Featured Lithium Battery developments "Reuters exclusive"

If I had a dime for every one of these clickbait claims of the next battery breakthrough I could afford the EV premium.

 

if anyone can pull it off, tesla can. they just stared down the government, and the government blinked

 

Since I started reading Popular Mechanics, Popular Science in the mid '60s, I've read 100s of "breakthrough" notices - and yet to see most of them.

 

Although the technology has indeed improved and more can be reasonably expected, something on that scale screams tradeoff. What did the engineers/chemists give up to achieve that?

The first thing that comes to minds is charging speed. We already know that limiting rates for current lithium batteries to 50kW will contribute to longevity. Having lower tolerances would likely result in a cost reduction as well. In other words, the devil is in the detail. Perhaps the long-life packs are limited to tier-1 charging.

Interestingly, a limitation of rate would prevent the Osborne Effect. Diversification of product is the next step in reaching out to a wider audience anyway. In fact, that is a fundamental of business growth. The idea of a one-size-fits-all solution is very much an early-adopter perspective. Seeing variation of offerings should not be a surprise to anyone.

 

Tesla has been correct on the trend downward in battery costs, otherwise they never would have become profitable.

In reality this tech developed by Dahn's lab and likely Maxwell's (now owned by tesla) dry electrode technology is only a small incremental improvement on CATL's current NMC based battery packs - in the PR piece they say just over $100/kwh at the pack level for current technology, $80/kwh for this lithium iron phosphate technology. The main cost drivers less cobalt (none) and less expensive to manufacture. Cost would drop from about $6000 for a 55 kwh pack to $4400 with lithium iron phosphate. They also say it would be lighter which may reduce vehicle costs also, but just an incremental improvement that will probably happen with this or anouther lithium ion technology, pushing back the date lithium solid state is likely to reduce costs. Note CATL is probably selling to tesla at costs right now but in the future both tesla and CATL will need to make a profit on these, making price to a tesla customer probably around $7K for that 55 kwh pack.

On the flip side of this Mercedes in the project one is using a very expensive small battery that can discharge and charge extemely rapidly. If they can bring those costs down it may find its way into many small batteried phevs.

 

For most of the world tesla is using current NCA batteries, I'm not sure if the model 3/Y chemistry has made it into the X and S same basic formula but a little different. In china they use NCA and NMC both for now, as panasonic did not want to expand and compete at the cost tesla could get from other manufacturers. They also use a different chemistries for most of their power wall applications.

 

LiFePO4 has been in hobby EVs for over 20 years, it’s generally
Heavier
Inert (doesn’t flame off easily)
Lower BMS requirements
Lower Cost
No conflict minerals (like platinum/ cobalt)

Automotive companies have generally avoided it as it’s not as mature and may have a shorter life, lower power output, it also is a lower voltage chemistry (More cells)

wheego for what it’s worth used this chemistry.

I am uncertain if this Chinese chemistry has been improved beyond traditional Lion but would be happily surprised to be proven wrong as it’s such as easy to manage hobbiest chemistry.

 

Remember its a canadian battery lab, Maxwell and CATL that are all working together on this. I'm sure if it doesn't test better in terms of cost to the current battery tech tesla uses (NCA and NMC by panasonic, LG chem, and CATL) it won't see production car status. I'm sure this battery pack is being designed for longer not shorter life, but until it gets out of the lab and into test cars no one knows.

 

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/552a8546e4b059a56a0567d1/t/553fcbb1e4b0ff4fc1817c08/1430244273977/User+Manual.pdf

it already is better in terms of cost.
And in terms of “cooling” requirements

energy density (weight) is the only question mark since current LIFEPO4 is heavier than lion

 

An engineer that creates tech - inferior to existing Tech would be out the door in record time, no? So screaming "trade-off" would be out of the question. Vaporware would really be the primary question - it would seem.

by tier-1 does that reference L1? ... 120V house current? Batteries and chargers are becoming more powerful. How would markets want something like that as a way to increase Longevity? As for longevity; many Tesla's have crossed the multiple 100's of thousands of miles mark - on the same pack - some packs dating back as far as 2012 .... 18 years ago.
Some of the Tesla superchargers (well over 16,000 worldwide) can deliver 250kW's.

how so .... older / lower power superchargers still deliver the product , & seem quite adequate .... & still get plenty of use.

is any group or person advocating everyone charge at L1, L2, or L-3? (link?) .... if so it won't experience much traction. As for a max rate of 50kW's being a threshold for battery longevity ... there is some truth to the notion that a car battery may experience decreased capacity over many continued High charge rates. In fact - tinkerers & hackers discovered Tesla's charging algorithm logs excessive supercharging .... or ANY L3 rate (via a tesla CHAdeMO adapter) .... that runs above as little as 20kW's ..... so .... it's no surprise that the most powerful charge rate using Tesla's onboard 240v chargers is 19.2kW ... keeping below the 20kw threshold.
.

 

2012+18 = 2030

 

There is always a balance of priorities.

Tesla pricing is a choice. Tier-1 max is 60 kW. You want faster, you pay tier-2 rates.

It has nothing to do with a choice by Tesla. The AC spec for SAE-J1772 has a maximum of 19.2 kW

 

Yea - should have been 8 years
oops ...

Point being - for most - that's about how long (or less) many keep their cars anyway.
.

 

How does the energy density compare? The CATL iron phosphate short range pack in the Model 3 may be as big as the long range on of the traditional Li-ion.

Just for China. The SR Model 3 gets an iron phosphate pack from CATL, and the LR uses the LG Chem cells.

 

No.

That's just flat false. We create inferior technology all the time to trade-off against something else. Microwaves absolutely suck at cooking most types of food compared to ovens, yet we have them for those times where speed is preferable to quality or where the food we are cooking (like water) doesn't care how it's heated. They're "inferior" cooking machines, yet we all have them and use them a lot, because of the speed and efficiency they bring.

Same with batteries.

In 1990 I had batteries that could produce 6,000W/kg continuously for a full charge, and charge from 0% to 100% in 15 minutes. Tesla batteries can produce something like 1,000W/kg for like 15 seconds (and then the power is reduced) and take over an hour to charge. Why did we go backwards? To store 5-10 times as much energy. 5-10 times as much energy at 1/6th the power and 1/4th the charge rate. Good trade off - for some applications - but a trade off nonetheless.

It's rare we get a total win on every front and with every metric. Very, very rare.

 

I'm used to looking at the kWh/kg, a measure of energy density, not "W/kg", a rate of power. Parallel the higher energy density cells and you can draw as much power as desired.

Bob Wilson

 

Series too. You're just adding mass, which doesn't change W/kg, just the kg.

The point is, Tesla uses low-power high-energy batteries, and just uses a whole lot of them. You could easily make a car just as powerful with 1/5th the battery weight by losing 30% of your specific energy (Wh/kg) and thus ending up with 0.7*1/5 = 14% of the total energy. It's a trade off. Tesla (rightly) uses low-power cells to get the most energy because energy is the problem with EVs, not power, even with low-power cells.

Bottom line: There's almost always some sort of trade off in engineering.

 

Since there is room, I doubt tesla is concerned if that is the case. Energy density has 3 flavors energy per unit volume kwh/l, energy per unit weight - kwh/kg, and energy per unit money - kwh/kg.

LiFPO4(C) is worse on the first two measures than NCA Li-ion but better in the last. Lithium iron Phosphate though does have a trick it does not degrade as fast in heat, so after 10 years its likely to retain more of its energy and there will likely be less vampire drain required to keep the pack healthy while not driving. Dahl's research group, Maxwell's research group added to the rest of tesla's research, added to CATL's expertise in manufacturing should increase kwh/l and kwh/kg at the pack level for both these iron phosphate and NCA battery packs. We won't know until they have prototypes and disclose, but my bet is those measures will be good enough, and better than the packs in model X and S.

If you want more power/$ its probably much easier to just add cells to the pack. If its power/kg and money doesn't matter the batteries designed for F1 used in the mercedes project one are the best. I don't know the current rules old rules had max battery storage per lap (usable) of 4 MJ (1.11 kwh) and max weight of 20 kg with max supplied to the mg/k (motor to the wheels) of 120 KW + unlimited to the motor on the turbo. With that power to the turbo its about 7.5 kw/kg - that's the real power limited by electronics the battery is more powerful. I think in project one mercedes has one with 4x the cells probably a little over 4.4 kwh usable with 600 kw bursts. Of course you can't burst like that for a full 30 seconds in a row because that would require 5 kwh usable and you would be over top speed.

I keep my tesla in chill mode (less than full power) most of the time because my girl friend gets a little car sick when I accelerate too fast. I don't have the performance model. Tesla's spec their batteries for range not power. They only upgrade the electronics on the most powerful batteries though for performance mode because they figure if you are accelerating like that you probably aren't going to get the same range. Its not really an engineering trade off on the batteries. The electronics are less money to not go into that performance mode. The really powerful battery on the project one is much more expensive but it is a million dollar phev.