by executive order since 1964 I don’t see that happening.
- deepdriver 4y ago
  For others who didn't know: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax
  - hughes 4y ago
    This is one of the stupidest things I've ever seen
  - missedthecue 4y ago
    "To circumvent the tariffs, imported Ford vehicles replace rear windows with metal panels and remove the rear seats and seat belts. The removed parts are shredded and recycled in Ohio." What an unbelievable waste. Why hasn't this cold-war relic been long abolished?
- sofixa 4y ago
  I don't see how a tariff on larger vehicles means that the US market can't switch to smaller vehicles. Isn't it even the opposite because smaller cheaper cars can be directly imported from overseas? I agree the US market is incapable of switching to smaller cars in the near future, but i doubt the Chicken Tax has much to do with it.
  - witheld 4y ago
    The chicken tax is a tax on small trucks, not large ones
    - sofixa 4y ago
      For me a small car is a three door coupé like the Renault Zoe, not a "small" truck.
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
This is huge. To date, Tesla has been the only non-Chinese manufacturer talking iron. LFP is often touted for being cheaper than NMC, but given growing insecurity around battery-grade nickel supplies, using the far-more-prevalent iron and phosphate isn’t just about cheaper cars. It’s about having cars to sell in the first place. With respect to range anxiety, pretty much every EV in the 200 to 300-mile range is sold out. (I was looking.) And Ford deploying LFP doesn’t mean it has to go 100% LFP in every vehicle. Just having the extra vehicles will win it market share. (As to why now, the last of the patents in a critical suite expired in April [1]. Steve LeVine writes excellently to this topic [2].) [1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1167178/000104746912002475/a2207978zex-10_36.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1167178/000104746912... [2] https://subscriptions.theinformation.com/newsletters/the-electric/archive https://subscriptions.theinformation.com/newsletters/the-ele...
- smaudet 4y ago
  Meanwhile, Hydrogen Fuel Cell cars are putting gasoline vehicles and electric to shame: https://www.timesnownews.com/auto/car-news/article/toyota-mirai-hydrogen-car-sets-guinness-world-record-for-longest-range/822571 https://www.timesnownews.com/auto/car-news/article/toyota-mi... Of course, you can't readily buy or charge one yet, but you don't have the battery problem (at all).
  - snotrockets 4y ago
    There were plans in Japan for wide use of hydrogen as the fuel of the future. Japanese car manufacturers aligned on that, but weren’t keen on building the necessary infrastructure. You could lease a hydrogen fuel cell car in CA. There was even a lot of state incentives if you did. But very few fueling stations (iirc, only two in the whole Bay Area)
    - martin_bech 4y ago
      Because the infrastructure needed would be bonkers, and creating fuelibg stations is not really a solved problem. You also loose a big amount of energy converting from electric to hydrogen and back. The cars themselves almost always have low storage because the tanks are very big. Hydrogen car performance is also a lot lower then pure EV.
acd 4y ago
Happy Ford is using more environmentally friendly Iron based LFP batteries. Cobalt in more traditional batteries is neurotoxic for humans and the mining of Cobalt is dirty. Very good that a large car manufacturer such as Ford is switching to Iron LFP. You should be able to fast charge LFP which will compensate for the lesser energy density. Since lfp is more stable they should be able to take the charging better than cobalt-based chemistries. Also Iron lfp is a more stable chemistry than cobalt-based so far less likely for battery fires.
- Roritharr 4y ago
  Having driven the 2021 Model 3 Standard Range with LFP Batteries from China: It charged much slower and had worse performance degradation in winter. This might be due to the software limitations Tesla put on the BMC, but since then it didn't improve by much. I wouldn't expect LFP be the panacea, but it should make EVs more affordable and is definetly in the "good enough" range for most families.
  - freemint 4y ago
    LFP is supposed to be less bad in winter. So that it isn't kinda confuses me.
  - sudosysgen 4y ago
    BYD has integrated heating elements to drastically reduce degradation in the winter. Charging speeds is just a result of cheaping out somewhere at the scales we're talking about.
cjdell 4y ago
I'm not sure why we aren't making EVs with small but upgradeable batteries. Like for example a $20k car with a 10kWh "good enough for now" starter battery that can be bought today. Still good enough for 90% of trips and upgradable to 50kWh with additional after market battery modules should the user decide. As simple as upgrading the RAM on an (old) laptop.
- noja 4y ago
  Like these mopeds with one or two swappable batteries https://electrek.co/2021/11/01/gogoro-electric-scooters-swappable-batteries-continue-rolling-around-the-world/ https://electrek.co/2021/11/01/gogoro-electric-scooters-swap...
- iasay 4y ago
  I would prefer to see this because the current ability to replace batteries in EVs is crap. I’ve owned enough second hand laptops to know what second hand EV ownership is going to feel like.
  - adrianN 4y ago
    Laptop batteries and EV batteries have a completely different performance profile. The data we have suggests that the battery will retain 80% of its maximum capacity for about as long as the rest of the car is expected to survive.
    - ngrilly 4y ago
      Is it mainly because cars are idle/off most of the time, unlike laptops and smartphones, or is there something else at play here?
      - cjdell 4y ago
        Big batteries have much more sophisticated battery management systems that are designed to be as kind as possible to the cells. Also they reserve a capacity of 10% on either side, leaving 80% usable capacity available to the user. Li-Ion batteries don't like being fully charged or fully discharged. Also due to their capacity most EVs are charged at about 0.1C whereas phones (especially with rapid chargers) are charged anywhere between 1C and 3C.
discordance 4y ago
Hopefully in 10 years all of these car batteries with 50% capacity left can be deployed as residential batteries for peanuts.
- antisthenes 4y ago
  You can already DIY battery packs from used EVs in order to build a residential whole-house backup. It's not peanuts, but getting very close to it.
- potatochup 4y ago
  At least at the moment, it's usually more efficient to recycle the good cells from an old pack into a new pack for automotive use. The chemistry between automotive and residential use diverges significantly because they are optimizing for different things: Car batteries minimize weight and maximize power input/output. For residential, weight barely matters at all, but # of discharge cycles and thermal stability matter more*. In 10 years, who knows what the economics will turn out to be though.
curiousgal 4y ago
> Ctrl - F recycle > 0 matches It feels like we are trading one poison for another from a climate change perspective. Just passing down the buck.
- Gustomaximus 4y ago
- TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
  You are correct. Nobody is recycling LFP, because there is nothing valuable to recycle.
  - jillesvangurp 4y ago
    Actually, the vast majority of LFP batteries are still perfectly fine and not in any need of recycling. There's indeed nothing to recycle yet. At least not a lot. And it will be some time before that starts changing. Recycling of failing batteries and discarded cells that did not survive quality control in the factory is of course a thing. These don't end up in land fills. The materials inside them are way to valuable for that.
- tuatoru 4y ago
  Recycling is a last resort. The mantra goes "reduce, re-use, recycle". In that order. Recycling is a last resort. Please don't jump to it first. That's what people who want to virtue-signal do, not what smart people do. Electric cars definitely cause less harm to the natural environment and people's health wellbeing than fossil fuel powered cars, so "reduce" is covered, even if not optimally. People are also definitely re-using lithium batteries. Since lithium batteries are a new thing, there is not yet a great enough flow of worn-out batteries to justify recycling at industrial scale as yet. Those as exist are being stockpiled for this, though. And a lot of R&D work is being done to set up for recycling.
- bryanlarsen 4y ago
  Each kilogram of battery in an EV removes a need for about a 100kg of gasoline. I'm sure they'll be recycling those batteries in about 25 years when they'll be starting to wear out, but even if they don't we're still leaning hard on the "reduce" in the three R's mantra.
konschubert 4y ago
The only thing that tops range anxiety for me is battery degradation anxiety. I would probably be totally fine with a lower range if I know that my battery can do 100 000 cycles.
- londons_explore 4y ago
  At the battery control system design stage, these two factors are mostly trade-off-able. For example, you'll get far far more cycles out of a battery if you only charge up to 80% and discharge down to 20%. Early hybrid cars used this to an extreme - and always kept the battery between 45% and 60%. By doing that you can get 50,000 cycles necessary to recharge and discharge every time you go up and down a hill.
- tuatoru 4y ago
  For a practical car, 200 to 500 full charge cycles per year is all that could happen. 200 for a suburban family car, 500 for an urban commercial vehicle. (200 cycles per year would be perceived by an owner as being "every day", because the days she's away on holiday or sick at home or WFH are not remembered. Nor would she remember that she only charges once on weekends.) 100_000 cycles is therefore 20 to (more likely) 50 years' use. That's a family heirloom, well outlasting the body, suspension, steering and interior of any car. I'd like to have that too. Edit: Er, that should be 200 to 500 years. Outlasting several chassis and interiors. Definitely heirlooms.
  - konschubert 4y ago
    I think 20 years of use would be cool for a car! Of course you might be right that the steering would break first - but shouldn't that be replaceable? I can't see a reason while the car's body or the electric motors would not last that long.
  - bryanlarsen 4y ago
    A full charge cycle is 0 to 100 and back. If you only do 20 to 80 as most owners do you get about ten times as many cycles. So a typical owner does well under 100 per year. 250,000 km is a reasonable expectation.
JohnJamesRambo 4y ago
Due to crazy car prices I was able to sell my 2021 Tesla for the same price as a 2022 factory new Tesla with lfp battery. I’m really excited to get it and be able to charge to 100% all the time and also have a much longer battery life at the same time. The previous battery was a nightmare of having to micromanage the battery charge for long trips and constant worry about if the battery pack was going to crap out after the warranty. I think the car is a bit slower with the lfp but I really don’t care.
bell-cot 4y ago
> Automotive giant Ford is shoring up its battery supply chain — partly by importing lower-cost, iron-based batteries popular in China — as it sprints to increase electric vehicle production. Old geezer's perspective: Back in its heyday, Ford Motor was one of the most vertically integrated (large manufacturing) companies in the world. They owned and operated their own fleet of ore carriers (cargo ships), to haul iron ore from the mines to the steel mill that was part of their all-Ford integrated manufacturing complex. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_River_Rouge_Complex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_River_Rouge_Complex - though Wikipedia barely scratches the surface on this. ) Back in the early 90's, I knew a couple guys who had spent their careers working on those iron ore carriers. Current-day Ford Motor having to go begging to China - for a major, iron-based component needed to produce more cars - that is laughable, and beyond pathetic. In a dark, miserable sort of way, if you care about America or its future.
- cumshitpiss 4y ago
  What's wrong with trading with China?
  - phtrivier 4y ago
    China spent the last two years demonstrating that they're "fair weather partners" when it comes to trade. And winter is coming. So obviously it's not bad _per se_ to rely on China ; but if it's not possible to diversify sourcing, this is begging for a disaster next time whatever geopolitic hits the fan.
    - CyanBird 4y ago
      > Fairweather What do you even mean, it wasn't them whom started the whole tradewar... It was the US gov
      - phtrivier 4y ago
        I meant that in any situation where china has to choose between interior market / upholding CCP plans / régional partnership vs trading with the global west, they will chose the former in times of crisis. Which is not a bad thing, again, it's just that everyone is relying on them as if they are an infinite factory of everything with unlimited supply, and it seems that, well, it's not true any more. But if they decide to stop trade with Russia tomorrow, I'll reconsider.
gregwebs 4y ago
This move solves this year’s problems but doesn’t address the lithium shortage that is already showing up in the price of lithium going up 5x. Analysts predict that by around 2025 lithium will limit the battery market that is trying to grow 40x to meet electrification demands. Note that opening a new lithium mine takes 7 years. Maybe Ford will be able to start selling sodium based batteries then. https://youtu.be/5v-DTS-ibow https://youtu.be/5v-DTS-ibow
- bryanlarsen 4y ago
  According to Musk, the bottleneck is refining the Lithium, not mining it. I imagine it's faster to open a refinery than a mine, but it'll still be a years long process. Expanding existing refineries is probably faster.
gandalfian 4y ago
Following the story of a family who bought an eight year old ford ev. $11,000. Needs a new battery, $14,000 plus labour and isnt actually available because Ford have discontinue it. A bit scary. https://www.ntd.com/battery-replacement-of-familys-ev-ford-focus-would-cost-more-than-car-itself_811083.html https://www.ntd.com/battery-replacement-of-familys-ev-ford-f...
- droopyEyelids 4y ago
  That's almost a prototype unit, which I would expect to be difficult to repair.
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
If the answer to your supply chain "hell" is to switch to a supplier with cheaper prices and a product that is in some respects better then I'm not sure it qualifies as "hell".
hnburnsy 4y ago
how did that chinese dry wall work out during the 2000s housing boom?
oldjavacoder 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium%E2%80%93air_battery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium%E2%80%93air_battery "However, an electric vehicle with aluminium batteries has the potential for up to eight times the range of a lithium-ion battery with a significantly lower total weight." It just needs silver for a catalyst. :-(
- gizmondo 4y ago
  Being non-rechargeable sounds like a bigger issue.
  - oldjavacoder 4y ago
    True but there are some recent developments in the area of making them rechargeable.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
Animats 4y ago
More useful story with less paywall: [1] [1] https://financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/ford-to-buy-cheaper-catl-ev-batteries-to-catch-tesla-3 https://financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/ford-to-buy-cheap...
carapace 4y ago
To me it seems that batteries in EVs make less sense than e.g. alcohol fuel ICE or hybrids. The main consideration is energy density, but alcohol is easy to make and handle, carbon-neutral, and the exhaust is non-toxic. This wouldn't make sense for the whole of car traffic because we use way too much fossil fuel to replace it all with e.g. industrial ethanol. But it could work as part of a transitional strategy. Fuel co-op as part of a CSA farm. It's pretty straightforward to convert existing ICE cars to burn alcohol instead. You don't even have to wait for anybody else, or any new technology to be developed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_alcohol_fuel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_alcohol_fuel
- dv_dt 4y ago
  Almost all of the energy density advantage disappears in an ICE powertrain via largely unavoidable thermodynamic loss.
  - carapace 4y ago
    I don't understand, that seems physically impossible? The engine would melt?
    - dv_dt 4y ago
      A gallon of gas has about 34 kWH of energy in it. Let’s say a ice passenger vehicle gets about 35mpg - so it takes about 1KWH of gas to move the car a mile. A Tesla 3 has gets takes around 25kWH to go 100mi. So about 0.25 KWh per mile. The ICE engine limitations cause it to use 400% more energy to go the same distance e. So even if gas is more dense, most of the energy is lost to engine thermodynamic limitations in using that gas - and yes mostly wasted energy in the form of heat dumping out the tailpipe.
      - carapace 4y ago
        Thank you very much. I appreciate you taking the time to spell it out for me.
- 4y ago

147 points by elsewhen 4y ago

How much room for improvement is left on the consumption side? Electric cars seem to require around 15-20kWh/100km. Can we get that below 10 for regular highway driving, say at 130km/h? What are the numbers for city driving like?

dbwjxufh7373 4y ago
acd 4y ago
You can make a self driving truck/electric vehicle lane where the speed limit is 80km/h. Paint a green line in the middle of the ev-lane and it should make self driving more easy to implement. Reason for slower speed wind resistance is far less at 80km/h. Energy use is quadratic concerning speed. So make a movie streaming ev-lane. Also one could fit cars with rail gear and run them on rail tracks on the highway which would lessen the tire friction roll resistance losses. Technology for allowing cars to run on rail tracks already exists for railway maintenance cars. Self driving on rail track is also much easier to implement. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road–rail_vehicle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road–rail_vehicle Safety from car crashes would also be far safer at 80km/h than higher speeds.
- wongarsu 4y ago
  Before you put them on rails, it might be easier to add panthographs to charge from overhead wires while driving in electric lane. Germany has a short section of highway testing that setup for trucks https://www.sustainabletruckvan.com/pantographs-for-trucks-siemens-continental/ https://www.sustainabletruckvan.com/pantographs-for-trucks-s...
- adrianN 4y ago
  If people wanted to travel 80km/h they could do so today. It is well known that going slower improves fuel efficiency. I'm asking for things like improved drivetrain efficiency and better aerodynamics.
  - stavros 4y ago
    I don't mind going at 80 kmh if someone else is doing the driving.
  - tuatoru 4y ago
    The laws of physics inconveniently get in the way. If your 90% efficient drivetrain-tyre system uses 20 kWh per 100 km, then improving that to 95% efficient maybe reduces that to 17 kWh. Pencils and javelins have lower drag coefficients than cars. Unfortunately people don't fit inside them. A javelin-shaped vehicle big enough to fit a person comfortably inside is a train.
    - RustyConsul 4y ago
      > A javelin-shaped vehicle big enough to fit a person comfortably inside is a train. or a cybertruck.
- nl 4y ago
  Self driving on open roads where 80km/h is possible is basically a solved problem. And if people cared about efficiency enough to drive at 80 they'd do it now. Low efficiency stsrt/stop driving is the problem to solve.
  - bittercynic 4y ago
    I like to drive a little slower to conserve charge/fuel, but it would be too discourteous to all the other drivers on the road, so I just go at the prevailing speed. If there were a separate lane for lower speed driving I would use it.
- fallingknife 4y ago
  If it's a self driving only lane, the speed limit should be increased, not decreased. Self driving on a highway where all the cars are self driving is already a solved problem.
lazyjones 4y ago
> Can we get that below 10 for regular highway driving, say at 130km/h? Probably not with normal-sized cars. For the Model 3, the theoretical minimum is 13.8 kW. This increases linearly with drag coefficient and area (as seen from the front). You would have to build a significantly smaller (flatter, narrower) car and improve the drag coefficient (0.2 has been achieved) to get there. Here's a calculator in German (sorry) for experiments: http://spare-benzin.de/Fahrphysik/Luftwiderstand/Luftwiderstand.html http://spare-benzin.de/Fahrphysik/Luftwiderstand/Luftwiderst...
ben_bai 4y ago
15-20kWh/100km is a gasoline equivalent of about 1,5-2l/100km. At 130km/h there is little room for improvement (thinner wheels, better aerodynamics). All the individual electric components in the car are like ~98% efficient. I guess 10kWh/100km is possible at 90km/h on cruisecontroll behind a big truck. EVs biggest problem are the inefficiencies in the electric grid, there is like a 50% margin for improvement.
clouddrover 4y ago
> Can we get that below 10 for regular highway driving Mercedes did in the Vision EQXX: 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... https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/mercedes-vision-eqxx-ev-concept-stuttgart-to-silverstone-range-record/ https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/mercedes-vision-eqxx-ev-c... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BS1SBhBjAHY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BS1SBhBjAHY
danans 4y ago
The Light-year zero is so efficient that it can gain 70km per day from its rooftop solar panels: https://lightyear.one/lightyear-0 https://lightyear.one/lightyear-0 Initial model is > $300k but they plan a $30k model in the future.

witheld 4y ago

I don’t think heavier batteries with less battery life are gonna do much for Americans. Not unless we can get into small vehicles real quick- and given that the chicken tax has been imposed by executive order since 1964 I don’t see that happening.

deepdriver 4y ago
For others who didn't know: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax
- hughes 4y ago
  This is one of the stupidest things I've ever seen
- missedthecue 4y ago
  "To circumvent the tariffs, imported Ford vehicles replace rear windows with metal panels and remove the rear seats and seat belts. The removed parts are shredded and recycled in Ohio." What an unbelievable waste. Why hasn't this cold-war relic been long abolished?
sofixa 4y ago
I don't see how a tariff on larger vehicles means that the US market can't switch to smaller vehicles. Isn't it even the opposite because smaller cheaper cars can be directly imported from overseas? I agree the US market is incapable of switching to smaller cars in the near future, but i doubt the Chicken Tax has much to do with it.
- witheld 4y ago
  The chicken tax is a tax on small trucks, not large ones
  - sofixa 4y ago
    For me a small car is a three door coupé like the Renault Zoe, not a "small" truck.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago

This is huge. To date, Tesla has been the only non-Chinese manufacturer talking iron. LFP is often touted for being cheaper than NMC, but given growing insecurity around battery-grade nickel supplies, using the far-more-prevalent iron and phosphate isn’t just about cheaper cars. It’s about having cars to sell in the first place. With respect to range anxiety, pretty much every EV in the 200 to 300-mile range is sold out. (I was looking.) And Ford deploying LFP doesn’t mean it has to go 100% LFP in every vehicle. Just having the extra vehicles will win it market share. (As to why now, the last of the patents in a critical suite expired in April [1]. Steve LeVine writes excellently to this topic [2].) [1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1167178/000104746912002475/a2207978zex-10_36.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1167178/000104746912... [2] https://subscriptions.theinformation.com/newsletters/the-electric/archive https://subscriptions.theinformation.com/newsletters/the-ele...

smaudet 4y ago
Meanwhile, Hydrogen Fuel Cell cars are putting gasoline vehicles and electric to shame: https://www.timesnownews.com/auto/car-news/article/toyota-mirai-hydrogen-car-sets-guinness-world-record-for-longest-range/822571 https://www.timesnownews.com/auto/car-news/article/toyota-mi... Of course, you can't readily buy or charge one yet, but you don't have the battery problem (at all).
- snotrockets 4y ago
  There were plans in Japan for wide use of hydrogen as the fuel of the future. Japanese car manufacturers aligned on that, but weren’t keen on building the necessary infrastructure. You could lease a hydrogen fuel cell car in CA. There was even a lot of state incentives if you did. But very few fueling stations (iirc, only two in the whole Bay Area)
  - martin_bech 4y ago
    Because the infrastructure needed would be bonkers, and creating fuelibg stations is not really a solved problem. You also loose a big amount of energy converting from electric to hydrogen and back. The cars themselves almost always have low storage because the tanks are very big. Hydrogen car performance is also a lot lower then pure EV.

acd 4y ago

Happy Ford is using more environmentally friendly Iron based LFP batteries. Cobalt in more traditional batteries is neurotoxic for humans and the mining of Cobalt is dirty. Very good that a large car manufacturer such as Ford is switching to Iron LFP. You should be able to fast charge LFP which will compensate for the lesser energy density. Since lfp is more stable they should be able to take the charging better than cobalt-based chemistries. Also Iron lfp is a more stable chemistry than cobalt-based so far less likely for battery fires.

Roritharr 4y ago
Having driven the 2021 Model 3 Standard Range with LFP Batteries from China: It charged much slower and had worse performance degradation in winter. This might be due to the software limitations Tesla put on the BMC, but since then it didn't improve by much. I wouldn't expect LFP be the panacea, but it should make EVs more affordable and is definetly in the "good enough" range for most families.
- freemint 4y ago
  LFP is supposed to be less bad in winter. So that it isn't kinda confuses me.
- sudosysgen 4y ago
  BYD has integrated heating elements to drastically reduce degradation in the winter. Charging speeds is just a result of cheaping out somewhere at the scales we're talking about.

cjdell 4y ago

I'm not sure why we aren't making EVs with small but upgradeable batteries. Like for example a $20k car with a 10kWh "good enough for now" starter battery that can be bought today. Still good enough for 90% of trips and upgradable to 50kWh with additional after market battery modules should the user decide. As simple as upgrading the RAM on an (old) laptop.

noja 4y ago
Like these mopeds with one or two swappable batteries https://electrek.co/2021/11/01/gogoro-electric-scooters-swappable-batteries-continue-rolling-around-the-world/ https://electrek.co/2021/11/01/gogoro-electric-scooters-swap...
iasay 4y ago
I would prefer to see this because the current ability to replace batteries in EVs is crap. I’ve owned enough second hand laptops to know what second hand EV ownership is going to feel like.
- adrianN 4y ago
  Laptop batteries and EV batteries have a completely different performance profile. The data we have suggests that the battery will retain 80% of its maximum capacity for about as long as the rest of the car is expected to survive.
  - ngrilly 4y ago
    Is it mainly because cars are idle/off most of the time, unlike laptops and smartphones, or is there something else at play here?
    - cjdell 4y ago
      Big batteries have much more sophisticated battery management systems that are designed to be as kind as possible to the cells. Also they reserve a capacity of 10% on either side, leaving 80% usable capacity available to the user. Li-Ion batteries don't like being fully charged or fully discharged. Also due to their capacity most EVs are charged at about 0.1C whereas phones (especially with rapid chargers) are charged anywhere between 1C and 3C.

discordance 4y ago

Hopefully in 10 years all of these car batteries with 50% capacity left can be deployed as residential batteries for peanuts.

antisthenes 4y ago
You can already DIY battery packs from used EVs in order to build a residential whole-house backup. It's not peanuts, but getting very close to it.
potatochup 4y ago
At least at the moment, it's usually more efficient to recycle the good cells from an old pack into a new pack for automotive use. The chemistry between automotive and residential use diverges significantly because they are optimizing for different things: Car batteries minimize weight and maximize power input/output. For residential, weight barely matters at all, but # of discharge cycles and thermal stability matter more*. In 10 years, who knows what the economics will turn out to be though.

curiousgal 4y ago

> Ctrl - F recycle > 0 matches It feels like we are trading one poison for another from a climate change perspective. Just passing down the buck.

Gustomaximus 4y ago
TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
You are correct. Nobody is recycling LFP, because there is nothing valuable to recycle.
- jillesvangurp 4y ago
  Actually, the vast majority of LFP batteries are still perfectly fine and not in any need of recycling. There's indeed nothing to recycle yet. At least not a lot. And it will be some time before that starts changing. Recycling of failing batteries and discarded cells that did not survive quality control in the factory is of course a thing. These don't end up in land fills. The materials inside them are way to valuable for that.
tuatoru 4y ago
Recycling is a last resort. The mantra goes "reduce, re-use, recycle". In that order. Recycling is a last resort. Please don't jump to it first. That's what people who want to virtue-signal do, not what smart people do. Electric cars definitely cause less harm to the natural environment and people's health wellbeing than fossil fuel powered cars, so "reduce" is covered, even if not optimally. People are also definitely re-using lithium batteries. Since lithium batteries are a new thing, there is not yet a great enough flow of worn-out batteries to justify recycling at industrial scale as yet. Those as exist are being stockpiled for this, though. And a lot of R&D work is being done to set up for recycling.
bryanlarsen 4y ago
Each kilogram of battery in an EV removes a need for about a 100kg of gasoline. I'm sure they'll be recycling those batteries in about 25 years when they'll be starting to wear out, but even if they don't we're still leaning hard on the "reduce" in the three R's mantra.

konschubert 4y ago

The only thing that tops range anxiety for me is battery degradation anxiety. I would probably be totally fine with a lower range if I know that my battery can do 100 000 cycles.

londons_explore 4y ago
At the battery control system design stage, these two factors are mostly trade-off-able. For example, you'll get far far more cycles out of a battery if you only charge up to 80% and discharge down to 20%. Early hybrid cars used this to an extreme - and always kept the battery between 45% and 60%. By doing that you can get 50,000 cycles necessary to recharge and discharge every time you go up and down a hill.
tuatoru 4y ago
For a practical car, 200 to 500 full charge cycles per year is all that could happen. 200 for a suburban family car, 500 for an urban commercial vehicle. (200 cycles per year would be perceived by an owner as being "every day", because the days she's away on holiday or sick at home or WFH are not remembered. Nor would she remember that she only charges once on weekends.) 100_000 cycles is therefore 20 to (more likely) 50 years' use. That's a family heirloom, well outlasting the body, suspension, steering and interior of any car. I'd like to have that too. Edit: Er, that should be 200 to 500 years. Outlasting several chassis and interiors. Definitely heirlooms.
- konschubert 4y ago
  I think 20 years of use would be cool for a car! Of course you might be right that the steering would break first - but shouldn't that be replaceable? I can't see a reason while the car's body or the electric motors would not last that long.
- bryanlarsen 4y ago
  A full charge cycle is 0 to 100 and back. If you only do 20 to 80 as most owners do you get about ten times as many cycles. So a typical owner does well under 100 per year. 250,000 km is a reasonable expectation.

JohnJamesRambo 4y ago

Due to crazy car prices I was able to sell my 2021 Tesla for the same price as a 2022 factory new Tesla with lfp battery. I’m really excited to get it and be able to charge to 100% all the time and also have a much longer battery life at the same time. The previous battery was a nightmare of having to micromanage the battery charge for long trips and constant worry about if the battery pack was going to crap out after the warranty. I think the car is a bit slower with the lfp but I really don’t care.

bell-cot 4y ago

> Automotive giant Ford is shoring up its battery supply chain — partly by importing lower-cost, iron-based batteries popular in China — as it sprints to increase electric vehicle production. Old geezer's perspective: Back in its heyday, Ford Motor was one of the most vertically integrated (large manufacturing) companies in the world. They owned and operated their own fleet of ore carriers (cargo ships), to haul iron ore from the mines to the steel mill that was part of their all-Ford integrated manufacturing complex. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_River_Rouge_Complex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_River_Rouge_Complex - though Wikipedia barely scratches the surface on this. ) Back in the early 90's, I knew a couple guys who had spent their careers working on those iron ore carriers. Current-day Ford Motor having to go begging to China - for a major, iron-based component needed to produce more cars - that is laughable, and beyond pathetic. In a dark, miserable sort of way, if you care about America or its future.

cumshitpiss 4y ago
What's wrong with trading with China?
- phtrivier 4y ago
  China spent the last two years demonstrating that they're "fair weather partners" when it comes to trade. And winter is coming. So obviously it's not bad _per se_ to rely on China ; but if it's not possible to diversify sourcing, this is begging for a disaster next time whatever geopolitic hits the fan.
  - CyanBird 4y ago
    > Fairweather What do you even mean, it wasn't them whom started the whole tradewar... It was the US gov
    - phtrivier 4y ago
      I meant that in any situation where china has to choose between interior market / upholding CCP plans / régional partnership vs trading with the global west, they will chose the former in times of crisis. Which is not a bad thing, again, it's just that everyone is relying on them as if they are an infinite factory of everything with unlimited supply, and it seems that, well, it's not true any more. But if they decide to stop trade with Russia tomorrow, I'll reconsider.

gregwebs 4y ago

This move solves this year’s problems but doesn’t address the lithium shortage that is already showing up in the price of lithium going up 5x. Analysts predict that by around 2025 lithium will limit the battery market that is trying to grow 40x to meet electrification demands. Note that opening a new lithium mine takes 7 years. Maybe Ford will be able to start selling sodium based batteries then. https://youtu.be/5v-DTS-ibow https://youtu.be/5v-DTS-ibow

bryanlarsen 4y ago
According to Musk, the bottleneck is refining the Lithium, not mining it. I imagine it's faster to open a refinery than a mine, but it'll still be a years long process. Expanding existing refineries is probably faster.

gandalfian 4y ago

Following the story of a family who bought an eight year old ford ev. $11,000. Needs a new battery, $14,000 plus labour and isnt actually available because Ford have discontinue it. A bit scary. https://www.ntd.com/battery-replacement-of-familys-ev-ford-focus-would-cost-more-than-car-itself_811083.html https://www.ntd.com/battery-replacement-of-familys-ev-ford-f...

droopyEyelids 4y ago
That's almost a prototype unit, which I would expect to be difficult to repair.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

If the answer to your supply chain "hell" is to switch to a supplier with cheaper prices and a product that is in some respects better then I'm not sure it qualifies as "hell".

hnburnsy 4y ago

how did that chinese dry wall work out during the 2000s housing boom?

oldjavacoder 4y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium%E2%80%93air_battery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium%E2%80%93air_battery "However, an electric vehicle with aluminium batteries has the potential for up to eight times the range of a lithium-ion battery with a significantly lower total weight." It just needs silver for a catalyst. :-(

gizmondo 4y ago
Being non-rechargeable sounds like a bigger issue.
- oldjavacoder 4y ago
  True but there are some recent developments in the area of making them rechargeable.
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Animats 4y ago

More useful story with less paywall: [1] [1] https://financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/ford-to-buy-cheaper-catl-ev-batteries-to-catch-tesla-3 https://financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/ford-to-buy-cheap...

carapace 4y ago

To me it seems that batteries in EVs make less sense than e.g. alcohol fuel ICE or hybrids. The main consideration is energy density, but alcohol is easy to make and handle, carbon-neutral, and the exhaust is non-toxic. This wouldn't make sense for the whole of car traffic because we use way too much fossil fuel to replace it all with e.g. industrial ethanol. But it could work as part of a transitional strategy. Fuel co-op as part of a CSA farm. It's pretty straightforward to convert existing ICE cars to burn alcohol instead. You don't even have to wait for anybody else, or any new technology to be developed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_alcohol_fuel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_alcohol_fuel

dv_dt 4y ago
Almost all of the energy density advantage disappears in an ICE powertrain via largely unavoidable thermodynamic loss.
- carapace 4y ago
  I don't understand, that seems physically impossible? The engine would melt?
  - dv_dt 4y ago
    A gallon of gas has about 34 kWH of energy in it. Let’s say a ice passenger vehicle gets about 35mpg - so it takes about 1KWH of gas to move the car a mile. A Tesla 3 has gets takes around 25kWH to go 100mi. So about 0.25 KWh per mile. The ICE engine limitations cause it to use 400% more energy to go the same distance e. So even if gas is more dense, most of the energy is lost to engine thermodynamic limitations in using that gas - and yes mostly wasted energy in the form of heat dumping out the tailpipe.
    - carapace 4y ago
      Thank you very much. I appreciate you taking the time to spell it out for me.
4y ago