Is it fair to say GM will eat a lot of money on battery warranty work?

Cadillac used to be the leader in low NVH, then Lexus took over. Caddies are still very low and I would never buy one;-) Where in the world do you live that you have a large percentage of people admiring smoke belching diesels. We are one of places for biodiesel thanks to willie nelson, and I have yet to see a car or truck with a "runs on biodiesel" smoke. This includes a hummer conversion and some good old american trucks. There are a few old mercedes around that belch it out. You may have noticed the bmw comercial that is talking about their diesels not smoking.

I am actually interested if there is a region in N.A. that favors smoking cars. IIRC the main market for these polluters is Europe. I've seen many oil burners there without good pollution control that they require even in my little polluting corner of texas.

 

We seem to be in topsy-turvy worlds. Every time I am in Europe I marvel at how I have never seen a modern-ish vehicle smoking. I am usually in the diesel areas like France so the majority of the vehicles are diesel and apart from the smell and the sound, you wouldn't know it if you didn't know what you were looking for.

Around here everything smokes. Thanks to deregulation, they took away smog controls and emission testing sometime in the early 2000's except for one county which has the state capitol and is always blue voting.

I see some of the old mercedes with smoke every now and then. Sometimes an old VW too. But usually it is the galaxy class trucks from one of the big 3. Even ones that look like the current model, so they can't be that old. It might be exacerbated because it is colder here than in texas. We've been having single digit F temps as the norm for a while now. It is back up to a balmy 40F now, I am in my shorts.

 

My last work in europe was in bulgaria, Germany and France seemed relatively low in smoking diesels, but you could definitely smell and hear them. Its probably choice of country.

Again where do you live. I would like to call contacts there to find out if it as that bad, and if we can do anything to reduce that pollution. Texas does have emissions testing, and Austin has some bad air days where people are encouraged to ride the bus (free on those days). Worst days were from the fires, but in houston the worst days are generally from the refineries. Cars only make it worse, which is why in a state with a government hostile to environmental regulation, emissions are tested.

40 is heavy jacket weather, we almost had a freeze sunday though. I'm not sure what a galaxy class truck is, but assume its a medium duty, the class above F150? Those may smoke at start up, but I don't see those smoking on the road. It may just be that we have newer trucks here along with the warmer weather and emissions regulations that require these trucks are well maintained. Nasty pollution from buses though especially at big events.

 

Rocky Mountains of Colorado.

By galaxy class I am making a geek reference to Star Trek where the gigantic ship with thousands of people onboard was a "galaxy class" starship. These are the F-whatevers, some have the extra wheels on the rear axle, some are too long for parking spaces, that sort of thing. One person needs nothing like that.

 

I do notice that there is more of that polution in the major cities of colorado. I didn't realize it was that bad

Here's a study about my area
http://www.catf.us/resources/publications/files/No_Escape_from_Diesel_Exhaust.pdf

Most of that remaining diesel polution can be contained by filters. I take Mopac when I can and avoid truck polution, but they don't smoke.

Those are just 3/4 or 1 ton pick ups. The bulk of them in Texas are gasoline, since diesel is not subsidized and diesel engines are expensive. There are definitely some though. We have a large number of what you call galaxy class, these got much cleaner with new rules starting in 2010.

OK we have taken this far off topic.

 

Here is a quick pic I just snapped. You can see the mountains in the background, but that layer of haze is smog. On cold clear days like today, or any day below 50F to 60F, you can see it. Today it isn't nearly as bad as it can be.

I don't have a great shot of the lower regions from where I am, but it gives an idea of what it looks like.

 

Not sure if it was mentioned, but the CARB compliant AT-PZEV Volt coming out later in 2012 will have a 10yr/150K warranty

 

Yes but the debate is on when death of the battery will be amid reports of depth of discharge manipulations.

 

Depth of discharge manipulations? Mean how it increases uses more and more of the batteries capacity to keep the mileage the same as it ages? Curious to see if there is something I haven't seen yet as that is the only DoD manipulation I am aware of. We shall see. Almost 3000 miles down, and even with the cold weather range is still excellent.

 

Yes that is the DoD manipulation. You need to look at the life cycle curves of batteries over various DoD ranges. What it boils down to is that if this report is true, then there will be catastrophic failure shortly after the normal 80% end of life is reached.

So you will get a gradual deduction in pack capacity over time. Then it will use more and more of the pack to maintain EV range output. By using a larger DoD, the cycle life diminishes even further and the capacity goes down too. So now it needs even more and it is a compounding problem. Exponential death. The pivot point being just outside of the warranty period would be ideal for GM.

 

Certaintly interesting. I am late to the party on this one, but was another reason I chose to lease vs buy. I bought our Prius, so we can all see where my faith truly lies... Knock on wood I have been very fortunate with lithium batteries as far as getting good life cycles out of them.

I do appreciate the wealth of knowledge on here though that is for sure. You guys know I will be the first one on here to complain if the battery starts going south that is for sure. I do watch the kwh consumption closely though, and if nothing else the pack is currently shorting me kwh rather than trying to maintain the same. The colder it gets the more it cuts back. From a high of 10.3kwh when I first got it to somewhere in the high 9's... At first I thought the worst, but the last 2 days with the warm weather it went back up to regular. There are a lot of unknowns with all of this in vehicles I suppose, and all we can do is drive and see what happens.

 

"I am actually interested if there is a region in N.A. that favors smoking cars. IIRC the main market for these polluters is Europe. I've seen many oil burners there without good pollution control that they require even in my little polluting corner of texas."

Rapid City, SD.

 

Thanks to Jeff N for finding this report. Page 75-77 is about the LG Chem battery used in the Volt. It said the goal of that project (2008-2010) was to demonstrate 5,000 cycles and 15 years (USABC goal). The data does not support they could reach that goal.

PLG2 is the mixture/balance of PLG0 and PLG1. We believe it was used in the Volt due to the chemistry and timing of the test.

The below is my take of the graph, from the report. I inserted the values on the X and Y axis to the best of my understanding. I also drew two green straight lines to project the end of life (80%) for PLG2.

If the pattern follows the PLG01 line, it won't be linear. The best scenario I can guess is 2,500 to 3,000 cycles.

 

Their summary was different.

Either way, the lack of detail in the report doesn't give us enough information to determine the actual depth of discharge of each cycle in their testing and thus make any conclusions about real life cycle life without making major assumptions.

 

Thanks for redirecting this discussion here from the "Volt sales" thread which was getting a bit off-topic.

For those who don't download the original document (it's huge), the original graph doesn't have actual values for the cycle numbers and capacity percentage values on the X and Y. They were presumably left out for proprietary/confidentiality reasons. The values which usbseawolf helpfully "photoshopped" in may or may not be the correct numbers and, as noted, his extrapolated graph lines for the PLG2 data may not be linear in real extended testing.

For example, the currently available Panasonic cells drop at a steeper slope to 80% capacity and then taper off more slowly towards 70%. The 80% capacity level is just an industry reporting convention for cross-comparison purposes and the cells may still be perfectly useful after "end of life".

As drees noted, the report itself clearly claims that the PLG2 cells do meet the target goals for 5,000 cycles and 15 years but the graphs seem to hint that they ran out of time to fully validate them before the report deadline. LG Chem provided cell samples to 3 different U.S. government national laboratories for further testing and validation. There is a separate report in the same PDF file of thermal testing which included these cells and which noted even heat distribution and low heat generation during use. That report is at pages 190-194 and covers other cells also.

We don't know that these cells are the same as the ones used in the Volt as the later report says they were designed for a PHEV10 configuration. Even if the Volt cells are different, they are likely very similar.

I expect the Department of Energy to post the new 2011 annual report soon and I hope it will include new updates on the testing of these cells.

 

So essentially what I gather from all of this (to break it into lay mans terms) is that battery degradation is affected by DoD (how much of the capacity I use), time, and how many times I plug it in?

Even if in a laboratory you got 2500 or 5000 cycles out of something those results are not very meaninful. You can make a Volt battery burst in to flames in a laboratory setting, but after 5 getting totalled in the real world that has not been the case. In 2 of those cases by extremely large vehicles, and one of those accidents being similar to the NHTSA test that caused all these problems. So while these tests give us a reasonable idea of what to expect, I do not think it will be the case in consumer cars in the end.

I really doubt these Li batteries will last 15 years, or even 10. In any electric car. My own personal estimate would be maybe 7 or so, and that would even be stretching the tech to its limits. It seems to me we are expecting a lot out of these battery assemblies. Long life, long range, and no maintenance.. Something is going to have to give eventually unless there is a substantial break through of some kind.

 

cycle rating in a lab is not really applicable to real life scenarios on any other level than "estimated talk time" for your cellphone. its a number to use for comparison purposes ONLY.

Nissan test engineers have determined shelf life to be a much larger factor in long term performance which essentially means the faster you use it the more you will have when the batteries are replaced.

so driving 25,000 miles a year or 8,000 miles a year will provide the same amount of degradation assuming all other parameters are equal.

i have a link i will provide... as soon as i can find it. its on the MNL site somewhere just have to remember which thread i saw it in

 

.

 

As Dave alludes to DoD and number of cycles is only part of the picture. Calendar life (the older a lithium cell gets the more it degrades) and temperature (the higher the temperature, the faster it degrades) plays avery large role when you're talkng about making a battery last 10+ years.

Also keep in mind that "end of life" which is typically regarded as 80% in the lab doesn't mean that the pack isn't useful. In a plug in hybrid it will remain useful for much longer, you will just lose EV range. In a EV, it just reduces the amount of range per charge, but depending on your requirements may be just fine for your use.

 

ya, at MNL we have the "Leaf equivalent" of 2 fast 4 u there. we have one guy who has 22,000 miles on his Leaf in 7 months! and has no signs of degradation. he will probably get 400,000 miles from his pack while the rest of us get 150,000 which is MY personal guesstimate of what i expect to get before making additional compromises on my driving decisions.