Battery technology: The future of electric cars

Who ever did the reporting did an excellent job. It would have been nice if they had included a little blurb about internal resistance BUT they covered the über view nicely.

Thanks,
Bob Wilson

 

I TOTALLY agree. In fact, I quit reading these types of stories because there are so many ; however, it seems to be the opposite with hydrogen fuel cell news. From a news standpoint, I see much more research going on with battery tech the world over.

 

Confusing. How does 200-mi Bolt fit into that story? GM secret we are not allowed to know about yet? In which case we need to be a little bit from Missouri (show me state).

 

Haven't read any Physics briefings for year or so, but last I read there's no major breakthroughs.

 

I'm about 2/3 the way through this new publication on Battery management.
Fundamentals and Application of Lithium-ion Batteries in Electric Drive Vehicles
Wiley: Fundamentals and Application of Lithium-ion Batteries in Electric Drive Vehicles - Jiuchun Jiang, Caiping Zhang I now have zero confidence in any EV/Hybrid other than the proven Toyota/Lexus systems and what several small Chinese domestic companies are developing. It would appear that just about every management system we have used as engineers has been bad for the batteries across all chemistry types, sizes, and uses.(Lead-acid, Ni-cd, ect) I now see why Toyota is emphasizing fuelcells for the future.

 

200 mile bolt will use an lg battery. I doubt is nearly as light as the envia gm wanted to use, but the price likely will drop down to $275/kwh. GM just needs a suspension and frame large enough to hold the weight and volume of the lg battery and they think they can do it on the sonic platform. Using the sonic platform though will mean there is less passenger space than tesla's model 3.

 

Alex on Autos: EV Buyers Guide - Battery Life Expectancy and Used

 

Generally good but:

1. He implies that the original LEAF actually used the entire battery but now EVs only use "21 or 22" out of a 24 kwh pack, for example. Actually Nissan has always allowed use of no more than about 88% (21 kwh).

2. He underplays the impact of heat and the importance of active battery cooling somewhat by stating "we don't know" how important that is. Oh yeah, we know!

3. He states that 25% loss of capacity after 40,000 miles isn't really that unexpected when actually that's pretty disasterous.

 

Do like the ad for the plugless Volt - it makes sense to get rid of the hassle of plug in / unplug.

DBCassidy

 

Battery breakthroughs would be wonderful, however, they aren't required.
The battery technology has been advancing 8-14% per year without any "breakthroughs".
This slow, steady improvement combined with more efficient manufacturing is bringing us the 2nd generation of EVs.

 

Was it worth the $140?

Well, I see it isn't being published until late May so I assume you must have gotten a free review copy? I see it is available on books.google.com in preview mode. I managed to read the first 20 pages or so which looked like standard Lithium Ion textbook with a bias towards talking about Chinese developments since the authors are in China.

I suspect that the battery management hardware and firmware used by the automakers is typically supplied by the battery makers and not really created by the car companies themselves. For example, the Volt battery pack with cells from LG Chem has extensive management circuitry that includes custom chips supplied by LG. Of course, the car companies have to follow and be aware of good advice about charge/discharge usage patterns and SOC usage in their higher-level vehicle control strategies, especially in hybrids where there is an alternate energy source that can be utilized.

Most people acknowledge that Tesla has done well with their packs as well as GM with the Volt. Volts, a Roadsters, and even a few Model S cars now have 100,000+ miles on their packs with modest degradation. Did the authors have much to say about them?