Featured Panasonic to supply batteries for Honda's removeable power pack

That's pretty clever... I can see their TV commercial already... Park you car in Venice beach. Pull out a battery pack for your skateboard and put it on, pull out a battery pack for your wife's bicycle and put it on... And off you go for some recreation. Of course cross product marketing has always failed because of compatibility issues, patents, greed... But if Honda motorcycles is planning a whole new line of EV vehicles?

 

It will be interesting to see what happens in future iterations... Legislation nullifying battery tech patents and requiring standardization across products would dramatically accelerate the end date of fossil fuels as our primary energy resource!

 

And the incentive to innovate would be ....

 

The incentive to innovate would be that designers could focus exclusively on the product and NOT the battery pack, much like gas and diesel is today, which is ubiquitous and no longer a hassle. Think how different cars would be if fuel wasn't regulated and they ran on a proprietary fuel that could only be bought at specific licensed gas stations?

 

But gasoline chemistry is pretty much a solved technology. Not so with batteries.

Mike

 

Capitalism doesn't care about solved technology... It cares only about exclusivity and exploitation... In the early days had we not had federal regulations it could of been very easy for auto makers to add some chemicals to gasoline, patent a proprietary blend and create special nozzles that only work with the vehicle the car was "designed for..."

PriusChat at times makes mention of the ways hybrid tech has been held back by NiMH patents in our more current anti-regulatory era of capitalist profit over public benefits.

But the backlash to all the pro-fossil-fuel bozos that took over this country's regulatory agencies, combined with Tesla saying that planet is better off rapidly developing this technology rather then enforcing their patents and exclusifying it means the batteries produced from giga-factories may get massive subsidies from all over the world to make them more common in 20 years than gas and diesel is today.

 

Easily swappable batteries might overcome the obstacle of protracted charging time at "gas" stations.

 

Exactly!!!

Tesla was planning to do this, but the financing for it didn't work out... At least yet. But in a more progressive, more liberal climate where funding is focused on solving problems like air pollution, rather than just all the money going to make people who create big problems richer, it's technically feasible to standardize the battery pack of all electric vehicles, as well as subsidize the cost of maintenance of those packs so well that we'll never talk about the price of a battery pack again. It's just something you feel being swapped out under your vehicle when you stop to get a fresh one. Might take a couple decades to transition, but sure would solve alot of problems.

 

Sounds good, in theory. But Tesla, for example, demoed this about 4 years ago, right?
The Model 3 would either be hampered (because it has newer technology) or swap stations would now need an inventory of two battery types...just for Tesla.
It also doesn't really make sense with all the physical sizes and configurations of vehicles. It would be different if a 200 or 300 mile battery was the size of a gas tank...but it isn't. So car makers want to try and maximize the battery size for the size of the car.

Mike

 

[snark]This will be a terrific advance for RC models.[/snark]

There are a host of technical issues not addressed:

• battery management system
• thermal management system
• vehicle communications
• environmental limits

Bob Wilson

 

Source: MaxAmps LiPo 22000 6S 22.2v Battery Pack for DJI S1000

• 22,000 mah
• 22.2 V
• 2530 g

So let's get four of these, ignoring cost:

• 488 wH = 22 Ah * 22.2 V
• 1.95 kWh = 4 * 488
• 10.4 kg = 4 * 2.6 kg
• 22.2 to 88.8 VDC range

The real challenge is the battery and thermal management system. Regardless of the load and charge, the modules have to be protected. For operator safety, approaching the limits needs operator signals to safely deal with pending loss of power or technical problems.

Bob Wilson

 

I'd rather have battery and associated systems progressing because of the incentive to innovate. I don't assume that the battery and its supporting systems are the best they will ever be. I want the cars of 5 years from now to be better, cheaper, faster charging, longer lasting.

I've driven cars from 9 different decades with varying technology engines. We can do better.

 

Actually, Mercedes has solved all these problems AND have the most user friendly battery swap system.


#SNL - Julia Louis-Dreyfus Does Commercial For Battery-Operated Mercedes AA Class Car - Videos - Metatube

Mike

 

Yes of course, for right now that makes perfect sense... But 10 or 20 years from now when we start to make alternative energy as a national and global priority, that's when we'll all collectively develop new energy storage technologies beyond our wildest dreams. As in 50 years ago when there was a space race to the moon, there was massive funding for science at high schools and colleges all over the country and even the most advance military technologies were focused on getting to the moon and back before the Russian did. That's the kind of massive shift it will take when it comes to the demise of fossil fuels, as well as a united global effort to re-stabilize global weather patterns that may eventually be even way more out of control than they are now. We've got a ways to go to get to that point, but there's not many other directions that things can go as far as I'm concerned.

 

Easily swappable batteries make a ton of sense if they can move past a few of the hurdles. Most obvious for EV's is the no need for quick chargers on long trips. Also, a big one people overlook....we can drive around with much lighter vehicles when we aren't going on road trips. We will be getting the long range Model 3, but it will pain me that we will only be using that full range a tiny fraction of the time. If we didn't need the extra range for driving up north in the winter we would definitely get the smaller pack. People don't need giant battery packs the vast majority of the time. This is exactly why the first gen Leaf can make a ton of sense for people as a second vehicle.

 

This is a very interesting point... Perhaps 30 years from now all the gas stations will be gone and in their place will be module swapping stations where you pick up a pack customized to your needs? If you're just driving around town for a week you get the tiny light pack, but if you're going on an 800 mile trip, you upload your travel route and they install a long-range pack that's optimized to exact driving conditions, major hill climbs and downhill regen opportunities, etc. The amount of energy saved with this trip optimization specialty could be huge... And the best part is all the former fossil fuel subsidies that cover most of the cost of the service means never again worrying about driving around on an old battery pack, because someone else takes care of that!