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Dear Electric Vehicle Owners: You Don’t Need That Giant Battery

6 points by fortran77 4y ago

clouddrover 4y ago
I just want to get where I'm going without having to charge the car every 5 minutes. My personal benchmark is 400 miles of highway range. That's enough for me. The proper solution is better batteries. Batteries still need to improve in all metrics: more energy dense, more power dense, more cycle life, more calendar life, more recyclable, cheaper, safer, lighter.
- fooblaster 4y ago
  400 miles? That's over 6 hours of highway driving. I don't think that's a reasonable battery size for efficiency, road wear, and vehicle weight
  - sim2er 4y ago
    That sounds about right, if it takes all night to charge. The Tesla supercharger can add 200 miles of range in 15 minutes, which I think is more important than overall max range. But the battery pack still has to be substantial enough to absorb that much energy at that speed, and offer reasonable performance after accounting for a few years of age degradation.
  - clouddrover 4y ago
    Of course it's reasonable. There are EVs that can achieve that now. The Mercedes EQS can do 395 highway miles which is close enough. The Lucid Air can do 500 highway miles: https://insideevs.com/reviews/443791/ev-range-test-results/ https://insideevs.com/reviews/443791/ev-range-test-results/ The Mercedes Vision EQXX concept car can do over 700 miles, although this hasn't been tested in the same way as the EQS and the Air above: https://www.thedrive.com/new-cars/mercedes-vision-eqxx-prototype-review-range-specs-driving https://www.thedrive.com/new-cars/mercedes-vision-eqxx-proto...
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
I think cars in the US are an absurd size generally, but as the article notes, they're going from absurdly wasteful ICE to absurdly wasteful EVs. Since we need to ramp up a global industry to transition, I don't really mind if the US is helping kick-start that.
rapjr9 4y ago
Tiny EV's are the future.
sim2er 4y ago
As charging stations become plentiful & convenient (read: very fast) battery size will naturally decrease - Large range is a necessary hurdle for market adoption. Plug-in hybrids are great for this, but don't encourage recharge station development the same way. Also having a large battery pack comes with other benefits even if the whole capacity isn't used. Fewer complete charge cycles resulting in longer pack life, and faster charging (since fully charging a battery is slower than a partial charge) are just two examples.
- clouddrover 4y ago
  > As charging stations become plentiful & convenient (read: very fast) battery size will naturally decrease Batteries are currently outperformed by the charging stations. There are no passenger EVs that can make full use of a 350 kW charger for 10-80% of the charge curve. Even something like the Hummer EV, which has a 212 kWh usable pack and can pull 350 kW at low states of charge, can only sustain that up to about 25% state of charge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kpmXfCFamU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kpmXfCFamU To have a smaller battery pack charge at 350 kW you'd need a new chemistry with a very high C-rate to sustain it for a good chunk of the charge curve.

6 points by fortran77 4y ago

I just want to get where I'm going without having to charge the car every 5 minutes. My personal benchmark is 400 miles of highway range. That's enough for me. The proper solution is better batteries. Batteries still need to improve in all metrics: more energy dense, more power dense, more cycle life, more calendar life, more recyclable, cheaper, safer, lighter.

fooblaster 4y ago
400 miles? That's over 6 hours of highway driving. I don't think that's a reasonable battery size for efficiency, road wear, and vehicle weight
- sim2er 4y ago
  That sounds about right, if it takes all night to charge. The Tesla supercharger can add 200 miles of range in 15 minutes, which I think is more important than overall max range. But the battery pack still has to be substantial enough to absorb that much energy at that speed, and offer reasonable performance after accounting for a few years of age degradation.
- clouddrover 4y ago
  Of course it's reasonable. There are EVs that can achieve that now. The Mercedes EQS can do 395 highway miles which is close enough. The Lucid Air can do 500 highway miles: https://insideevs.com/reviews/443791/ev-range-test-results/ https://insideevs.com/reviews/443791/ev-range-test-results/ The Mercedes Vision EQXX concept car can do over 700 miles, although this hasn't been tested in the same way as the EQS and the Air above: https://www.thedrive.com/new-cars/mercedes-vision-eqxx-prototype-review-range-specs-driving https://www.thedrive.com/new-cars/mercedes-vision-eqxx-proto...

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

I think cars in the US are an absurd size generally, but as the article notes, they're going from absurdly wasteful ICE to absurdly wasteful EVs. Since we need to ramp up a global industry to transition, I don't really mind if the US is helping kick-start that.

rapjr9 4y ago

Tiny EV's are the future.

sim2er 4y ago

As charging stations become plentiful & convenient (read: very fast) battery size will naturally decrease - Large range is a necessary hurdle for market adoption. Plug-in hybrids are great for this, but don't encourage recharge station development the same way. Also having a large battery pack comes with other benefits even if the whole capacity isn't used. Fewer complete charge cycles resulting in longer pack life, and faster charging (since fully charging a battery is slower than a partial charge) are just two examples.

clouddrover 4y ago
> As charging stations become plentiful & convenient (read: very fast) battery size will naturally decrease Batteries are currently outperformed by the charging stations. There are no passenger EVs that can make full use of a 350 kW charger for 10-80% of the charge curve. Even something like the Hummer EV, which has a 212 kWh usable pack and can pull 350 kW at low states of charge, can only sustain that up to about 25% state of charge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kpmXfCFamU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kpmXfCFamU To have a smaller battery pack charge at 350 kW you'd need a new chemistry with a very high C-rate to sustain it for a good chunk of the charge curve.