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Wednesday, November 29, 2006 Making Electric Vehicles PracticalResearch presented this week at the annual MRS meeting promises to double battery capacity, cut costs, extend life--and finally make electric cars attractive to the masses. By Kevin Bullis
Today's battery technology is adequate for electric vehicles with a range of more than 200 miles, but the batteries are still very expensive and require elaborate safety mechanisms. There are also concerns that they won't last long enough to be attractive to most consumers. But current research will double energy-storage capacity while also increasing the lifetime of batteries, improving safety, and cutting costs more than enough to make electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids practical for the mass market. At least these were the predictions of researchers presenting their latest work at the Materials Research Society (MRS) meeting in Boston this week. And although many significant challenges remain, an experimental type of rechargeable battery that's like a fuel cell could increase battery storage that much more. Stanley Whittingham, inventor of the first commercial lithium-ion battery and professor of chemistry, materials science, and engineering at the State University of New York, at Binghamton, says current research should make electric vehicles practical--with the following caveat: they'll probably be used for trips of less than 100 miles. Those who want 300-to-400-mile ranges typical of gasoline-powered vehicles will need to turn to plug-in hybrids: vehicles much like today's gas-electric hybrids, but with a much larger battery pack that makes it possible to go longer on electric power, thereby saving gas. These batteries could be partly charged by an onboard gas engine, but also by electricity from a wall socket. Whittingham says that while he expects battery capacity to double, it's not going to get much better than that. The real advances in batteries, he says, won't be in energy capacity, but in safety, longevity, and cost. If electric vehicles are to be widespread, one of the most important goals of battery research must be to replace the cobalt now used in the lithium-ion batteries found in cell phones and laptops. "There's just not enough [cobalt] in the world," says Whittingham, who is working on mixed-metal electrodes, which require little to no cobalt. One promising new type of battery, which actually has lower storage capacity than today's lithium-ion batteries, could nevertheless prove a boon to plug-in hybrids. Lithium iron phosphate batteries use iron, a very cheap metal, instead of cobalt, and they have an inherently safe chemistry (see "Safer Lithium-Ion Batteries"). What's more, they operate at a lower voltage that will extend the life of the electrolyte, and therefore the battery.
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A Cheaper Battery for Hybrid Cars
01/24/2008
Comments
EVangel on 11/29/2006 at 6:24 PM
4
Having driven an EV1 and later having agitated to prevent GM from crushing their electric coupe, I will be an early adopter of zero-emission highway EVs when major makers resume production.
DrWelly on 12/01/2006 at 1:36 PM
6
Questions then become ... is fast-charging really possible? And how fast? It is practically impossible to recharge a battery (even to only 80% SOC) in less than 5 minutes. Even if the battery kinetics allows such a fast rate, the heat dissipation will be enoromous and we will need a nuclear-reactor grade cooling system for it. Also, as the driving range increases, so does the size (i.e., Amp-hour) of the battery pack. The 5C current (assuming a 10-minute wait for partial charge is acceptable) for a 40Ah pack is 200A, but the 5C current for a 100Ah pack is 500A. What is the hardware solution? Not to mention the logistic and infrastructure.
Safety. It is critical but we should be able to take some comfort on the issue regardless of the chemistry. When a battery pack is built, the electrochemical cells are likely in some steel or metal container, which is not a good "fuel". And there are layers of module construction, plenum, etc., which are most likely non-flammable materials also. The safe chemistry provides yet another extra layer of security. On top of all these physical barriers, there are also redundancy of computer software and circuity to prevent many potential failure modes. It is unlikely that a failed battery pack would be severe enough to burn a hole on the car like the picture of "Dell laptop burnt on the desk".
In my opinion, HEV is really a more practical applications at least in the foreseeable future. Increase the battery size may allow PHEV to become a major player, but let's face it ... an average driver would likely forget about plugging in the car religiously everynight and let the gas mileage slip a little from time to time. For PHEV to work right, however, the size (and weight and cost) of electric motor will need to increase much more to drive at the higher speed ... and also the increased mass of battery pack. Yet, there is still hope a fully electricified zero-emission vehicle ... if fuel cell (or similar technology) is finally materialized.
gwf_fly on 12/01/2006 at 3:29 PM
9
Have you been to wrightspeed.com?
Also, ask any former owner of the EV1 about practicality. NONE of the owners I knew wanted to 'give' their vehicles back to GM to put into the crusher. When the mandate that forced GM to make a 'zero emission' vehicle ended, they demanded that all those driving the vehicles return them under a deadline. I believe to this day that GM knew that the EV1 was a concept that was too good, and that they would never make any money on it. Cheap gas drove GM management into making hulky SUV's with enormous profit potential while trashing the EV1! How sad! Can you imagine long waiting lines for a GM product today like folks do for the Prius or Insight? The last upgrade to the EV1 was available with the lithium-ion type batteries. Those cars ran a good 170 miles at freeway speeds and charged overnight for just $3.50 off-peak hours. Do the math. What is the price per mile with a $3.50 charge versus $3.50/gallon gasoline? There must have been something enormously practical about their EV1's!
Some of the folks at wrightspeed.com are survivors of the EV1 group, and they are not going to let the idea of a practical EV die in America!
theBike45 on 12/28/2006 at 8:47 AM
13
areas of recharge speed and range that the Detroit Electric, built in 1907. And those legions of happy customers were matched by legions of customers who kicked their EV1s after running out of juice after only 50 miles as the batteries aged. Those few who wanted to keep their heavily subsidize leases also had not yet been thru the NiMH battery replacement cycle, and had to cough up $20,000 for a battery pack that died after 4 or 5 years. Those owners were also insulated from
the $45,000 price of the do-nothing EV1. A more inconvenient, expensive grocery-geter has never
been produced. The EV1 should never have been either developed or brought to market. I'd also love to hear the logic of why GM, desperately trying to regain market sare, would have refuced to produce a surefire winner just because it didn't run on gasoline. Perhaps this poster can explain why GM would give a rat's ass about the
fuel any of its cars use. GM builds AUTOMOBILES
and TRUCKS. The company is NOT, repeat NOT, and oil company. GM owns no gasoline stations, nor refineries, nor oil wells. They make not one cent from the sale of gasoline, and I'm sure they would love to find a fuel that doesn't skyrocket in price and kill their sales of full sized vehicles, the only ones they can build and make money because they require lesser amounts of very expensive union wage labor. All of the other electrics were superior to the EV1, Honda's EV, Toyota's Rav4 electric, etc. And they also all
were big flops. Unless there is a practical electric battery (fast recharging, long lasting), there cannot exist a practical electric car. A child of 7 has no problem underrstanding this concept, one that scores of audiences who have watched the most fictionalized "documentary" ever made ("Who Killed the Electric Car?"). As one
transportation expert aptly remarked : "No one
had to kill the EV1. It committed suicide."
This poster's argument that those few (less than 500) EV1 leasees were adament about keeping their cars says more about there determination to be "green" and their personal circumstances than anything else. No one could drive just an EV1. The
person would have to forego vacations, trips, or any sojourns to destinations over 40 miles away.
He also can't live in a townhouse, apartment or condo. He would have to own this $45,000 car, plus the yearly battery expense of $5,0000, making it the most expensive vehicle to drive this side of an M1 Abrams tank. And for what? The Honda Insight hybrid was judged by experts as overall "greener" than the EV1. The EV1 sucked. End of story.
billdale on 01/18/2007 at 6:10 AM
15
If EVs were such losers, why did GM go to so much trouble to pull them off the market despite resistance from drivers that had offered GM MILLIONS of dollars to be able to buy their used EV 1's?
You obviously did not watch "Who Killed the Electric Car"-- if you had you would have seen that when people tried to lease the cars, the "salespeople" were actually trying to give them every reason not to do so-- they were NOT trying to attract customers-- they were intent on driving them away.
The car manufacturers negotiated a modified mandate with California in which they promised to provide cars based on "consumer demand"-- and then proceeded to sabotage any and all efforts for customers to actually lease one. They figured that so long as they could kill any demand for EVs, they would not have to build them, and California would knuckle under.
Mel Gibson was one of the EV- 1 leasees... he was on camera describing the gauntlet GM made them navigate through just to get one of their cars. There was ENORMOUS dis-incentive to sign up. Only the most determined die-hards stuck it out long enough to get one.
If GM really didn't want to have to build electric cars and EVs were really as crappy as you say, the best move they could have made would to have been to sell all of the EV-1's to those people that were so eager to buy them. GM could have said, "See? We told you so... they're junk! Now YOU'RE stuck with them!" But that's NOT what they did-- they only want to sell big, expensive, complex cars that wear out fast and that cost a fortune to maintain.
GM went to enormous trouble, expense, and bad PR to be able to get rid of those cars-- I saw the EV-1 that the Peterson Automotive Museum has in Los Angeles... GM only gave it to Petersen AFTER they carefulLY removeD ALL batteries and running components before they turned it over to them. It was just an empty shell. If it was as worthless as you say, why would they have bothered to gut it first? Because they were afraid it would be used to keep interest in EVs alive!
"Who Killed the Electric Car" included several detailed interviews with engineers, salespeople and other executives that started out in the beginning on the EV-1 project, and they all told just how aggressive and determined the GM brass was to kill the EV-1 project.
GM was not the only manufacturer that went to great trouble to demolish the electric cars they had leased out, once they got California to lift its mandate-- so did Ford, Toyota, and others as well... and that is DOCUMENTED on film. There's footage of the other EVs being crushed, assembly- line fashion, just like the GM EVs. No car manufacturer would risk such bad PR unless they were terrified of the alternative.
GM executives were on-camera saying how the EV-1's were going to be taken to universities, research labs or whatever to learn as much as possible about them... "do the right thing", supposedly to advance the state of the art... and all components would be dismantled and recycled. But the video did not lie. The cars were not dismanted at all-- they were crushed flat, and run through huge grinders that reduced them to heaps of toxic rubble that could not have been recycled in any way. It was a pathetic waste.
The only issue there ever was with EVs was with the batteries-- the cars were quiet, clean, powerful, non-polluting, easy to operate, and safe. Altair, A123 Systems, Firefly and others have all continued to improve battery tech dramatically to produce electric cars that are just what millions of people would be willing to drive. And that is really what GM, Ford, and the others are really afraid of-- EVs don't require valve jobs, oil changes. tune-ups, timing belts, fan belts, catalytic convertors, smog tests or other expensive parts and services to keep them running. All they need is a nightly electric charge for $3.
I have a full-size BMW sedan. The electric car Phoenix Motorcars sells, which I have seen in person and am on the waiting list for, has very similar 0-60 times and other performance statistics. It's a very powerful, likeable car, and it can be recharged in less than 10 minutes, has a range of 250 miles between charges, and the batteries will last for over 30,000 charges-- that means they'll last for decades. And I won't have to pay for any of the oil changes, tune-ups, smog tests or transmission rebuilds that you will in that time. With my regenerative braking, I won't have to do brake jobs as often as you will, either.
Why are you so rabidly afraid that electric cars will be getting rid of fume-belching gas guzzlers? What's your hidden agenda? Thou dost protest TOO much!
Brad Clark on 03/03/2007 at 4:48 PM
1
http://newsnet.byu.edu/story.cfm/39888
Also, with R&D and production costs included GM paid $1,000,000 for each EV1 produced. No one could afford that and those who could would never do so for such a plain car. I believe that is the point. It was not econimically feasable to produce and sell them at that point. In order to make it feasable you needed to charge a lot of money and have improved technology and design (hence the Tesla). As to why they destroyed most of the EV1's...who knows, but I am not much a believer in conspiracies, so to each their own.
roboclaw on 07/09/2007 at 8:38 AM
2
The following people are in the process of making batterys for plug in eletric hybrids. Cheers.
http://www.altairnano.com/markets_amps.html
A battery with nanomaterials
At Altairnano, we’ve developed new electrode materials to help you offer an environmentally safe battery with:
Innovative technology
Large configuration choices
No operational safety issues
Three times the power of existing batteries
A one-minute recharge
High cycle life—10,000 to 15,000 charges vs. 750 for existing batteries
The capability to operate in extreme temperatures:
-22° to 480° Fahrenheit
Low life-cycle costs
tutor_turtle on 02/28/2008 at 12:06 PM
1
Text:
Nanotechnology May Boost Battery Capacity Ten Fold
Submitted by Adama D. Brown on Sunday, January 06, 2008
A new way of building lithium-ion batteries discovered by researchers at Stanford may be able to increase mobile device battery life by an order of magnitude.
The capacity of a normal rechargeable battery is limited by the amount of lithium ions that can be held by the battery's anode. In existing cells, the anode is made of carbon. Silicon is much more efficient for this purpose, but silicon-based batteries were considered a dead end because the silicon anodes would rapidly degrade under the extreme expansion and shrinking caused by soaking up positively charged lithium atoms while charging then releasing them during discharge.
However, Stanford researchers have developed a new process that may make silicon-based power cells both practical and more efficient. The technology involves using thousands of silicon nanowires one thousandth the thickness of a sheet of paper. The nanowires swell up to four times their original size as they absorb lithium, but resist fracturing or degrading.
The leader of the research team describes the new method as "a revolutionary development," with the potential to increase existing lithium ion battery capacities by a factor of ten.
Salt Grains Larger than Nano-size
While this research sounds promising, it's important to remember that previous claims of revolutionary battery technology, such as silver-polymer and alkaline-polymer batteries, have failed to reach mainstream implementation.
Just because an advancement works in the lab is no guarantee that it will be practical and cost-effective to build in the outside world.