Sanyo Electric Aims to Slash Lithium-Ion Car-Battery Costs by About Half

Source

As you know Panasonic and Sanyo have merged already. Toyota is using their lithium battery in prototype PHV Prius.

This is a great news because, 5.2 kWh pack in PHV Prius would drop to $3,200 (by 2015) at today's exchange rate.

The date of the large-capacity cells ramping up is also an indication that PHV Prius may come to market sooner than we were told, by a year.

How many units does it take to package 5.2 kwh ? Just wondering what the production capacity really is in terms of cars.

I thought $600/kwh is the going rate these days for Li-x -- or at least the price Nissan is paying for the LEAF battery.

96 cells per subpack. The prototype had 3 packs, total of 288 cells.

Weird - you can get Li batteries for $500/kwh now.

Automotive grade?

Yes - that's what GM is paying LG. Electrification Coalition quotes $600 and lower. Only A123 and Altairnano are higher. Consumer grade is $300 and lower.

This sounds like really good and big news, especially as competitors line up to match or beat them.
But I'd like to hear more about what's going on with evnow's claim that the price is already here.
Is there something else that might be better about the Sanyo batteries???
What's going on??

I don't have data on the LG Chem cell life cycle but my guess is about the same as Nissan Leaf.

Leaf's battery pack is good for 1,000 deep discharges. Sanyo / Panasonic cells are good for 2,000 to 3,000 cycles. We are talking about 2.5x the number of cycles (value-add).

Which chemistry are you talking about ? The original article doesn't indicate anything ...

First, I'd like to correct myself. The cycle should be 2,000 to 3,000.

I do not know the actual chemistry Sanyo / Panasonic will be using for those large format lithium battery. There are two possibilities as we know they were working on the Lithium Nickel Manganese Cobalt (NMC) with reference here and here.

Toyota also has Lithium Nickel Cobalt Aluminum (NCA).

Both of these chemistries are good for 2,000 to 3,000 deep cycles. With PHV cycles (67% discharge), it should get 4,000 to 6,000 cycles.

USB I'm glad your finally on the Lithium band wagon.

The JCI-saft batteries are rated for over 3000 cycles. They are running in many conversions and will be in the new Ford Transit connect, as well as the bmw and mercedes hv, and many chinese lithium cars. The rumored waranty on ford's bev will be 120,000 miles which amounts to about 1500 cycles.

The LG chemistry in the sonata has been reported by Hyundai to last tens of thousands of cycles and 300,000 hybrid miles in their charge cycle. Of course they will only be warranted for 10 years like the rest of the car and likely 10,000 miles.

What is hilarious is the NiMH patent prohibition on large capacity cells has advanced development of several LiON battery technologies. This also avoids the rare-earth monopoly. THANKS!

I'm reminded of Polaroid's patent dispute with Kodak who is still in the camera making business.

Bob Wilson

Fixed that typo in bold.

Johnson Controls - Saft cells are Lithium Nickel Cobalt Aluminium (NCA), the same as one of Toyota's tri-metal chemistry. I think NCA and NMC tri-metal chemistries offer the best bang for the buck and Toyota has both of them covered.

Tesla is going with the Lithium Nickel cells from Panasonic with their unique BMS and Toyota is also getting their feet wet with that approach as well.

It will be interesting to find out which tri-metal Sanyo is going to mass produce in 2012 for PHV and EV. If it is NMC, they would be 3 years ahead of Nissan (for 2015 gen2 Leaf).

The current Leaf, Volt and Sonata hybrid use the same Lithium Manganese Aluminum (spinel) cells (bi-metal) which are good for 1,000 deep cycles. It is "good enough" but the tri-metal Lithiums will last 2 to 3 times more cycles.

Leaf with 100 miles EV range x 1,000 (90%? depth) cycles = 100,000 miles.

Volt with 40 miles EV range x 2,000 (60% depth) cycles = 80,000 miles. Note: 2,000 cycle is optimistic.

Sonata hybrid will only use very small / light HV cycles so it should get many many cycles and it will be very reliable.

By large format, do you mean prismatic ? They aren't talking about formats either. They just say "automtoive" .... who knows what that means to them.

Tesla is actually going to continue to use consumer batteries in the base Model S. Only in models with higher range will they use the newer Aluminum.

I don't know what Plug-in Prius will use - most probably the cheaper consumer grade ones.

BTW, the basic premise of Tesla is that it will be cheaper in the long run to use cheaper multi-sourced consumer batteries and build a complex BMS around them. They think the consumer batteries will evolve faster and the prices will fall faster. Something like Google's idea of generic redundant hardware and reliability using somplex software.

We will have to see which idea is better - Nissan's or Tesla's.

The artile in my original post said:

The Osaka-based company may add a manufacturing line at the plant to make large-capacity cells for plug-in hybrid and all-electric cars by March 2011, raising its output ability to as high as 1.5 million units a month.

That's 4 to 5 months away, unless they meant to say March 2012. Large-capacity typically means prismatic cells. The largest cylindrical cells are the D size NiMH cells used in the original Prius and Honda IMAs. I have never seen lithium cells produced in those size cylindrical cells.

If they are prismatic Tesla is not going to use them. Toyota as well. May be they will start competing with LG - who seem to be winning a lot of contracts lately.

Toyota would use them. The prototype PHV Prius uses prismatic lithium cells. That's why the March 2011 surprised me since that indicates the PHV Prius may come out as early as next year.

I think they will use them on another hybrid and then put them in the phv prius later. You can build the plant and still adjust the chemistry.

I hope sanyo catches up, it will be good to have 4 competitors (sanyo/primearth, lg, jci-saft, nissan) in the lithium car battery game. That plus the matrix of consumer cells in the tesla and rav 4 should help quickly develop the technologies. I think the lithium polymer technology shows the most promise but is also likely more expensive. As a note Nissan is using a slightly different chemistry for
it's infiniti M hybrid than the leaf, so perhaps the phv prius will have one hybrid type and one ev type battery. I expect that the weight of the battery pack for the phv prius will drop or capacity will go up by the time it hits the market.

I think you are right. It seems Toyota will use Sanyo lithium cells in a hybrid minivan first then in PHV Prius.

Yes, I know it is an old article, August 2010:

Auto Industry Headed For EV Battery Glut - 2010-08-16 16:21:00 | Design News

An embarrassment of riches.

Bob Wilson