6 ms·

Superbatteries will transform the performance of EVs

32 points by lxm 3y ago

haspoken 3y ago
https://archive.ph/Vo8Z0 https://archive.ph/Vo8Z0
badcarbine 3y ago
No shit. Now we just need to figure out how to make them. Until that happens no vehicles should be produced. There needs to be more regulation on the biggest CO2 producers. This isn’t about the planet it’s about our lives. We’re breathing this stuff too.
- distortionfield 3y ago
  > no vehicles should be produced Listen, I’m as radical as any of them, especially when it comes to the climate, but you can’t propose no new vehicles be produced and be taken seriously. We need outputs -governed regulation around CO2 And we need it now. Stopping vehicle production is a band aid over the symptom, not the cause. Most harmful CO2 comes from general electricity production anyway.
  - hedora 3y ago
    I think new ICE engines should include a $200/ton atmospheric carbon capture fee based on their expected lifetime fuel consumption. (That works out to a $2/gallon tax. I’m fine with charging it at the pump, especially if established at the same time as a universal basic income scheme).
    - analognoise 3y ago
      That would only hurt poor people. $2/gallon extra would cause overnight riots.
      - riku_iki 3y ago
        that's the only way to incentivize people to optimize their routes, habits, switch to hybrid/electrics, otherwise consequences can be much tougher in 30-50 years with no way to fix it.
        HWR_14 3y ago
        Poor people cannot afford an EV now, and they cannot afford a $2/gallon tax. Taking away options without supplying any new ones will cause a large number of people to be unable to commute to work and huge economic upheaval.
        riku_iki 3y ago
        I don't see how you come to such conclusion, I think $2/gallon tax will be some fraction of total ownership cost for the car (fuel, car cost, insurance, maintenance), those who can't afford that fraction can't afford car too.
        HWR_14 3y ago
        There are many people out there who can barely afford a car. On average gasoline accounts for ~16% of people's transportation budgets and ~2.5% of their take-home pay (obviously, these numbers are using average everything). A $2/gallon tax is an increase of a little more than 50% (not in California, but using the US average price). So that's more than 1.25% of their tax home pay and 8% of their transportation cost. That's a lot. And again, those are averages. For people at the bottom it's worse. It's not a lot if you are making six-figures. But for a lot of people it quite literally puts driving to work as too expensive.
        riku_iki 3y ago
        > So that's more than 1.25% of their tax home pay its totally not a lot given we are talking about future of planet and humanity and that penalties on children of exactly the same people will be much higher if we won't stop pollute the planet.
    - kimixa 3y ago
      This would only work if every source of atmospheric carbon was equally taxed - otherwise you get incentives to have indirect carbon usage, be it in costs of manufacture, or energy generation through other means. Otherwise you get BS like scrapping vehicles that took significant amounts of atmospheric carbon to produce, just because they have a slightly better gas mileage. It should only be encouraged if the total over the lifetime of the vehicle is better, but manufacturing costs are often excluded. Plus this naturally excludes those who can't afford the upfront cost of a new vehicle - even if everything was taxed "correctly" by this logic and so was lower cost in the long run.
  - RecycledEle 3y ago
    If anyone can wants to stop new vehicles from being produced, I hope they at least are honest enough to be a subsistence farmer who refused to use computers.
- thefourthchime 3y ago
  If you're serious about climate change and global warming, then you need to have priorities. And the first priority is coal-fired power plants. They produce 30% of the global CO2 emissions. Automobiles only make up 14%, and that's including the big diesel trucks that move freight around. You've got to attack the big stuff first.
  - bryanlarsen 3y ago
    Transport makes up a quarter of emissions and electricity 40%. Smaller, but not very much smaller. The three biggest emitters are electricity, transport and heating in that order, and that is the order that we're attacking them in. 40% of new electricity generation capacity worldwide in 2022 was renewable.[1] YTD, 15% of new vehicle sales have been EV's.[2] Heat pump market share in 2022 was 15%.[3] 1: https://www.statista.com/statistics/270281/electricity-generation-worldwide/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/270281/electricity-gener... 2: https://cleantechnica.com/2023/09/10/world-ev-sales-15-of-world-auto-sales/ https://cleantechnica.com/2023/09/10/world-ev-sales-15-of-wo... 3: https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/heat-pump-market https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/heat-pum...
    - XorNot 3y ago
      Mess with peoples transportation options and they notice in a big way. Whereas nobody cares where their electricity to the grid comes from, provided it does. EVs are an excellent option for exactly this reason: what we need is to mess with transportation minimally, ideally with benefits (i.e. quieter, cheaper fuel, maybe self-drive) but ultimately get the usage of energy for transportation disconnected from any specific fuel source.
  - dangus 3y ago
    Climate change and global warming aren't the only problems with gasoline cars. Just listen to how the news and the average person discuss gas prices. Operating gasoline vehicles requires continuous access to affordably extracted oil. The US is so car-dependent that high gas prices in isolation can impact the economy. EVs open options and almost certainly stabilize energy pricing more than refined gasoline. They also use less energy overall.
rnk 3y ago
About every 6 months there's one of these "new battery technology" will save the day articles (but the day is not right now) and often given as the excuse for why legacy auto isn't doing a great jobs with battery electric vehicles, see Toyota here. I think that eventually one of these solid state battery technologies will work out and also will be able to be manufactured reasonably cheaply. It seems very likely that manufacturing existing EV models will be pretty easily convertible to use whatever new battery technology shows up on the market (changing out the skateboard perhaps - not nothing to change but not that hard). Toyota says they have it figured out but their new EVs aren't coming until 2028 model year (5 years!). But this kind of longer timeline also hides the failure of a lot of car makers to invest enough in the battery supply chain - they can't buy enough batteries or they are too expensive, so it's another excuse for what they want anyway, which is not to make that many EVs. They want to keep selling ICE cars while they can. Look at GM and Ford, the GM ultium battery pack has unspecified problems with mass manufacturing, Ford has also slowed down manufacturing at times this cal year (to improve efficiency or something, specific reasons unclear). I still see the market dynamics being that (1) Tesla continues to take market share from legacy auto where ever they are on the market, and (2) Chinese companies will follow and be even more devastating, because they are making EVs in even larger quantities, decent quality and low prices.
- dangus 3y ago
  Unlike the past, new battery tech and reductions in manufacturing costs are an arms race with huge incentives for the industry. 10 years ago, $30k bought you a Nissan Leaf with 80 miles of range. Fast forward to today, and the same not-inflation-adjusted amount of money buys you a Chevy Bolt with around 240 miles of range. I expect that within the next 10 years, a vehicle with the average new MSRP will get 400-500 miles of range on a charge. Even if that prediction doesn't pan out, we can almost guarantee that typical charging speeds will increase and charging networks will expand further, blowing past critical mass.
  - datavirtue 3y ago
    Yeah, battery keeps getting heavier.
rgmerk 3y ago
Batteries are already good enough for most light vehicle applications. If you’re looking to tow a horse float long distances, or drive the Canning Stock Route[1] for fun, sure, current EVs are not going to meet your needs and things like solid state batteries will be helpful. But this idea that current EV battery technology is somehow inadequate for most people is wrong and annoying. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canning_Stock_Route https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canning_Stock_Route
- DoesntMatter22 3y ago
  The tesla semi is adequate for something like 80 percent of the loads 18 wheelers take because long haul is apparently only 20 percent of the market
javajosh 3y ago
I am writing an article for the economist titled: "Flying cars will transform commuting".
purpleblue 3y ago
The article says that the range would be over 700 miles and charge in 10 mins. I think if we could reliably charge a 300 mile car in 5 mins, akin to filling up a tank of gas, that's all we would need, we don't need the 700 miles.
Animats 3y ago
You can buy portable UPS-type devices with solid state batteries for camping.[1] From WalMart, even.[2] Starts at $349. So this is a bit more real than most battery announcements. Technical paper: [3] 2019 Nobel Prize in chemistry awarded to founder.[4] When the idea has both a Nobel Prize and a product available right now from WalMart, it might actually work. [1] https://yoshinopower.com/ https://yoshinopower.com/ [2] https://www.walmart.com/search?q=Yoshino+Technology%2C+Inc.&facet=brand:Yoshino+Technology%2C+Inc https://www.walmart.com/search?q=Yoshino+Technology%2C+Inc.&.... [3] https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1774194 https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1774194 [4] https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2019/summary/ https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2019/summary/
- edgyquant 3y ago
  Your Walmart link seems broken. No match found
  - HnUser12 3y ago
    I found it. https://www.walmart.com/ip/Yoshino-B330-SST-New-Solid-State-Portable-Power-Station-241Wh-330W-Continuous-520W-Peak-Battery-Recreation-Camping-Emergency-Solar-Optional-Generator/2709079977 https://www.walmart.com/ip/Yoshino-B330-SST-New-Solid-State-...
- consp 3y ago
  I can find no source or any mention claiming Akira Yoshino's connection to the US based company you mention other than using his name. The website of the company does not even mention it. I get a high "using a non existing but near the horizon technology and stuffing it with existing Li cells" vibe from the website.
  - Animats 3y ago
    I see that, too. Info about the company is sparse, short of buying a DNB report. The company address, 18529 East Gale Ave City of Industry, CA 91748, US, is a warehouse. They're not manufacturing there. They left the overhead door open and Google Earth shows the inside. It's all cartons and pallets.
tuatoru 3y ago
Performance isn't the problem. Cost is. Every time I do the calcs it takes more than ten years for the extra cost of an EV over a roughly equivalent ICEV to be recouped in my situation (which admittedly is fairly low mileage). And that's assuming tyre costs are the same, which I doubt for a heavier vehicle, and other maintenance costs (steering, brakes, suspension, body, lights and accessories, and interior) are zero for the EV.
xnx 3y ago
Batteries are kind of fascinating because they have so many dimensions for improvement: watts/cost, watts/weight, cycle durability, calendar durability, safety, etc. Small improvements in any of these matter, and different applications have very different needs (e.g. mobile phones vs. grid storage). Even though this article is 2 years old, it's still a good overview: https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/05/eternally-five-years-away-no-batteries-are-improving-under-your-nose/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/05/eternally-five-years...

32 points by lxm 3y ago

https://archive.ph/Vo8Z0 https://archive.ph/Vo8Z0

No shit. Now we just need to figure out how to make them. Until that happens no vehicles should be produced. There needs to be more regulation on the biggest CO2 producers. This isn’t about the planet it’s about our lives. We’re breathing this stuff too.

distortionfield 3y ago
> no vehicles should be produced Listen, I’m as radical as any of them, especially when it comes to the climate, but you can’t propose no new vehicles be produced and be taken seriously. We need outputs -governed regulation around CO2 And we need it now. Stopping vehicle production is a band aid over the symptom, not the cause. Most harmful CO2 comes from general electricity production anyway.
- hedora 3y ago
  I think new ICE engines should include a $200/ton atmospheric carbon capture fee based on their expected lifetime fuel consumption. (That works out to a $2/gallon tax. I’m fine with charging it at the pump, especially if established at the same time as a universal basic income scheme).
  - analognoise 3y ago
    That would only hurt poor people. $2/gallon extra would cause overnight riots.
    - riku_iki 3y ago
      that's the only way to incentivize people to optimize their routes, habits, switch to hybrid/electrics, otherwise consequences can be much tougher in 30-50 years with no way to fix it.
      - HWR_14 3y ago
        Poor people cannot afford an EV now, and they cannot afford a $2/gallon tax. Taking away options without supplying any new ones will cause a large number of people to be unable to commute to work and huge economic upheaval.
        riku_iki 3y ago
        I don't see how you come to such conclusion, I think $2/gallon tax will be some fraction of total ownership cost for the car (fuel, car cost, insurance, maintenance), those who can't afford that fraction can't afford car too.
        HWR_14 3y ago
        There are many people out there who can barely afford a car. On average gasoline accounts for ~16% of people's transportation budgets and ~2.5% of their take-home pay (obviously, these numbers are using average everything). A $2/gallon tax is an increase of a little more than 50% (not in California, but using the US average price). So that's more than 1.25% of their tax home pay and 8% of their transportation cost. That's a lot. And again, those are averages. For people at the bottom it's worse. It's not a lot if you are making six-figures. But for a lot of people it quite literally puts driving to work as too expensive.
        riku_iki 3y ago
        > So that's more than 1.25% of their tax home pay its totally not a lot given we are talking about future of planet and humanity and that penalties on children of exactly the same people will be much higher if we won't stop pollute the planet.
  - kimixa 3y ago
    This would only work if every source of atmospheric carbon was equally taxed - otherwise you get incentives to have indirect carbon usage, be it in costs of manufacture, or energy generation through other means. Otherwise you get BS like scrapping vehicles that took significant amounts of atmospheric carbon to produce, just because they have a slightly better gas mileage. It should only be encouraged if the total over the lifetime of the vehicle is better, but manufacturing costs are often excluded. Plus this naturally excludes those who can't afford the upfront cost of a new vehicle - even if everything was taxed "correctly" by this logic and so was lower cost in the long run.
- RecycledEle 3y ago
  If anyone can wants to stop new vehicles from being produced, I hope they at least are honest enough to be a subsistence farmer who refused to use computers.
thefourthchime 3y ago
If you're serious about climate change and global warming, then you need to have priorities. And the first priority is coal-fired power plants. They produce 30% of the global CO2 emissions. Automobiles only make up 14%, and that's including the big diesel trucks that move freight around. You've got to attack the big stuff first.
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  Transport makes up a quarter of emissions and electricity 40%. Smaller, but not very much smaller. The three biggest emitters are electricity, transport and heating in that order, and that is the order that we're attacking them in. 40% of new electricity generation capacity worldwide in 2022 was renewable.[1] YTD, 15% of new vehicle sales have been EV's.[2] Heat pump market share in 2022 was 15%.[3] 1: https://www.statista.com/statistics/270281/electricity-generation-worldwide/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/270281/electricity-gener... 2: https://cleantechnica.com/2023/09/10/world-ev-sales-15-of-world-auto-sales/ https://cleantechnica.com/2023/09/10/world-ev-sales-15-of-wo... 3: https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/heat-pump-market https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/heat-pum...
  - XorNot 3y ago
    Mess with peoples transportation options and they notice in a big way. Whereas nobody cares where their electricity to the grid comes from, provided it does. EVs are an excellent option for exactly this reason: what we need is to mess with transportation minimally, ideally with benefits (i.e. quieter, cheaper fuel, maybe self-drive) but ultimately get the usage of energy for transportation disconnected from any specific fuel source.
- dangus 3y ago
  Climate change and global warming aren't the only problems with gasoline cars. Just listen to how the news and the average person discuss gas prices. Operating gasoline vehicles requires continuous access to affordably extracted oil. The US is so car-dependent that high gas prices in isolation can impact the economy. EVs open options and almost certainly stabilize energy pricing more than refined gasoline. They also use less energy overall.

rnk 3y ago

About every 6 months there's one of these "new battery technology" will save the day articles (but the day is not right now) and often given as the excuse for why legacy auto isn't doing a great jobs with battery electric vehicles, see Toyota here. I think that eventually one of these solid state battery technologies will work out and also will be able to be manufactured reasonably cheaply. It seems very likely that manufacturing existing EV models will be pretty easily convertible to use whatever new battery technology shows up on the market (changing out the skateboard perhaps - not nothing to change but not that hard). Toyota says they have it figured out but their new EVs aren't coming until 2028 model year (5 years!). But this kind of longer timeline also hides the failure of a lot of car makers to invest enough in the battery supply chain - they can't buy enough batteries or they are too expensive, so it's another excuse for what they want anyway, which is not to make that many EVs. They want to keep selling ICE cars while they can. Look at GM and Ford, the GM ultium battery pack has unspecified problems with mass manufacturing, Ford has also slowed down manufacturing at times this cal year (to improve efficiency or something, specific reasons unclear). I still see the market dynamics being that (1) Tesla continues to take market share from legacy auto where ever they are on the market, and (2) Chinese companies will follow and be even more devastating, because they are making EVs in even larger quantities, decent quality and low prices.

dangus 3y ago
Unlike the past, new battery tech and reductions in manufacturing costs are an arms race with huge incentives for the industry. 10 years ago, $30k bought you a Nissan Leaf with 80 miles of range. Fast forward to today, and the same not-inflation-adjusted amount of money buys you a Chevy Bolt with around 240 miles of range. I expect that within the next 10 years, a vehicle with the average new MSRP will get 400-500 miles of range on a charge. Even if that prediction doesn't pan out, we can almost guarantee that typical charging speeds will increase and charging networks will expand further, blowing past critical mass.
- datavirtue 3y ago
  Yeah, battery keeps getting heavier.

rgmerk 3y ago

Batteries are already good enough for most light vehicle applications. If you’re looking to tow a horse float long distances, or drive the Canning Stock Route[1] for fun, sure, current EVs are not going to meet your needs and things like solid state batteries will be helpful. But this idea that current EV battery technology is somehow inadequate for most people is wrong and annoying. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canning_Stock_Route https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canning_Stock_Route

DoesntMatter22 3y ago
The tesla semi is adequate for something like 80 percent of the loads 18 wheelers take because long haul is apparently only 20 percent of the market

javajosh 3y ago

I am writing an article for the economist titled: "Flying cars will transform commuting".

purpleblue 3y ago

The article says that the range would be over 700 miles and charge in 10 mins. I think if we could reliably charge a 300 mile car in 5 mins, akin to filling up a tank of gas, that's all we would need, we don't need the 700 miles.

Animats 3y ago

You can buy portable UPS-type devices with solid state batteries for camping.[1] From WalMart, even.[2] Starts at $349. So this is a bit more real than most battery announcements. Technical paper: [3] 2019 Nobel Prize in chemistry awarded to founder.[4] When the idea has both a Nobel Prize and a product available right now from WalMart, it might actually work. [1] https://yoshinopower.com/ https://yoshinopower.com/ [2] https://www.walmart.com/search?q=Yoshino+Technology%2C+Inc.&facet=brand:Yoshino+Technology%2C+Inc https://www.walmart.com/search?q=Yoshino+Technology%2C+Inc.&.... [3] https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1774194 https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1774194 [4] https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2019/summary/ https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2019/summary/

edgyquant 3y ago
Your Walmart link seems broken. No match found
- HnUser12 3y ago
  I found it. https://www.walmart.com/ip/Yoshino-B330-SST-New-Solid-State-Portable-Power-Station-241Wh-330W-Continuous-520W-Peak-Battery-Recreation-Camping-Emergency-Solar-Optional-Generator/2709079977 https://www.walmart.com/ip/Yoshino-B330-SST-New-Solid-State-...
consp 3y ago
I can find no source or any mention claiming Akira Yoshino's connection to the US based company you mention other than using his name. The website of the company does not even mention it. I get a high "using a non existing but near the horizon technology and stuffing it with existing Li cells" vibe from the website.
- Animats 3y ago
  I see that, too. Info about the company is sparse, short of buying a DNB report. The company address, 18529 East Gale Ave City of Industry, CA 91748, US, is a warehouse. They're not manufacturing there. They left the overhead door open and Google Earth shows the inside. It's all cartons and pallets.

tuatoru 3y ago

Performance isn't the problem. Cost is. Every time I do the calcs it takes more than ten years for the extra cost of an EV over a roughly equivalent ICEV to be recouped in my situation (which admittedly is fairly low mileage). And that's assuming tyre costs are the same, which I doubt for a heavier vehicle, and other maintenance costs (steering, brakes, suspension, body, lights and accessories, and interior) are zero for the EV.

xnx 3y ago

Batteries are kind of fascinating because they have so many dimensions for improvement: watts/cost, watts/weight, cycle durability, calendar durability, safety, etc. Small improvements in any of these matter, and different applications have very different needs (e.g. mobile phones vs. grid storage). Even though this article is 2 years old, it's still a good overview: https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/05/eternally-five-years-away-no-batteries-are-improving-under-your-nose/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/05/eternally-five-years...