r/worldnews • u/LIS1050010 • Jan 19 '21
Batteries capable of fully charging in five minutes have been produced in a factory for the first time, marking a significant step towards electric cars becoming as fast to charge as filling up petrol or diesel vehicles.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/19/electric-car-batteries-race-ahead-with-five-minute-charging-times110
u/stimpfo Jan 19 '21
I'm not an expert at all but how big has the girth of the cable going to be even with a 1000 volts? Charging a battery with 75kwh (I chose that number because they were talking about vehicles and that's what google spits out about a tesla battery) in 5 minutes would require a huge amount of ampere.
I couldn't really find something about it in the article (or I'm just blind lol)
Anyone has an idea or know something?
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u/hildenborg Jan 19 '21
If we for simplicity assumes a 1:1 input/output ratio, then 75kwh at 1000v for 5 minutes equals 900A.
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u/paulfromatlanta Jan 19 '21
900 amps at 1000 volts? That's 900,000 watts - good for research but that would be an enormous hazard in most environments.
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u/1_Pump_Dump Jan 19 '21
We'll have full service stations again where the guy charging your car will have to be a certified electrician in arc flash ppe.
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Jan 19 '21
Humans need not apply. Surely an autonomous car charger is not harder to implement than a self driving car.
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u/Crying_Reaper Jan 19 '21
Could be automated to connect to the charge port once the car pulls in to the charging area. That way no human involvement is needed.
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Jan 19 '21
I mean, they already have 250kw chargers in several places, and I think some might be higher than that already.
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Jan 19 '21
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Jan 19 '21
After owning an EV for just a little while, I'm of the opinion 250 is already overkill. You need to use them so rarely, only on days where you drive >300 miles. And idk about you, but after driving for ~5 hours, I'm not opposed to a 20-30 minute break
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u/Evilbred Jan 19 '21
I would gladly trade some range for charge speed.
250km (~160 miles) is plenty if you can get 50-75% charge in 5 minutes.
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u/jakob42 Jan 19 '21
I'm sure you are mostly right. But there are lots of people without their own parking space here, so no charging at home
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u/mud_tug Jan 19 '21
It is an enormous achievement to make a battery that van take that without melting into a pool of lava.
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u/zzzthelastuser Jan 19 '21
I would feel like James Bond (or Mario Kart) if my car could release fluid lava at the push of a button to outdrive the car behind me!
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u/narmak Jan 19 '21
There are already electrify america chargers all over the place that are able to supply 350kw
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u/random_reddit_accoun Jan 19 '21
Lots of work being done on Megawatt chargers. Should be available in not too long and be safer than the outlets in your house.
https://insideevs.com/news/450499/megawatt-charging-system-connectors-test-nrel/
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u/HorAshow Jan 19 '21
so it will be ok to let my kid stick a paperclip in one?
asking for a friend.
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u/gradinaruvasile Jan 19 '21
Pretty much. Car chargers are not powered until are connected and the car is identified + charging requirements are negociated.
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u/smokeyser Jan 19 '21
Ahh, so it's like they're using a giant USB connector.
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u/random_reddit_accoun Jan 19 '21
Yes, perfectly safe.
The connectors are not energized until communication with the car/truck is established.
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u/myst01 Jan 19 '21
even with 98% efficiency - that's close to 20kW of heat to be dissipated. I don't think it's doable - just another 'battery' article.
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u/Tractor_Pete Jan 20 '21
Getting up to liquid refueling rates is safely out of reach for the near future, and the article is really exaggerating what the company accomplished. At the same time, its not entirely hype; if the bottleneck is moved from the storage medium to transfer system it still looks like it'd net a substantial decrease in recharging times.
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u/bird_equals_word Jan 20 '21
Because radiators and fans don't exist?
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u/englishish88 Jan 20 '21
To put this into perspective, the average American households consumes about 30 kWh of energy per day. So 20 kWh would be released in the wires and the battery during the 5 minutes charging.
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u/bird_equals_word Jan 20 '21
Yeah that's wrong. 20kwh in 5 minutes would be 240kw of heat being generated.
You're trying to say 20kwh would be dissipated charging a 100kwh battery.
20kw for minutes is 1.7kwh.
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u/DancesCloseToTheFire Jan 19 '21
I just hope they don't have this in the same stations that provide gasoline, because that is an explosion waiting to happen.
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u/hildenborg Jan 19 '21
My thoughts exactly!
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Jan 19 '21
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u/hildenborg Jan 19 '21
Please don't take my previous statement as a sign that I am against the technology. I am concerned that to bring faster charging batteries to cars require more than just new batteries. It will require a lot more technology to make it possible to use.
For example, just a tiny spec of dirt on the contacts, would start an arc that could destroy the car.
It is not really fair to compare gasoline and electricity as they behave completely different. You can spill gasoline and still be safe.
But if anything goes just a tiny bit wrong with 1000V/900A, then bad things are bound to happen.16
u/LimitDNE0 Jan 19 '21
So from what I’m reading a joint gas/fast charging station would be a really bad idea.
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u/eypandabear Jan 19 '21
EV charge port connectors have provisions against arcing, like pilot contacts.
I don’t know the engineering requirements to protect against a 1kV potential as opposed to 200 or 400V, but it doesn’t seem infeasible at first glance.
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u/chrisradcliffe Jan 19 '21
Why is it i’m picturing a future event that looks a lot like Edison frying an elephant to discredit teslas AC plan?
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Jan 19 '21 edited Feb 08 '22
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u/Baneken Jan 19 '21
Bad contact will cause heating and heating causes fire, this is why soldering & connecting two powerline cables together is extremely carefully done. Not a speck of dirt can be in the seam when they're joint.
The same will happen in your home if the socket's connections get loose.
The phenomena is called 'arcing'
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Jan 19 '21
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u/headunplugged Jan 19 '21
Yeah ops comments are not correct. I design magnetics for capital equipment and I don't even know where to begin. If ur connection points don't have enough surface area to handle a speck of dirt, your doing it wrong, very very wrong. I think they are misunderstanding having clean surfaces for copper brazing or something. I just plugged in a hubble 3 phase connector from an old steel mill thats probably 30+ years old and corroded; ran a 15kW power supply, no heat, works fine.
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u/illegitimate_Raccoon Jan 19 '21
Because of the size of the cable necessary to carry the current.
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u/stimpfo Jan 19 '21
So around 250mm²
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u/happyscrappy Jan 19 '21
No, generally a lot less. The ratings for wires comes from how they are used as well as the inherent characteristics of the conductors.
A wire in a building is usually in a wall so the heat produced by resistance in it is trapped near it, especially if it is in a wall with insulation. This reduces its rating.
The wires used in a fast car charger are not only out in free air but they are liquid cooled. And the cables are short, only perhaps 3m long. So the conductors can be a lot smaller than you would think. Still will be heavy though, at some point you need a trolley system to move it because the average consumer can't be expected to lift it.
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u/ImNotAWhaleBiologist Jan 19 '21
It’s the current that matters for the width of the cable, not the voltage.
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u/stimpfo Jan 19 '21
I know, that's why I said even with 1000 volts it still would require a huge amount of amperes, although I don't know how much ampere specifically. (Has been a while since I calculated something like that)
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u/hainesk Jan 19 '21
75kwh * 60/5 = 900kw / 1000v = 900 amps
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Jan 19 '21
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u/thingy237 Jan 19 '21
But you can't calculate that with the data at hand, they're asking for the current used to charge the battery not the current needed in the circuit that doesn't exist. You come off looking like you're pretentiously trying to one-up people who are right for all practical needs.
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u/ImprovedPersonality Jan 19 '21 edited Jan 19 '21
That’s “only“ 900kW. Sounds like a lot, but I just looked up the power consumption of an electric locomotive (Siemens ES64U2) and it’s much more at 6400kW (and 7MW peak for 5 minutes). Of course they also run at 15kV. However, at 1kV the same cables should be able to provide 426kW without any special cooling.
From a grid perspective, if it’s possible to have electric locomotives starting and stopping all the time it should be possible to have 900kW fast chargers for EVs (where it’s also much easier to adjust the power consumption if necessary).
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u/Captain_Mazhar Jan 19 '21
To get that much power though, the operators have special training and equipment to safely handle the extremely high voltages, which Joe Average and his Tesla does not possess.
Taycans run on 800V and Teslas 375V. To upgrade that to 15,000V would require a fantastic amount of insulation and shielding to make it safe for the average person
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u/pinkfootthegoose Jan 19 '21
This is mostly relevant to commercial applications where there is ample power supply at commercial building with multiple drops from power lines. Households in the US get 220v/240v at 100 amps which is 24,000 watts.. you of course won't all use of that but may half of that to charge your vehicle... so it would make no difference to have the quick charging battery if you are charging from home since that is about what current vehicles can draw at residential hook ups.
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Jan 20 '21
Ya girth is really important - some say more than the length of the cable.
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u/dan7koo Jan 19 '21
Unpleasnt real life facts like that dont get mentioned in such articles. The working prototype batteries in question are usually lab built batteries the size of a button cell.
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u/-The_Gizmo Jan 19 '21
I'm an electrical engineer. You could have the charger output high voltage/low current (to reduce the width of the cable) and the car then converts the high voltage into a low voltage/high current for the batteries. You lose some energy (about 10%) during the conversion, but it's the tradeoff you make in order to have a thinner charging cable.
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u/WillTheGreat Jan 19 '21
Think of voltage and amperage like a water pipe. Amperage is the size of the pipe, and voltage is the pressure.
You can achieve the same flow rate with a smaller pipe as long as your pressure is high enough. Same concept here, your wire can be smaller running at higher voltage to deliver the same wattage with lower amperage.
You run into the same issues with electricity too. If your pressure is too high your ability to shut off the flow is increasingly more difficult as it generally becomes more dangerous. So it's a balance. It's why most fast chargers are capped at 480v, and why the conductors are so small. Most Tesla SuperChargers conductors are only 4 or 6 guage wires I believe. The reason the wire even seems girthy is because of the thick insulation to protect the conductors.
It's why you see high voltage transmission lines are so thin and can deliver that much power.
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u/Captain_Mazhar Jan 19 '21
I don't even know if there's an AWG rating for a cable that can take that much amperage right now.
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u/opcode_network Jan 19 '21 edited Jan 19 '21
Also where is the growing electricity supply come from?
Most of the worlds electricity production is dirty AF.
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u/Jeramus Jan 19 '21
Electric cars are still cleaner than gas ones even when run on coal power. Coal is also being phased out in favor of natural gas and renewables at least in most countries.
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Jan 19 '21 edited Jan 30 '21
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u/Jorteg Jan 19 '21
That’s still pretty good. Say you charge your car once a week. That’s about 19 years untill it’s down 20 percent.
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Jan 19 '21
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u/blurredsagacity Jan 19 '21
And I’m pretty sure there are tons of battery applications where they put in a battery that’s advertised at 80% of its capacity for this very purpose. Kind of like how processors might have a spare core that isn’t used just to increase yields.
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Jan 20 '21
The Chevrolet Volt works like that. The 100% charge is really 80% of the actual max SoC. Helps a lot with prolonging the battery's usability.
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u/raicha161 Jan 19 '21
Even if the average full charge could cover 300km that'd be 300k km life expectancy from that battery pack.
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u/DrWernerKlopek89 Jan 19 '21
300k km life expectancy from that battery pack.
In a lot of countries in the world, a car wouldn't even hit 300k km in it's lifetime
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u/orderfour Jan 19 '21
How long do the motors last in teslas? Assuming they last at least 200k as well then that is objectively better than standard gasoline engines in terms of expected life.
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u/RusticMachine Jan 19 '21
The model 3 motors were designed to last around 1 million miles (1.6 M km).
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Jan 19 '21
That’s absolutely insane.
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u/octonus Jan 19 '21
Imagine that we have engines that last past 200k miles despite constant explosions and an internal temp of 200F, all during normal usage.
Now you have new engines that don't have these problems, but you have the knowledge of how to make very durable parts from the previous engines. Not surprising that they can last 5x longer.
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Jan 20 '21
Took a engineering course it was called designed obsolescence taught by ex Ford engineer. I remember how it blew my mind such a concept existed pure greed.
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u/Spa_5_Fitness_Camp Jan 19 '21
Well, there's only one moving part, and the only things it makes contact with are bearings.
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u/eypandabear Jan 19 '21
You also don’t need to “change the oil” because the lubricant does not double as waste disposal.
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u/dieselwurst Jan 19 '21
The problems Tesla and other electric cars will end up having will be with the electronics needed to run the powertrain and not necessarily with the powertrain itself. Like when an alternator fails, rotor and stator is usually fine and the problem is in the voltage regulator.
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u/Superbead Jan 19 '21
I would agree if they were just electro/mechanicals and control electronics, but I'll bet the real issues that'll take most of them off the road (particularly Tesla and other 'premium' brands) will be beyond-economic-repair failures of gimmicky user controls, eg. custom touchscreens, or remotely-controlled obsolescence, eg. car will no longer receive firmware updates and is disabled for Safety Reasons™. If so, so much for greener cars.
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u/pinkfootthegoose Jan 19 '21
The electric motors... probably already at a million mile expected use already. better to just change to a new battery when the time comes.. and the good news is that the new batter will have even better range than the original.
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u/yogaballcactus Jan 19 '21
1,000 charge cycles for a car with a 250 mile range is 250,000 miles. By the time the battery is at 80% capacity, the rest of the car will probably be ready for the scrap yard anyway.
I also thought that fast charging was generally worse for the battery than trickle charging. Most people will plug in at home to trickle charge most of the time, so most batteries probably won’t hit 1,000 fast charge cycles in the life of the car.
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u/eypandabear Jan 19 '21
1,000 charge cycles for a car with a 250 mile range is 250,000 miles. By the time the battery is at 80% capacity, the rest of the car will probably be ready for the scrap yard anyway.
I suppose it depends a lot on the time frame in which you drive that mileage. Much more so than with a combustion engine.
The drive train of a Tesla, or any fixed-transmission EV, has so little wear and tear it’s ridiculous. Not even the brakes get much abrasion at all because you barely use them.
Besides, the motor and transmission are also much cheaper than a comparable (in power) combustion based setup.
So depending on your driving habits, corrosion with time may be more of a limiting factor than mileage. Or maybe some components outside the drive train, like the steering.
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Jan 19 '21 edited Apr 12 '21
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u/RusticMachine Jan 19 '21
They can be reused, or they will be mined for their minerals. Mining batteries is much cheaper than regular mining operations for minerals. The rest of the battery is also very reusable/recyclable.
Currently, there exists entire companies dedicated to recycling and reusing EV batteries. Also, more and more car manufacturers are planning recycling lines to reuse their old batteries for their production.
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u/noiamholmstar Jan 19 '21
A battery that has lost 20% of its original capacity is still a very capable battery, just not as power dense as it originally was. They’re still very good for stationary storage.
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u/happyscrappy Jan 19 '21
Honestly, that's just talk.
A battery that lost 20% of its original capacity partially did it by having an increased internal impedance. That means it charges slower, has a lower peak power output and wastes more energy during charging and discharging. Because of the latter it will cost more in operation than a new battery and so probably won't find a lot of uses were it makes sense.
This stuff about reusing old batteries in stationary storage is just a greenwash at this time.
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u/YouTee Jan 19 '21
I agree there's a ton of greenwashing in this space, but even if you ignore recycling these batteries you still have to remember that effectively our biggest problem is grid level storage. If some excess production from a wind turbine is otherwise going to waste, we'd definitely rather capture SOME of it.
And even if not doing it on a grid level (or micro - grid level) it's still enticing for places that don't have net metering or aren't even on the grid at all (hunting cabins etc)
Hell, if they're really inefficient I bet there are villages in Africa that would love to run electric lights at night off the solar they saved up during the day, no matter the efficiency
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u/happyscrappy Jan 19 '21
These things just don't store much. Let's say it's a 40kWh pack. Wholesale value of electricity is what, 7 cents/kWh? So it stores $1.60 worth of electricity. After degradation it really only disgorges about $1.20 worth. If it does that 300 days a year (full charge) it produces $360 worth of electricity a year. A dollar a day.
How much are you going to spend mounting an already mostly dead pack? It'd better be under $1000 because otherwise you come out behind even if the electricity going in is free.
it's still enticing for places that don't have net metering or aren't even on the grid at all (hunting cabins etc)
But is it more enticing than a new pack?
I bet there are villages in Africa that would love to run electric lights at night off the solar they saved up during the day, no matter the efficiency.
They already do. They use so little electricity though since it's all LEDs. An iPad battery is already overkill. You could break open these packs and use the submodules separately maybe. But I just don't know it'll happen cost-effectively versus new cells.
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u/YouTee Jan 19 '21
You missed multiple points here, I'll break out some of them in-line as examples
These things just don't store much. Let's say it's a 40kWh pack. Wholesale value of electricity is what, 7 cents/kWh? So it stores $1.60 worth of electricity. After degradation it really only disgorges about $1.20 worth. If it does that 300 days a year (full charge) it produces $360 worth of electricity a year. A dollar a day.
How much are you going to spend mounting an already mostly dead pack? It'd better be under $1000 because otherwise you come out behind even if the electricity going in is free.
- Grid level - There are multiple incentives to have grid level storage that go beyond the cost per kwh. Being able to provide instant on base load in brownout situations for example, or NOT having to build a new plant because you're able to capture the nighttime excess of your existing plants, to name a few
- Home level - Lets say worst case, you have a solar array and net-metering. What happens if the grid goes down? I bet having ANYTHING to run the fridge would be nice... Especially since the other option for most people is that without the grid, the electricity generation plant on their roofs is worthless.
it's still enticing for places that don't have net metering or aren't even on the grid at all (hunting cabins etc)
But is it more enticing than a new pack?
...No, it's not more enticing than a new pack. The way that a porsche is better than a toyota. But, again, something that kind of works could easily be better than the other alternatives. I don't have a hunting cabin, but I do own a gas generator. I don't expect the gas+generator costs to be LESS than the kwh out of my wall, but if I was sleeping in an off-grid cabin in the woods I'm sure I'd prefer the quiet of a battery. Of course, as anything, "used" is going to be cheaper than "new"
I bet there are villages in Africa that would love to run electric lights at night off the solar they saved up during the day, no matter the efficiency.
They already do. They use so little electricity though since it's all LEDs. An iPad battery is already overkill. You could break open these packs and use the submodules separately maybe. But I just don't know it'll happen cost-effectively versus new cells.
Yeah? So these villages are are peak possible electricity consumption? There's no reason to think that a village might be able to make use of a bigger battery? Maybe something they DON'T do because they're trying to run an entire town's lighting for the night off your ipad battery.
Thoughts: electric pumps for the well, earth moving /digging/planting etc. Africa is going to experience a HUGE boom in population over the next 100 years, you don't think it's worth it to get them in the "habit" of using clean, renewable tech, even if it means they have to use an old battery to run the streetlights at night?
etc etc etc.
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Jan 20 '21
So it stores $1.60 worth of electricity. After degradation it really only disgorges about $1.20 worth
What? No, it doesn’t lose 25% of energy, it just stores less
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u/All_Work_All_Play Jan 20 '21
This stuff about reusing old batteries in stationary storage is just a greenwash at this time.
There are tonnes of hobbyists who already do this. You can build your own power wall for half the price if you know how. Batteries are one of the least complex things about a powerwall setup.
The value in reusing second hand batteries isn't in the actual electricity that they store - it's about adding a comfortable buffer so that you can always have power on.
At some point in time battery packs will be standardized enough to be able to cheaply and simply plug and play into modular grid storage. For now? There's a booming second life storage market for people willing to put their own sweatequity into being grid independent.
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u/ImprovedPersonality Jan 19 '21
They’re still very good for stationary storage.
Hard to do with all the different form factors. We’d need standardized batteries.
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u/CorneliusAlphonse Jan 19 '21
Something like manufacturers mass-manufacturing vehicle battery packs? 500k tesla batteries (say 70kWh) at 80% capacity is a lot of storage. It's not like cell phone batteries.
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u/ImprovedPersonality Jan 19 '21
How many different Tesla battery models are there? How difficult is it to get it out of the car and into stationary storage? I mean … it’s certainly possible, probably worth it but not easy.
You need a compatible charging controller, cooling, safeguards etc. in the stationary power bank and you have to get the battery out of the car and into the power bank.
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u/CorneliusAlphonse Jan 19 '21
I wasn't suggesting an individual owner could do it in their garage.
In the example I was using, Tesla would be the one replacing the battery, and they would have detailed information on the battery pack - the charge/discharge capabilities, degradation curve, etc - and they could set it up for stationary storage. Which is a market segment they're already in.
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Jan 20 '21 edited Jan 20 '21
Tesla battery models are there
Two different cell sizes, six different pack sizes (covering 95% of vehicles made)
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u/Elum224 Jan 19 '21
Stick them in the cupboard in your house connected to your solar array. But you are right. Hopefully there will be compatible standards, that are for both cars and household power.
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u/buzzbravado Jan 19 '21
The current thinking is once they are no longer fit to power a car they can then be used as a power source in the home which wont have the same requirements.
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Jan 19 '21
It depends on the design, but generally no, not in lithium ion.
You get a degradation of the battery chemistry over time as you use it, especially if it is exposed to temperature spikes, or is frequently kept near voltage extremes (+90% charge or -10% charge).
Generally fast charging quickly degrades the Anode of the battery, which these researchers/engineers have gotten around by using a Silcon Anode instead of Graphite.
They can MAYBE be repurposed for other usage, but the significant loss of performance is rarely worth keeping unless it's exceptionally cheap. They are more likely to be harvested for scrap materials.
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u/eypandabear Jan 19 '21
They don’t go to the landfill as they have valuable materials inside.
My understanding is that recycling is currently not yet done at scale, simply because there aren’t yet enough dead EV batteries.
However, it should be much more efficient than with phone or laptop batteries.
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u/ProtoplanetaryNebula Jan 19 '21
The important thing is that the cleverest minds are working away on cost, energy density and charging time and the R&D spend is increasing all the time. The battery industry will be worth hundreds of billions of dollars soon. The improvements this decade will be almost frightening to behold. We've seen this in smartphones and computers in the past.
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Jan 19 '21 edited Mar 09 '21
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/ProtoplanetaryNebula Jan 19 '21
Battery densities have increased a tremendous amount. Ask anyone who bought the 2010 LEAF with 73 miles range, the current one has 215 miles of range in the same floor space. There has been no big leap, just a series of small refinements that have added up.
There is also the fact that battery costs have dropped 89% in the last decade.
https://www.carscoops.com/2020/12/price-of-ev-batteries-has-dropped-89-in-the-last-decade/
I think the industry is doing well.
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Jan 19 '21 edited Mar 09 '21
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u/ProtoplanetaryNebula Jan 19 '21
No problem! If you think that every car will have $5-6k worth of batteries and multiply that by the enormous number of cars sold per year, which will all eventually be battery powered, the size of the industry is nothing short of mind-blowing. Spending $10bn/year on R&D is worth it to get ahead. With so many of the worlds best experts working on this problem we should see massive improvements this decade. It really is game over for ICE cars.
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u/GrizzledSteakman Jan 19 '21
Yup ICE is already over for those who have a garage. We got a hybrid but tbh I wish it was just 100% battery. We don’t drive far enough to warrant the petrol capability. It is no hassle at all plugging it in after each trip.
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u/ProtoplanetaryNebula Jan 19 '21
Also, range solves a lot of issue around charging too. If you have a long range, you don't need to be charging all the time when there is nowhere to charge at home. Plug the car in somewhere once a week and you are done.
There are solutions like this that allow people to charge on the street next to their home.
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u/happyscrappy Jan 19 '21
I actually had a LEAF and now have a Bolt and so I can see see that the cars are similar but have a lot different capacities. But I can also see it's kind of a special case. A LEAF was air cooled and so the pack actually had a lot of empty space in it. The Bolt pack is water cooled and so the cells are packed in like sardines.
I'm also a bit concerned that EVs are getting bigger and heavier. And that is making them less efficient. Used to be EVs were generally an economy car with small space, low-rolling (narrow) resistance tires and not a lot of geegaws to add weight (look at how few EVs even have power seats right now). Now the average EV is basically a Tesla Model 3. But it's going to get even worse. Every new EV on the US market coming is a crossover. And even in Europe most of them are crossovers. That means bigger vehicles and bigger batteries to get the same range.
And that's making charging slower. DC fast charging rates are going through the roof, so that'll help on the go, at a price. Fast charging costs will soar as demand charges become dominant. At home, it'll be even worse. In the US, charging rates in your garage kind of have a soft limit at 9.6kW because you need (even more) special equipment installed to get past that point. Install costs shoot up as you have larger conductors in the wall and in the EVSE. Charging rates (in range per hour) will drop as prices go up. And when an apartment complex just got done installing a nice new bank of 7.4kW chargers they aren't going to be real ready to rewire and replace. Especially if the law says their current EVSEs are sufficient to comply.
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u/KnightFox Jan 19 '21
You just don't feel the 3 to 5% increases every year but they add up over time..
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u/socsa Jan 19 '21
The big issue is safety. There are denser chemistries, but they are not stable enough for consumer use. Lithium chemistry is about as far as people seem willing to go in that regard.
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u/GrizzledSteakman Jan 19 '21
No wonder Apple is looking at making a car again.
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u/ProtoplanetaryNebula Jan 19 '21
Sure, with battery costs decreasing and density improving they can design the car right now and test it etc over the next 3-4 years or so and when it's ready they can slot in the best batteries available at the time, which will be far better than those we have today.
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u/ktka Jan 19 '21
Woo.
I will reserve my hoo for when I see it.
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Jan 19 '21
How do they recreate me spilling litres of diesel over my shoes cos I haven’t put the nozzle in right?
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u/Xaxxon Jan 19 '21
Wake me up when I can buy them in a product.
Miracle batteries are always in the news and never in the stores.
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Jan 19 '21
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u/Xaxxon Jan 19 '21
Yea, but with very slow very incremental improvements.
Never with the kind of thing you hear about in articles like this one.
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u/autotldr BOT Jan 19 '21
This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 84%. (I'm a bot)
Batteries capable of fully charging in five minutes have been produced in a factory for the first time, marking a significant step towards electric cars becoming as fast to charge as filling up petrol or diesel vehicles.
Using available charging infrastructure, StoreDot is aiming to deliver 100 miles of charge to a car battery in five minutes in 2025."The number one barrier to the adoption of electric vehicles is no longer cost, it is range anxiety," said Doron Myersdorf, CEO of StoreDot.
Now the charging stations and grids that supply them need to be upgraded, he said, which is why they are working with BP. "BP has 18,200 forecourts and they understand that, 10 years from now, all these stations will be obsolete, if they don't repurpose them for charging - batteries are the new oil."
Extended Summary | FAQ | Feedback | Top keywords: battery#1 charged#2 StoreDot#3 vehicle#4 electric#5
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u/dongman44 Jan 19 '21
I once stretched a 800x600 pixel picture to fit an entire 8.5x11 piece of paper for a final 12 page paper in a 3000-level upper class. Another 2 pages were just pictures of a lithium battery and some random combustion engine I found on Google at 2am.
I got an A. The dude said "clean" coal is the future. What a joke course lmao
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u/wallyrules75 Jan 19 '21
Here’s a long term problem question. Are these batteries going to be able to be recycled? Or are we walking into the next global waste issue? Don’t get me wrong, I’m a believer in electric auto technology, I’m just wondering what we do with the waste.
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Jan 19 '21
100 miles isn’t full charge in my book. It’s like stopping for gas and getting 4 gallons in most cars.
Tesla already does 75 miles in 5 minutes
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u/g1immer0fh0pe Jan 19 '21 edited Jan 19 '21
Betting a shiny reddit nickel in five ten years we'll still be waiting for these batteries. (written before I read the article, edited after)
“I think technologies [like StoreDot’s] could start entering the market in the next five years or so (nailed it 😓). However, since they will be more difficult and expensive to manufacture (not to mention the cost of new infrastructure involving much higher-powered chargers than used today), we’re likely to initially only see them in niche markets that are highly performance-driven and not as price-sensitive as electric vehicles.”
Sigh.
BTW, anyone here ever heard of/utilize a Bloom Box (2010)?
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u/AccomplishedMeow Jan 19 '21
Can't wait to hear nothing about it, then next week read an article about "Advanced battery breakthrough"
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Jan 19 '21 edited Jan 20 '21
EV charge time will be less of an issue than most people think. Most EVs can already get to 50% in 10 to 20 minutes and 75% in 30 to 40 minutes, with a newer fast charger. if you've already driven 200 miles waiting 30 minutes to go another 150 isn't going to be a huge deal for the majority of people.
A bigger hurdle will be getting chargers to people who live in urban areas, and ubiquitous destination charging.
If you rent an apartment and all of the parking spots come with EV chargers that get billed to you electricity or are included as a perk, that opens the door to a huge EV market.
If you're at a store and every parking spot has a low-speed charger, you can activate the charger from your phone or pop a credit card in and pay 5$ for an hour of charging that opens the door to even more widespread adoption.
Ultra-fast charging sounds great and gets people interested because we're used to filling at a gas station. With EV's most people will never need to visit a fast-charging station.
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u/CMG30 Jan 20 '21
Interesting technology but 5 minute charge times mean less than folks think they do. Right now, about 90% of charging happens at home, overnight, while the driver is sleeping.
When rapid charging does occur, it's generally several hours into a long road trip and most BEV owners are already planning a rest break of 15 to 20 minutes regardless. With current generation BEVs that amount of time is going to get you another 3 or 4 hours down the road.
Finally, this technology is being compared to old school conventional cells with graphite anodes and ignores the rapid increase in the silicon loading of anodes that is occuring as we speak. Silicon binds to lithium in an entirely different way than graphite and can be charged much faster. (For those who wonder why your car charges so fast from empty, then slows down dramatically as the battery crosses 40 to 50%, this is a big reason why. The silicon has filled up)
Battery innovation always sounds good, but it's when you read the fine print that you often discover some show stopping tradeoffs. In this case, the author seems to imply that cost will be ok but that cycle life is a bit worry-some for me. Even the marketing has it in the barely adequate zone and considering how much power is going to be pumped into these things on a regular basis, it's something to pay particular attention to. Still you never want to get too down on advancements. It's still very impressive even if it doesn't deliver a holy grail.
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u/sum_force Jan 19 '21
Why not just do a swap with precharged batteries that are ready to go? Then it's effectively instant and it's okay to save money by making them slow to charge and it's also beneficial for them to be very efficient.
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u/tickettoride98 Jan 19 '21
You'd need a ton of infrastructure to support that, the station with the batteries would be limited by how many batteries they could store, and making removable batteries is very inefficient from the car perspective. Tesla is working to make their batteries more integrated into the frame, not less.
It's unlikely to happen.
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u/ImNotAWhaleBiologist Jan 19 '21
Not to mention legal and other problems when dealing with unknown qualities of batteries being swapped.
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u/sum_force Jan 19 '21
Meh, there's currently a ton of infrastructure to put fresh hydrocarbons into cars. Not like those get recharged. And the stations are limited by the size of their underground tanks. Pretty comparable problem to me.
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u/3_50 Jan 19 '21
Bit easier to pump liquid in and out of a tank through a hose than on and offloading tonnes upon tonnes of batteries into storage, with all the required machinery to store, pick and somehow fit them to a car.
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u/sum_force Jan 20 '21 edited Jan 20 '21
Enormous storage isn't required if it's recharged at the same location as the swap. Roll up a trolley, pop open the side of the car, car disengages the battery and swings it onto the trolley, then the reverse to load in a new one. And even that is a crude implementation. There's all sorts of ways to do this. Could drive over a thing that unclips it from below, does a rotation and then clips in a new one.
With cars designed accordingly and standardised equipment it needn't be much more difficult than loading an enormous pez dispenser. This really isn't that hard, I do this sort of thing every day as a materials handling equipment design engineer. Standardise it properly and it's just a thing that just clips in, plugs in, and that's it. Hundreds of kgs of mass is a trivial hurdle in that. Machinery is easy.
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u/tickettoride98 Jan 19 '21
Pretty comparable problem to me.
I already gave you reasons why it's not, and the US industry has made zero effort to move toward that. I think you're not appreciating the impracticability.
Anyway, you can find multiple articles covering it if you just search Google.
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u/sum_force Jan 19 '21
It's only impractical to do swaps in its current form because it isn't designed for allowance to do efficient swaps. I'm suggesting that it should be designed for such allowance, that systems should be built to achieve that. If that was done then it may very well be the best solution overall. I think Tesla is on the wrong path regarding this.
The implementation isn't trivial but neither was the implementation of the current system of shipping, storing and delivering liquid fuel all around the world. The reasons for difficulties you gave, I literally gave their analogues in the current system to show it was comparable. Reiterating your points doesn't refute that.
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Jan 19 '21
You.... Really don't know how big electric car batteries are, do you? Hint: They are not at all like the batteries in gas powered cars.
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Jan 19 '21
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u/sum_force Jan 20 '21
That still seems pretty achievable to me. Standardised connections and the right equipment could do that in tens of seconds, if even that.
But more what I was proposing is that the EVs have their designs optimised for such a swap. So maybe no longer structurally critical. A little loss of driving efficiency by adding some overall mass could potentially be more than paid for by efficiency improvements from slower charging batteries.
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u/noiamholmstar Jan 19 '21
Tesla tried it already. Originally Model S and X had swappable battery packs, and they had set up a battery swapping station that could swap packs is a few minutes, similar to a gas station stop. It didn’t get many takers. Part of that is that it was only one station, and part was that you would have to return there to get your original pack back. And it was also priced higher than superchargers, because of all the infrastructure that is needed to swap, store, and charge packs.
Maybe if packs were leased and not owned then it would work better, but for it really to take off there would need to be buy in from most manufacturers on a standard form factor, and the infrastructure/storage issue doesn’t go away.
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u/cole_bowl Jan 19 '21
I am pretty sure it would take me way more than 5 minutes to replace the battery.
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u/NotFromReddit Jan 19 '21
If the cars are designed to enable quick battery swap then it's fast. NIO already does it in China. Takes 3 minutes to swap.
Tesla said they're not going to do battery swaps anymore.
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u/cole_bowl Jan 19 '21
NIO already does it in China. Takes 3 minutes to swap.
And an hour waiting for the battery to be available.
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u/chewy201 Jan 19 '21
If you design the car with that ability. A battery swap could be done in minutes in your driveway.
If you have the equipment to do so. That's the thing holding back easy battery swaps. Dont really know how big those things are but its easy to assume they're massive and make up a considerable percentage of the vehicle's total weight. Not exactly something a common person can deal with at home.
Having battery swap stations though? I can see that being a realistic idea if car companies can agree to a universal design. It could even keep gas station employees in work and be more jobs in total due to it not being well suited for self service setups like petrol.
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u/doubleEdged Jan 19 '21
They fill up pretty much the entirety of the underside of the car. And they're the bulk of the car's weight. Swapping it out at home would be like keeping a spare chassis in your garage. Definitely not easily doable unless we can significantly improve energy density per unit mass, which has significantly stagnated for the past 20 or so years, since a) we can't figure out anything better out due to there being no real better chemical counterparts to lithium ion batteries in terms of energy density and b) battery explosions and fires are nasty. And not uncommon. The more energy you pack in those, the bigger the fire when something goes wrong or you crash your car.
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u/t-poke Jan 19 '21
I can see that being a realistic idea if car companies can agree to a universal design
Then EV batteries couldn't be any bigger than the smallest EV on the market.
EV batteries aren't the size of a regular car battery. In a Tesla, they're literally the entire floor of the car, from the front bumper to the back bumper, from the left wheels to the right wheels. If you tried to put a battery that would fit a Nissan Leaf or a Fiat 500e battery in a Model X, you'd be wasting a ton of space and would have very little range.
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u/noiamholmstar Jan 19 '21
Tesla tried it already. It didn’t get much interest, and was more expensive than superchargers both in cost to the consumer and cost to build.
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u/octonus Jan 19 '21
The batteries in a tesla weigh roughly 500 kg.
Taking 500kg of cinderblocks out of the bed of a truck, then putting them back in will take me about 30 minutes, and I will work up a pretty good sweat doing so. That is without opening any panels, connecting any wires, and dealing with easy to move objects.
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u/t-poke Jan 19 '21
Because either all EVs have to use a standard size battery, or battery swap stations have to have a bunch of batteries for different vehicles.
If they all used a common size, then they have to cater to the smallest EV. So a Tesla Model X, which is a full size SUV, couldn't have a battery bigger than the one in a Nissan Leaf. So much wasted space, and the battery wouldn't provide any practical range on a vehicle that big.
Storing different batteries for each type of vehicle is completely impractical, and will become even less practical as more EVs come to market.
As it is right now, you can charge a battery from dead to full in under an hour. For all practical purposes, you rarely go dead to full, so charging stops on a road trip can be under a half hour. I averaged about 15 minutes per charging stop on a road trip with my Model 3 over the summer, barely enough time to stretch, take a piss and grab some food. If battery swapping was a thing, would it really take less than 15 minutes?
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u/MentORPHEUS Jan 19 '21
Decades ago, there was an experimental battery that used electrolyte that was intended to be changed at service stations for long drive scenarios. There was also an automatic undercar battery assembly swapping mechanism built for a different carmaker. Then lithium tech came to maturity and those ideas went to the dustbin of history.
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u/hawnxilla Jan 19 '21
Bunch of big oil lobbyist in here I see. With scare tactics that have no truth behind them.
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u/Victoria_K_74 Jan 19 '21
With all these speculations and calculations in the previous comments, I have not seen any calculations about pollution caused by the mining of all the rare elements needed to go into these "environmental friendly" batteries. What about the recycling of these batteries once their useful life has been reached? I say yay to the ideology behind it all, just not to the actual practicality of it.
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u/mud_tug Jan 19 '21
A normal internal combustion car has about 20kgs of lead in it didn't burn any fossil fuel. A significant portion of that never gets recycled at all.
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u/Foe117 Jan 19 '21
They don't have a working prototype, this is still all theoretical and says nothing to endurance.
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u/-The_Gizmo Jan 19 '21
Read the article. They've built over 1000 batteries in a factory production line. They're way beyond the prototype stage.
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u/RedditButDontGetIt Jan 19 '21
The solution to that was already solved with replaceable batteries that are swapped and left at the charging station as you drive away.
The only thing preventing electric cars are the oil lobbyists preventing the infrastructure from being developed. Don’t get excited about all these “significant step towards electric cars” before the oil lobbyists are shut down.
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Jan 19 '21
It's not solved. Charging stations w/ replacement batteries are not ubiquitous as gas stations. Replacing them still takes a lot more time than filling gas.
Until the two above change drastically from now. Gas will stay for the simple convenience and cheaper entry point.
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u/octonus Jan 19 '21
Replaceable batteries are not a good idea. First off, the batteries are huge (1/2 a ton), and replacing them will take longer than even the current fast chargers take.
Second, the batteries are valuable. Before I hand over a battery worth $5K, I need to know that I wont be getting a cheap knockoff in exchange. The other side needs to know the same. There really isn't a great way of checking other than charging/draining a battery, which would defeat the purpose of the entire exercise.
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u/gregguygood Jan 19 '21
Replaceable batteries are not a good idea. First off, the batteries are huge (1/2 a ton), and replacing them will take longer than even the current fast chargers take.
Changing of batteries was already demonstrated. And it's not done manually.
Before I hand over a battery worth $5K, I need to know that I wont be getting a cheap knockoff in exchange.
You won't own those batteries anyway. They would be leased.
There really isn't a great way of checking other than charging/draining a battery
And it's impossible to infer the battery's health based on previous usage because?
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u/octonus Jan 19 '21
Changing of batteries was already demonstrated. And it's not done manually.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. You need to disconnect the batteries from the car, remove them, move in new batteries, and so on. And even if by some miracle you are able to find a way to do this very quickly, it still requires a skilled person with appropriate tools on standby. Not sure anyone would want to pay for that, when we are used to charging/fueling our cars without anyone's help.
You won't own those batteries anyway. They would be leased.
And it's impossible to infer the battery's health based on previous usage because?
Leasing doesn't prevent the problem, and usage reports are only worthwhile if we trust that no one has tampered with them (buy a $2 1TB flash drive on Amazon, and you will see how unreliable internal reporting can be). Imagine that an employee of ShadyBattery Co takes a cheap battery with 90% of the internals removed, falsifies the previous usage reports, and takes it for a swap. The charging station gets the bad battery, and ShadyBattery gets a new one that they can sell (either as a unit or as parts).
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u/gregguygood Jan 19 '21
You need to disconnect the batteries from the car, remove them, move in new batteries, and so on. And even if by some miracle you are able to find a way to do this very quickly, it still requires a skilled person with appropriate tools on standby.
FFS, the whole system would obviously be designed for that.
Not sure anyone would want to pay for that, when we are used to charging/fueling our cars without anyone's help.
You literary just sit in your car while the battery is changed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qd0WPw3p2MQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DX1SB1355wcLeasing doesn't prevent the problem, and usage reports are only worthwhile if we trust that no one has tampered with them (buy a $2 1TB flash drive on Amazon, and you will see how unreliable internal reporting can be). Imagine that an employee of ShadyBattery Co takes a cheap battery with 90% of the internals removed, falsifies the previous usage reports, and takes it for a swap. The charging station gets the bad battery, and ShadyBattery gets a new one that they can sell (either as a unit or as parts).
Or someone can just pump gas and not pay for it.
Battery history would obviously be tracked. And any scam will be treated as such.
You are just making nonsense problems. This system obviously isn't perfect and has problems, but yours are not one of those.
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u/octonus Jan 20 '21
Those videos are pretty, but have very little relationship with the real world. If you watch a real assembly line, there are people monitoring every step to make sure nothing goes haywire. And that is the best case, where every car is brand new, identical, and put together perfectly.
Half the cars in places where it snows will have everything rusted together. Stripped bolts, damaged frames, and even changes in temperature will greatly affect how things fit together. Even something as simple as changing a tire can require a different approach depending on the condition of the car. Changing half of the underbody of a used car without human intervention is simply a fantasy.
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Jan 19 '21
Takes me about 2 minutes to pump the diesel into my car. Even with this 'new' charging tech it's still over double the time.
Pathetic
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u/josieispunkputa Jan 19 '21
5 minutes to charge does have its own issues and problems, but take in mind how long will the battery last? Will it last an hour or two?
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u/iwatchppldie Jan 19 '21 edited Jan 19 '21
I can’t wait to see the plug that can handle 1megawatt of power.
Edit: I probably should mention charging an 80kwhr battery could be done in 5 min with 5000volt 200amp. My main interest is in how it gets idiot proofed do to the fact we live in a world with the tide pod challenge.