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The past 20 years have made lithium ion 2-3x more dense, both because of some chemistry changes and because of better pack level design. And it's still improvi
by epistasis 3mo ago
The past 20 years have made lithium ion 2-3x more dense, both because of some chemistry changes and because of better pack level design.
And it's still improving at about 5% per year.
- dzhiurgis 3mo agoTesla has been around for nearly 20 years. Model S (12 years) has gained 17% of range due to chemistry (rest is system efficiency and simply bigger battery).
- heaney-555 3mo agoRange is not a real issue for electric cars. Charging time is, though, and there are massive improvements happening for that right now.
- jqbd 3mo agoI would wager charging time is basically solved, adoption is only thing that's left.
- rogerrogerr 3mo agoYeah, when I take a road trip I genuinely enjoy the cadence of charging. 5-10 minutes every two hours, just enough to go to the bathroom or walk around. I get to my destination not materially later, and feeling far more relaxed than when I was doing death marches in a gas car.
- SV_BubbleTime 3mo agoThis is such a euphemism to pretend that you’d like to wait two hours at a refueling station. Anyone who’s ever driven between Seattle and Portland and seen the e16b charging lots of people sleeping in their cars knows there is a whole different side to your rosey picture. EV owners are still internalizing their range anxiety into a benefit. I get it; I like EVs for their around town purpose, but man it’s almost fantasy to sell it as “5-10 minutes every two hours”.
- rogerrogerr 3mo ago> This is such a euphemism to pretend that you’d like to wait two hours at a refueling station. What? I said no such thing. I would hate to wait two hours at a refueling station. > it’s almost fantasy to sell it as “5-10 minutes every two hours”. I guess I live in fantasy land then. Maybe the non-Tesla charging story is crap, but I made conscious choices not to participate in that circus. I have no range anxiety. I point the car where I want to go, it tells me where to charge and for how long, and it’s earned my trust over many road trips. It hasn’t been wrong yet.
- vablings 3mo ago"This is such a euphemism to pretend that you’d like to wait two hours at a refueling station." There is virtually no EV sold on the market today that takes two hours to charge to 80% at a HVDC charger. "I get it; I like EVs for their around town purpose, but man it’s almost fantasy to sell it as “5-10 minutes every two hours”." The Hyundai Ioniq 5 takes about 20 minutes to go from 10% SOC to 80% SOC in about 18 min with an 800v charger. That equates to about 3 hours of driving on the highway.
- rogerrogerr 3mo agoAnd you mostly aren’t charging to 80%, usually it’s closer to 40-60%.
- SV_BubbleTime 3mo agoheh, ok, that’s strange. So when you say it’s got a 350 mile range, but then make the point you only need to charge to 40% that you would be fine with a single vehicle that had a 140mile range? I swear buying an EV in 2026 breaks brains. The push back has been so bad because the mfgs pushed the single car lie… but the people that jumped in now need to defend their $60,000 purchases. I get it, but please don’t think you guys are sneaky about it. We all know what it is. “5-10 minutes every two hours” … lol, that’s good when you’re going from LA to San Diego. If I had to stop every two hours on a road trip I’d get a train ticket, it would feel a lot faster.
- 1234letshaveatw 3mo agoThis EV owner disagrees, and I imagine that city dwellers without dedicated charging agree
- heaney-555 3mo agoIf you could charge the battery in 5 minutes at a public charger, would the range still be a problem?
- rconti 3mo agoPlenty of city dwellers get by without home gasoline filling spigot.
- superxpro12 3mo agoTell that to my polestar 2 pls. and then come back again in the winter when it drops another 30% due to the battery heater energizing
- piquadrat 3mo agoYour Polestar 2 battery is based on battery technology that is 5+ years old. Right now you can buy a BYD car in China that charges at up to 1500kW - close to 10x the peak charging rate of a Polestar 2.
- SV_BubbleTime 3mo agoI’m an automotive EE… I find particular interest when someone mentions BYD as what “works” in electric vehicles. Wild fucking west right there.
- epistasis 3mo agoI'm not an automotive EE, could you explain more about BYD? I'd love to hear more from an expert!
- SV_BubbleTime 3mo agoThings like crash, fire, egress, homologation and pedestrian impact, long term service… these are things western mfgs obsess over, and BYD doesn’t give a shit about. You can buy BYD vehicles without airbags. They’re Chinese market vehicles. It’s like DJI drones, they work, and they cheap, some are even decent performance on paper, but they aren’t “real” in a sense that serious users would demand. It’s OK if a BYD is bricked with a bad OTA. It’s less OK for the auto industry in the rest of the world. It’s taken Tesla a LONG time to figure out building computers is easy, and cars are hard. Same for BYD.
- umeshunni 3mo agoBYD is selling millions of cars and will be #5 globally this year. They're doing fine whether or not racist westerners take them seriously. At the same time, western manufacturers are closing factories and begging for EU bailouts.
- not_the_fda 3mo agoIts a huge issue in cold climates.
- zuzululu 3mo agouphills + cold/hot climates, the ranges won't be able to compete with ICE. its basic physics. cold uphill still reduces charging speed, available power, and range, while sustained heat accelerates degradation. Thermal-management systems mitigate those weaknesses by consuming energy and adding cost, weight, and complexity. meanwhile ICE has gotten ridiculously clean and efficient over the years it is more efficient at the shaft does not settle total-system efficiency, cost, weight, resource use, grid losses, battery production, or suitability for every operating env. Comparing an engine with a motor while ignoring the battery and electricity supply chain is silly I still do not trust that sitting on a pile of lithium batteries is safe. NMC does not mean non flammable or consequence free. LFP cells can still enter thermal runaway, release toxic gases, reignite, and require difficult firefighting procedures. They also generally trade energy density and cold-weather performance for that improved safety. Also the speed charging ? That dramatically reduces the stability and lifespan of the batteries. Ton of used EVs not being sold because the battery replacement is somewhere between 40~60% of the car's value. we had ICE for over a century now, its just like a software that gets continuous updates ICE systems are highly optimized, repairable, energy-dense, fast to refuel, and supported by enormous infrastructure. EVs are improving faster partly because they still have major weaknesses to solve. A steeper improvement curve does not prove that the present technology is superior for every use case neither is using the latest javascript framework.
- heaney-555 3mo agoThe latest battery chemistries perform incredibly well in cold and hot climates. Internal combustion is not clean, and is inherently significantly less efficient than an electric motor. Also, LFP chemistries are incredibly safe compared to NMC, which is what you're concerned about in terms of thermal runaway. ICE is mostly stagnant tech. Meanwhile EV tech is rapidly improving!
- 3mo ago
- 100percentjake 3mo agoBMW i3 went from 60Ah to 120Ah of battery capacity (and slightly more voltage) in the exact same chassis through the span of its life (2014-2022, RIP). It is even possible to put the later 120Ah batteries in the early 60Ah cars and reap the rewards, and is a practice that is actually supported by the cars' software natively.