New Sodium-based Battery Technology - 600 Mile Range

They've had this on their site for some time.
Research Progress : Next Generation Secondary Batteries | TOYOTA MOTOR CORPORATION GLOBAL WEBSITE

 

this would put the middle east out of business.

 

Now, wouldn't that be a shame.

 

mm-hmm.

 

not the same batteries though... Toyota has invested a lot into their own battery development for a long time, but lets hope they end up with finished product soon enough.

2020 is long time... even their predictions for FCV's are for 2015 .

 

Anyone think that the oil companies/oil producing countries will want/let this happen?

 

It is capable of delivering 30% more voltage than Lithium-ion. How does this equate to 600 miles?

 

thats peak power i think... means less powerful battery needed for same amount of battery output.

 

Voltage has nothing to do with range. Its a gibberish article. The main advantage of sodium ion versus lithium ion is cost as they are easier to manufacture and use less expensive materials. The OP article didn't say anything about energy density breakthroughs which are needed for range.

Here is one of the recent breakthroushs though about using sugar in the manufacturing process to produce a higher energy density hard carbon anode.
The battery of the future might run on sugar

Current sodium ion batteries in the lab have an energy density of around 400 wh/kg which is about double commercial lithium ion - but about the same as some lithium ion in the lab. They can not hold up to as many charge cycles though. That is why we don't use them now.

I guess if you were able to commercialize the stuff in the lab and put it in a tesla S you might get 600 miles, but why? I would assume you would make 60 mile phevs, 100 bev, and 300 mile bevs less expensive. I don't think we would change the catagories. If you want to go over 600 miles occationally, a phev makes a lot more sense than a bev.

 

Imagine how little gas America would consume if all cars were 100-mile PHEV's. Maybe it will be part of the emissions requirements in fifteen or twenty years.

 

Yes if that happened we would quickly become a petroleum exporting nation We could use oil revenues to get quickly clean up the grid.

We can take an educated guess on impacts though.

A car with 35 mile range is about 60% electric plus 40% hybrid,

As we get to 80 mile range we get to about 80% electric and 20 % hybrid.

At 60 mile range we are at about 73% electric and 27% hybrid.

Those are at least the estimates based government studies of trips. When we get above a 20 mile range, the benefit starts to decrease. At 60 mile range, about where leaf owners, start getting severe range anxiety. YMMV.

If every vehicle was a 35 mile CD PHEV, and the hybrid part was 25% more efficient than current cars average then we would use about 30% of the gas we currently do. Since we import about 40% of petroleum, just half the vehicles would need to do this to remove all oil imports.

I would expect phevs in 2022 to vary in range between 15-60 epa AER in CD mode.

I don't think government mandates will help. The california ZEV mandates seemed to choose the wrong technologies, and were steadily rolled back. They demanded BEVs when hybrids were appropriate, then Fuel cell vehicles when PHEVs were appropriate.

The government incentives, not mandates, from the US, Japan, Germany, and China may get us the battery improvements we need for a sucessful BEV and PHEV market. It is these incentives that are driving the sodium ion r&D, but we have no idea if it will be a winner or loser. CAFE standards that do not pick a winner can also help, as would changing regulations to help phev cars. The current carb rules penalize phevs by requireing a 10 year waranty,and don't allow more efficient start up, but weighting emissions to vehicle start up, not likely emissions over a trip.

 

Sodium battery hybrid with a 600 Mile EV range and lower parts cost. Bring it on sooner.

 

I was reading the news about the rocket attacks in Israel, and thought, "Why doesn't Israel just declare war?" Then I realized why: Oil.

 

I believe we are perhaps witnessing the change in the auto technology at a rate never seen before. We will in the next 10-20 years see in mass production the car that drives itself and will also be an electric car that will charge on a cell phone network and be pollution free. Exciting times.

 

There's jackasses on the road already that think their car drives itself.

 

in 80's everyone thought that by 2010, we will be flying cars, not driving them .

Rate of the change is slow.

 

i wonder when the air/metal battery will come back into the picture.

when you look at the humans on this planet then the last 100 years its been really fast!
only the imagination of people is just faster then human possible ;-)
i know that they already where thinking that by 2000 that would be the case .

i think its good that things did not go that fast because i think this planet would be in even a worse shape then.
i hope that we can turn this "progress" around before its to late

just declare ware?
of course wy don't we all just declare war... nice ... NOT.
oil? what about because people don't want war!! at the first place.

 

Lithium air is closer to commercialization than sodium ion
IBM creates breathing, high-density, light-weight lithium-air battery | ExtremeTech
It can significantly drop weight compared to current lithium polymer and lithium ion batteries of similar capacities. It may be more expensive for awhile also, as you would need both a water tight system with an air compressor to feed the batteries the air in a car.

Sodium ion is being looked at because it can significantly reduce cost and is a drop in replacement for lithium ion, if cells are packed correctly in the battery.

Toyota and its partners are working on both systems as well as improved lithium ion and lithium polymer batteries. My bet is on lithium polymer being on-top in 7 years for cars, but these two technologies commercialized in electronics.

I was around in the 80s, no one promised me flying cars. That must have been the 60s or 70s. We were promised jet packs! Instead we got the segway. But when you look at batteries, think of the huge batteries in car phones, and compare them to the cell phones of today. OK, AT&T claims its paying $740 for my $200 iphone 5, but its thin and has much longer talk time if I don't use my blue tooth or lte too much, or stream those songs from the clouds. In batteries and electronics we have had rapid progress.

xkcd: Flying Cars