Electric Vehicles: Batteries

Solid State Batteries from Harvard

fyl — Fri, 16 Sep 2022 09:30:51 -0600

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3BEefD-Zac is another Electric Viking video about this new battery. While they are not being built for car-sized batteries yet, they offer serious promise.

Let's say you fully discharge and charge your EV every day. Ten thousand charge cycles would mean over 27 years of battery life. Recharge in three minutes. Increased energy density. They are projecting it will be in production within three years.

Can Batteries be Recycled

fyl — Thu, 08 Sep 2022 11:52:16 -0600

You all to often hear that batteries cannot be recycled. This is clearly false. The number of batteries from electric cars are not particularly high today but the numbers will increase rapidly this decade. As "battery materials" have to be extracted it is realistic to see new companies that produce the needed materials by recycling batteries.

While this video is from early 2020, it does a good job of showing how the recycling can be done.

Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) Batteries are Taking Over

fyl — Wed, 07 Sep 2022 06:30:25 -0600

A year ago Elon Musk predicted that LFP batteries were the future. Recent sales are showing that is the case. Virtually all BYD cars use LFP batteries and about half of new Teslas use them. This doesn't mean LFP is the long-term battery technology (nor is any Lithium battery for that matter) but it certainly seems to be the best right now.

The Electric Viking offers good coverage of the numbers.

Two kinds of energy density

fyl — Tue, 06 Sep 2022 12:03:21 -0600

Energy by volume and energy by weight are the two measurements.

Increased energy by volume means you can get more battery capacity in the available space.

Increased energy by weight means you can build a car that weigh less. If the car weighs less it will less energy per km/mile.

Both of the metrics continue to improve.

Battery Types

Administrator — Mon, 05 Sep 2022 13:20:29 -0600

Virtually all EV batteries today are based on Lithium technology. That means Lithium is used as a primary component of the battery. There are two popular sub-types, each with its own advantages and disadvantages.

Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries are less expensive because they don't use nickel and cobalt. Some do use manganese. The big plus is longer life -- thousands of charge/discharge cycles --- and can be fully charged/discharged without degradation. The downside is less capacity for their weight.

Lithium Ternary batteries use more expensive metals but offer greater capacity for their weight. Besides the higher cost they have a much lower cycle life which is further downgraded but charging them to 100%.

This said, battery technology is changing very rapidly.