18 ms·

I had an early EV with only 80 miles of range, and found it extremely useful for most in town travel and commuting. Now that EVs are pushing ~400 miles range at

• alemanek 3y ago
  From the article it claims charge speed 10x that of lithium and 50,000 cycle lifetime. I don’t know about you but a EV that can go 150 miles and charge to 80% again in 2min would be super compelling to me. Solid commuter car but not too annoying on the rare roadtrip. But, I am guessing grid frequency regulation use cases are going to make these too expensive for a car for a long time.
  • _yb2s 3y ago
    I missed the 10x charge speed- that is a killer feature that more than makes up for the reduced range.
    • xaellison 3y ago
      I wonder what that will mean for charging infrastructure that suddenly has to deliver 10x power to enable that. Not sure that sort of charging could be as ubiquitously placed as gas stations
      • gpm 3y ago
        Just have the same batteries in the charging station to smooth out power usage? Seems a lot cheaper and operationally less complex than a gas station.
        • chabons 3y ago
          This assumes that the same number of vehicles use the charging station. Lower charge times means potentially higher steady-state throughput.
          • Dylan16807 3y ago
            Higher steady-state is mostly a good thing. You need to bulk up the power lines, but you're making good use of them and have lots of money to spend on them.
            • LoganDark 3y ago
              Having lots of money doesn't mean spending lots of money. Budgets often get cut for no good reason.
              • Dylan16807 3y ago
                Okay, I mean I'm aware of that perfectly generic information but "sometimes management sucks" doesn't impact a feasibility analysis much. And this hypothetical station was already willing to spend on a lot on batteries.
                • LoganDark 3y ago
                  Just because they want to spend on batteries doesn't necessarily mean they can spend on power lines. Most of the time you can't just pay the power company to bulk up your lines, just like you can't always pay an ISP to install a faster connection, even if they provide that service to another area.
                  • Dylan16807 3y ago
                    Okay but that's a completely different objection from the one in your previous comment. And yes it's not always possible but it'll be available in enough places. If a particular station can't get better lines, then as someone else said they could have fewer charging spots. High load per spot still works out well for them, because they can save space.
      • jacob019 3y ago
        Indeed the charging cables are already massive. Just need some superconducting cables.
        • Dylan16807 3y ago
          Liquid cooled cables aren't too bad. Megawatt charging system is big but doesn't seem unreasonable, and that gives you 5x the amps. In two minutes it can add 80kWh to an 800 volt battery, and the max voltage is 1250. https://resources.news.e.abb.com/images/2023/5/12/0/Next_generation_electric_Scania_truck_completes_first_charging_test_with_pilot_megawatt_charging_system_from_ABB.jpg https://resources.news.e.abb.com/images/2023/5/12/0/Next_gen... https://www.engineerlive.com/sites/engineerlive/files/ITM.1123.p.30-31%20-%20Ad%20Ed%20Staubli-MCS-connector-front-real.jpg https://www.engineerlive.com/sites/engineerlive/files/ITM.11...
      • ItCouldBeWorse 3y ago
        It just means the infrastructure gets the same cheap batteries as buffer.
      • LoganDark 3y ago
        Even today's charging can be severely lacking, imho
      • mschuster91 3y ago
        Not that much, grids can and do deal with highly variable loads all the time, as all the heavy machinery involved in traditional power generation (=generators, gearboxes, axles, turbines) has a lot of inertia that buffers sudden changes. However, as more and more generation capacity shifts to renewable sources that by design have very small (wind) to zero (solar) inertia, there will be a requirement to build out frequency stabilizer units like the Tesla unit in Hornsdale, Australia [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornsdale_Power_Reserve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornsdale_Power_Reserve
        • Dylan16807 3y ago
          Advanced solar and wind inverters can also push back on grid changes to mimic inertia. Also I'd say the inertia in a normal wind turbine doesn't count because it's not tied into the grid frequency.
        • crote 3y ago
          Aren't batteries quite limited in their ability to provide synthetic inertia? Sure, they can respond on a second or tenth-of-second scale, but they don't provide the kind of instantaneous inertia you get from spinning rust. Inverters aren't exactly designed to just eat power surges, they'll instantly disconnect instead. That's why the UK grid has been building some "high-inertia synchronous compensators", and a 2019 outage showed that it's urgently needed.
          • CorrectHorseBat 3y ago
            Can't you make them behave however you want with sub millisecond reaction time?
      • creativeSlumber 3y ago
        Unless they also use these batteries to store the charge. The batteries an be charged slowly like a capacitor.
    • jseutter 3y ago
      Agreed, I just learned that the next formula for Formula E will eventually have charging stops. The spec will allow 5kwh of charge in 30 seconds, which is 10% SoC in their case. Pretty cool.
    • LargeWu 3y ago
      Sounds like their current strategy is stationary-only, i.e. not for use in vehicles, owing to the lower power density of sodium batteries. But that does not mean it's a problem that won't be solved in the future.
    • ClassyJacket 3y ago
      My Model 3 already charges at 180kw. Are they saying cars built with these batteries will charge at 1.8Mw? How are they going to build charging infrastructure at that level?
      • TaylorAlexander 3y ago
        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40224937 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40224937
    • donny2018 3y ago
      To take advantage of that charging speed, you have to supply 10x of charging power though. 10x of charging speed of Li-ion would be in megawatts per single charging device.
  • UncleOxidant 3y ago
    > But, I am guessing grid frequency regulation use cases are going to make these too expensive for a car for a long time. Not sure I follow here. Can you elaborate? Are you saying the the demand for sodium batteries for power grid backup is going to be high vs supply such that they're not going to make it into cars anytime soon? Isn't one of the Chinese EV makers starting to use sodium batteries?
    • alemanek 3y ago
      Yeah I am thinking grid applications will take up most of the available supply for the next few years. That charge/discharge speed makes it perfect for helping to stabilize the grid, frequency regulation, as well as for replacing peaker plants. Lithium batteries are already being used for these two applications but I think these sodium batteries would be better.
      • jacob019 3y ago
        Depends on the production economics, how fast they scale, and what issues are discovered in real world use. There is some risk for everyone with new tech.
      • xbmcuser 3y ago
        Large scale grid project are planned years in advance so unlikely to eat up all the production as factories will need a constant demand source to clear inventory and have regular cash flow so I think home batteries like Tesla powerwall are going to have big boom soon specially as people getting paid less and less for their home solar output from the grid. If I am not wrong chinese largest battery manufacturers have started looking at home batteries as some car manufacturers were complaining about not enough demand for ev.
  • kolinko 3y ago
    The main blocker with ev charge speeds now is the charging station capacity though, no? Having said that - if we can get cheap and safe batteries installed within the charging stations, this would make for an awesome improvement
    • ggreer 3y ago
      Most charging stations already have lithium batteries installed as a buffer for the grid, and those batteries tend to be safer designs since there's no weight/density penalty for fixed infrastructure. Sodium batteries would just make charging stations cheaper to build. A lot of people tend to think of the ideal charging station as a gas station, where lots of cars go to quickly add range. But gas stations have large capacity because of their disadvantages. Ideally if they were safe, cheap, and compact, wouldn't you want gas stations everywhere? I'd love to have a gas station at home, in every parking garage, and at every scenic viewpoint on the road. The reason we don't have that is because gas stations emit toxic vapors and have giant tanks of combustible liquid. They need tanker trucks to regularly refuel them. Charging stations don't have those problems, which is why you can make them much smaller and put them almost anywhere. You don't even need a grid connection. Solar + batteries works in places where land is cheap.
  • supercheetah 3y ago
    Two minutes is about the amount of time it takes to fill my ICE car, so yeah, that'd be nice.
    • jdewerd 3y ago
      Yeah but do you have a gas station at home so it's "always full"? That's really nice ;)
      • rossjudson 3y ago
        "You mean I can't just drive the car? I need to think about how to find fuel for it every couple of days? And then I have to drive there and hope nothing explodes?"
      • jtriangle 3y ago
        You certainly can, provided you have a truck, and a DOT certified fuel trailer, and a transfer pump. That system also allows you to participate in oil futures as an end user, not to mention it lets you keep your generator up and running for a very long time. Downside is, modern e10 gasoline tends to adsorb water from the air over time, so fuel isn't stable long term. Most guys doing this are running diesel cars/gensets for that reason. The model is, go to a truck depot with a 300 gallon trailer, fill up trailer and truck, park the trailer at home. Then fuel the truck off the trailer until it needs to be filled again, repeat. Do understand that, you can get a larger tank, but anything over 1000 gallons requires a placard/permit to haul around. That's in a single tank, so, in theory, a legal length 5th wheel trailer could have multiple tanks under that and be compliant. If you want the tanks attached to a vehicle itself, the maximum size is 150 gallons, hence why semi trucks have multiple fuel tanks that are smaller than that. Really the only difficulty is finding a place nearby that is willing to sell that much fuel to an individual.
        • eternityforest 3y ago
          Is running a generator for long periods cost effective? If someone lived where the grid wasn't reliable, and could make the initial investment for all this fuel storage stuff, why not do solar?
  • silisili 3y ago
    Compelling to me also, as a person who has shied away from EVs because of charging time annoyances. I'd gladly trade the mileage for charging speed every time. Getting excited for what's to come.
    • jdewerd 3y ago
      Is charge time important because you can't install a L2 charger at home / apartment to keep it "always charged" or because your usage pattern is too heavy duty for a 30 minute break every 200-300mi? If it's just the former, the slow steady march of EV mindshare might solve your needs before the "L4" super-fast-charging battery. I am starting to see L2 chargers pop up in apartment parking lots, for example. IMO, "always charged" is significantly more convenient than short stops at a station, so it would still be desirable in a world where "L4" batteries and stations were common.
      • silisili 3y ago
        The latter, actually. I'd much prefer to stop for five minutes every 2 hours than 30 minutes every 4 hours.
        • pornel 3y ago
          The current state of the art is somewhere in between with 18 minutes per ~3 hours. It even helps to split charging into shorter sessions (2x 9 minutes), because batteries charge fastest when they're about 25% full. Keep in mind that EVs charge unattended, so you only spend a minute plugging in, and can leave to get a coffee, etc.
          • silisili 3y ago
            How 'guaranteed' is that rate? I don't keep up with it like I probably should, but seem to often read that some chargers are outdated, and sometimes you have to 'share' if somebody else is charging nearby?
            • 3y ago
  • IshKebab 3y ago
    2 mins to charge a 40 kWh battery is 1.2 MW. I can't see that happening any time soon.
    • cogman10 3y ago
      And I just don't think it's needed. You are almost certainly not charging from 0->100%. It's probably more like 10%->90% which gives you 32kW to charge. We currently have 350kW chargers on the market, they'd do that in ~6 minutes. At some point trying to get 2 minutes vs 6 minutes is just silly nit picking.
    • chx 3y ago
      Just install an SMR at every gas station. Problem solved! :P
  • elihu 3y ago
    Fast charge speeds make electrified highways a more viable option. There are some projects in Europe using overhead lines (for trucks) or power rails embedded in slots in the road surface (usable by cars or trucks) so that vehicles can recharge while moving. Building a network of electrified highways is expensive though. One way to reduce initial costs is not to electrify the whole length but to have, say, one mile of electrified road per every ten miles of highway. To get unlimited range from that 1:10 ratio, you need the vehicles to have batteries capable of absorbing power 9x faster than the vehicle uses it to maintain highway speeds. I could see EVs having a large lithium ion pack and, if this technology is really that good, a smaller sodium ion battery to act sort of like a capacitor to smooth out intermittent charging. I could also see low-capacity-high-power-density batteries being used in hybrids, though those need to be able to sustain high discharge rates as well as high charge rates, and I don't think the article mentioned discharge rates.
    • dieortin 3y ago
      Charging private vehicles while they move sounds very complicated
      • elihu 3y ago
        This is one way to do it: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/12/worlds-first-electrified-road-for-charging-vehicles-opens-in-sweden https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/12/worlds-f... Overhead cables are simpler and cheaper, but not easily compatible with cars (which would need a comically tall pantograph to connect to the cables). (Induction is a third option, but it's not really viable except in certain special cases because it's way more expensive, can't deliver as much power, and tends to be less energy efficient.) Electrifying highways may sound expensive or complicated, but consider what the alternatives are. We could stick with fossil fuels. The U.S. burns about 4 million barrels of gasoline and about 4 million barrels of diesel a day, most of which is used to push cars and trucks around. That's not simple or cheap, we're just accustomed to the cost. Another option is we switch to EVs and rely on big batteries for range. That kind of works, but battery manufacturing scale isn't there. It's also kind of wasteful to have a substantial portion of the vehicle weight being batteries. It means cars and trucks are heavier than they need to be, and they can haul less cargo. If we could get to the point where, say, someone could drive coast-to-coast without ever having to stop to charge with only 30 or 40 kwh battery, that would be huge. It would reduce EV costs dramatically, it would reduce average vehicle weight, and you might even get better performance. (This wouldn't completely eliminate the need for some long-range vehicles for areas not served by electrified highways, but for most uses it should be fine.)
  • robocat 3y ago
    > to 80% again in 2min Needs say 720kW delivery for those two minutes (need higher if counting inefficiency losses). Note that Tesla 's V3 Superchargers provide a maximum of 250kW. I've assumed a 30kWh battery charged to 24kWh (80%), because the spec for a new Nissan Leaf is 59kWh battery for 385km driving range.
    • alemanek 3y ago
      Yeah we are for sure talking about the future here. There are already vehicles capable of handling 350kW chargers. Probably not too crazy to think that could double in the next decade. But I am definitely not expert on this.
• jwagenet 3y ago
  This falls in line with a plug in hybrid being an excellent alternative to evs for most people. 30-50 miles of driving around town for work an errands, with an ICE for the occasional longer trip. Almost all driving will be electric without the charge anxiety.
  • GaggiX 3y ago
    I believe that most people with a plug in hydrid actually forget to plug the car in, so the car is almost never in electric.
    • simplyluke 3y ago
      That is... debatable. The study that showed that came out of Europe, where a huge percentage of cars purchased new are fleet vehicles, and not owned by individuals/families. Why would I plug a company car in when I pay my electric bill but have a corporate card for gas?
  • stevetodd 3y ago
    My hesitation with hybrids is that I keep all the associated maintenance costs of an ICE engine. Now I have two power trains and energy systems to maintain instead of just one.
    • tryptophan 3y ago
      Just buy a toyota hybrid and have 0 worries to 200k miles then.
      • aembleton 3y ago
        One of the fuel injectors died at 190k miles in my Prius, so not quite 200k. At 210k now. Only other thing is that it is consuming more oil now so needs topping up every few thousand miles.
    • holoduke 3y ago
      But how often do you have issues with the engine. My last 3 cars never had a single engine issues for at least 175.000 miles. Its very rare today to have big engine issues.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• sircastor 3y ago
  I still drive a low ranged early EV (2012 Leaf) and it still works very well for me (we probably get about 35 miles of real range per charge.) I would be delighted if I could replace the battery with something like this. I worry that I’ll never see a compatible replacement battery with the tech though.
• ZoomerCretin 3y ago
  From the article, these are estimated at 70 Wh/kg. Pretty abysmal for EVs, but the trade-offs likely aren't too undesirable for home battery backups or utility-scale batteries.
  • Gare 3y ago
    From what I can gather, 160 Wh/kg is currently possible with sodium-ion, maybe even a bit more in the future.
• amelius 3y ago
  The problem is that these batteries are much heavier.
• pnw 3y ago
  My first EV was a Volt which had only ~30 miles of EV range before it switched to gas. I bought it because I was EV curious but worried about range and I got a crazy cheap lease from GM. I drove it for three years and did a few short road trips. When I returned it, my total driving stats: 99% on electrons.
  • brnt 3y ago
    Hybrids get a bad rep. It makes for such a difference: knowing that you don't need to worry about that 1%.
    • karmajunkie 3y ago
      The argument against hybrids that's always resonated with me is that you get the maintenance costs of a gasoline engine with the upfront costs of a battery. I've owned a Leaf and found it relatively trouble-free but never a hybrid. Am I just buying into FUD there?
      • brnt 3y ago
        Prius are pretty well known for being cheap to drive for a long while no? Sure, they are always going to be more complex than a full electric but good gasoline cars are don't have any huge maintenance costs for a good long while.
      • tedd4u 3y ago
        It's easy to like plug-in hybrids (I do), but it does feel transitional. As you pointed out, you have the potential for higher maintenance costs, _plus_ during electric operation, you carry the weight of ICE, fuel, fancy transmission, etc. which makes electric operation less efficient. And vice versa, during ICE operation you have a big battery and motor to carry around, reducing fossil fuel efficiency. I guess you could add a boiler and coal hopper for tri-modal steam operation. One caveat is, depending on your workload, you might put only 25% of the time on the ICE per mile driven (since most short trips would be electric). I.e. if an ICE car runs the engine for 2,500 hours per 100,000 miles, a plug-in hybrid might only have run the engine 500-600 hours at 100k miles.
• w1nst0nsm1th 3y ago
  The problem lies on electric grid capacity. If we're phasing out fossil fuel powered transportation, we will have to upgrade massivelly electricity productions well as in grid capacity.
  • thebruce87m 3y ago
    > The highest peak electricity demand in the UK in recent years was 62GW in 2002. Since then, the nation’s peak demand has fallen by roughly 16% due to improvements in energy efficiency. > Even if we all switched to EVs overnight, we estimate demand would only increase by around 10%. So we’d still be using less power as a nation than we did in 2002, and this is well within the range the grid can capably handle. > In the US, the grid is equally capable of handling more EVs on the roads – by the time 80% of the US owns an EV, this will only translate into a 10-15% increase in electricity consumption.1 https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/journey-to-net-zero/electric-vehicles-myths-misconceptions https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/journey-to-net-zero/ele...
    • hedora 3y ago
      The way I think about this is that I use an L1 charger at home that draws 1500 watts about half the time (on a normal day). That's ~= 15 light bulbs from the 1990's, or roughly 6 desktop PCs. I switched from incandescent to LED bulbs, and a desktop to a laptop, so that's almost enough to offset the EV's usage. Also, we have solar panels, and a house battery that can time shift our energy consumption.
      • chx 3y ago
        A modern fridge and washing machine are both vastly more efficient, too.
    • rossjudson 3y ago
      Switching overnight is a silly scenario, and I agree we shouldn't pay much attention there. The power grid also naturally grows from year to year. As more and more battery systems come online and are available to store and discharge power (your car, a household power backup system, solar, etc), the load on the grid will smooth out.
• dzhiurgis 3y ago
  100 mile range battery - that’s about 30kwh or a whopping $1500 worth of battery cells. ICE won’t be able to compete to this.
  • spaceguillotine 3y ago
    that much range currently costs about $6000 for a Nissan replacement. Rumors are a longer range current EV battery like in the Ioniq is $50k to replace.
    • dzhiurgis 3y ago
      I don’t expect replacements to drop in price. Also that’s just cell cost. It takes quite a bit to assemble a pack, plus profit margin. p.s. I doubt that rumour, unless Hyundai really likes to milk their customers. Teslas largest packs are less than 20k. Small ones less than 10k (which is how much I save per year because power is cheap and gas is expensive here).
• Salgat 3y ago
  In my experience the miles they advertise are no where near the reality. My Model Y has never given me 320 miles on a charge and it's not like gas stations where you can hit one up at the last moment, on a trip you gotta start finding a charger once you hit around 20-25% charge left.
• WalterBright 3y ago
  Why do people need 200 mile range for an EV? For example, my daily mileage averages about 5 miles. As an errand-runner, a 30 mile EV would be very practical. The huge benefit of this is a smaller and cheaper battery, and the biggie - much less weight. Much less weight leads to much less tire/brake wear and tire/brake dust pollution. I'd still have a second gas car for the trips.
  • mbgerring 3y ago
    Some people (including myself) only need cars for long-distance trips where air or train travel is not feasible, and for most people, even if their car is mainly a grocery-getter, psychologically, they want to know they can drive across the country with it.
  • 0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
    Most people do not want to have to own two cars.
    • WalterBright 3y ago
      There are a wide variety of cars to suit various needs. There's a large place for a lightweight 30mi EV. Especially for people who don't want to pay the huge premium for a 7x times more expensive battery.
    • astrange 3y ago
      If you rarely need to take long distance trips you can rent a car that does it.
  • darknavi 3y ago
    We road trip with our Tesla ~5 times a year and I never want to own an ICE car again.
  • twobitshifter 3y ago
    Citroen Ami would be great for you. There are now cars built for this type of thing.
  • 3y ago
• mbar84 3y ago
  It would be really nice if there were a battery technology that could charge 100 miles in a few minutes, even if that meant you would be constantly charging on longer trips.
• antisthenes 3y ago
  > I imagine a lot of people, that would be totally acceptable if it means lower cost, and batteries that effectively last forever without replacement. MBAs at car manufacturing companies will ensure that battery pack cost savings are NOT passed on to the consumer, don't worry about that. We were supposed to hit $100/KWh on battery packs several years ago, but EV prices skyrocketed instead, despite literally being in the same plastic/aluminum shitbox where every car looks alike. Cheap battery packs = higher margins for companies.
  • mixmastamyk 3y ago
    Prices have already moderated a bit with slumping sales.