Battery crunch coming
 

Volkswagen says it needs the equivalent of 40 "gigafactories" worth of batteries by 2025 for 3 million electric cars/ year. 200GWh per year.
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"Assuming other automakers prepare similar electric-vehicle sales goals, VW predicts a total of 1.5 terawatt-hours will be required within the global automotive industry."
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Do we have enough Lithium? Cobalt? We need to focus on gravity/ railroad for grid storage (and nuclear which needs no storage) to save the batteries for transportation.
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VW says it needs '40 gigafactories' for electric-car batteries by 2025
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Good for him. Save the human race. And make a few bucks.

It seems silly to have battery backup for the home. Excess solar can be sold back to the grid, so that negates the need for storing excess production.

I'd like to see a system that can connect an EV to the house in case of a power outage. This would completely eliminate the need for home power storage or power generators.

Never mind the batteries and the Lithium. What about the mains electricity to charge them all? Bye bye hydrocarbons, hello nuclear.

Battery grid storage seems silly now but what about when solar and wind become more than just a drop in the bucket of the base load? This is the aspect that the anti nuclear crowd is totally unaware of (ignorant bliss). The grid doesn't function unless it is rock solid or things start browning out and burning up.

I'm still against chemical storage. Seems it would be more efficient to use pumped hydro or other potential kinetic energy storage such as your railcar suggestion.

How efficient is decomposing water into H2? This is one of the few chemical storage solutions I could see being practical.

H2 conversion forth and back not good. Ammonia has also been used. Rail cars should be quite cost effective if there is an appropriate grade. I'm surprised Tesla hasn't jumped in on this since the Gigafactory1 is surrounded by hills. Save the batteries for transportation.

Yes save the world by strip mining it for battery materials.

I think the answer is smaller batteries and on the road charging. One experimental bus line in Salt Lake City is using the bus stops to inductively charge small sets of batteries. Fewer batteries required. We could inductively charge cars while they drive. Technology is already here.

Also what about the super capacitor cars?

It takes an enormous amount of copper wire to make an inductive charge road. The cost is prohibitive.

Although induction charging might work for buses that run a known route and spend a decent amount of time at stops, it's just not practical for passenger vehicles.

Better streamlining and smaller frontal area will help reduce battery requirements. But I don't see anyone headed anywhere near there yet. As a matter of fact, many of the new concepts are full size crossovers.
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The VW XL1 has a CdA 3.05 ft^2 and so could get by with half the battery and quick charge in half time.
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The streamlined electric motorcycles in Vetter competitions achieve 101 Wh/ mile, 336 mpgE, in real world runs with 55 mph average moving speeds.

Lithium is a common element, and it can be recycled.

With smaller more efficient vehicles, we can get the job done with a lot smaller batteries.

And VW may be overestimating what is required, as well.

Last time I checked it's not economical to recycle lithium batteries.
Their non toxic nature and lithiums reactivity make it easier just to toss it in a land fill.

It will be when gigafactory scale recycling of automotive size batteries gets established.
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And newer large capacity batteries with careful thermal and electrical management last 3,000 partial cycles. 400,000 miles. With near zero calendar degradation.

I think a better fast charger network would be good enough to make smaller batteries more feasible. Right now, a 200+ mile range EV is what I would need to replace my Prius for the driving I generally do. But if there were fast chargers every 30-40 miles along those drives, I could probably get away with an ~80 mile range EV (though ~120 would make the number of stops to charge more reasonable). Tesla of course has the range and charger network to support distance driving, but I don't have Tesla money, nor do I want a large luxury car.

Looking at charger maps, it looks like some parts of the northeast and west coast are about at that point. In Utah, though, they're quite rare. The closest Chademo or CCS charger to me is 52 miles away, with several more down in SLC. However, most of those are at dealers or parking garages, so availability after business hours is hit and miss.

If a person regularly needs to travel more than the range of an EV, then it's the wrong tool for the job. It costs much more than gasoline to quick charge an EV, and it takes much longer to "refuel", and you have to stop more frequently.

An EV is the right tool for shorter trips within the range of the battery, where the owner has access to charging either at home or at work.

I view the fast charge network as a last resort; for rare occasions where I'm unexpectedly running low on charge, or moving across country.

We don't need fast chargers to be as commonplace as gas stations. The point is that the "gas station" is at home. We need just enough chargers that EVs can get by in a pinch, or travel longer distances if the driver chooses to.

I don't think anyone is going to spend a few billion dollars on a giga recycling center, then recycle batteries at a loss.

The Tesla Gigafactory HAS A RECYCLING OPERATION in the factory. If a lithium shortage is the problem - then recycling it WILL be worthwhile. Duh.

... and all this time I thought deepsea offshore fracking would be the answer to lithium shortages.

But does it have to, or are we just seeing an early adopter premium added on until the chargers get more regular use?
I'm not saying they should be as common as gas stations, more like as common as Walmart. If they're not common, then they're not very useful in a pinch because you won't be able to reach it or the only one you can reach ends up being out-of-order.

I think it makes more sense to have most EVs going around with 30-40kwh batteries and plenty of places to charge for those occasional trips than to haul around a 60+kwh battery just in case you want to make a trip (which you'll still probably need to charge on any decent trip anyway). It's because of the lack of chargers that a larger battery is needed or wanted to help with reducing range anxiety.

We're not talking laptops and cell phones anymore. Recycling these big automotive batteries will make sense when 1TWh per year start coming in 30-40 years from now.
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For longer trips a standardized series ICE gen on a trailer could be rented.

Why do you need inductive charging for busses at all? Do it the way busses (and trains) in many European cities have been for years: A pantograph connects to overhead power wires. If you have fixed routes, you don't even need batteries; otherwise you just charge at stops.

Perhaps fast charging costs are at a premium due to how new they are, but they do cost more than L2 chargers. Not only do they cost more to build (1-time cost), but they also have to pay demand charges, which are an additional monthly cost in addition to the amount of electricity consumed.

I was just thinking that it's more likely we get overhead power lines that our cars connect to than inductive charging.

If lithium batteries last 10+ years and there is some mandate forcing most cars to use them.
Where are the used batteries for these new cars going to come from?
Then if the plant is located on the left Coast it will cost a hazardous freight charge to ship the used batteries cross county for most locations, where is that money going to come from?

It would be nice but I don't really see it happening.

Construction on Gigafactory 1 seems to have stalled since August. And why is there not a single solar panel in sight yet?
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https://cdn.teslarati.com/wp-content...018-splash.jpg
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https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-giga...uction-update/
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As far as I can tell the price of batteries hasn't come down at all.

There are some solar panels on the Gigafactory now. That article was from January. Try this--
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.tes...top-array/amp/

Maybe I'll find it again. But according to a recent report, there is enough lithium that's already found to replace every single vehicle in the whole world with a Tesla and still have plenty of lithium left over.

The idea of battery storage is to move completely off of coal, nuclear, etc. and to move to renewables. If there is no way to store energy from wind and solar then they are only good when there is sun or wind.

Of course the future is unclear. But theoretically, the same battery technology being developed for EV's will also help energy storage. Solar panels are at an all time low price and are expected to get even lower. If a cheap way to store solar comes about then solar could be the cheapest way to make electricity. In other words, if there ever is an EV revolution, it could mean a solar revolution as well.

H2 is terribly inefficient. Hydro storage takes up lots of land and returns very little. A better alternative right now would be flywheel storage. But supposedly as EV technology progresses, the technology will be much cheaper and available for other purposes, such as grid storage.

Agreed. There is no perfect answer. I may sound like I'm advocating lithium ion technology for every use imaginable. But in reality, with so much propaganda from every angle, who knows what's best for the environment other than banning vehicular travel altogether.

If only they were cheaper and held more energy. Still, super caps technology is in the same race as lithium ion. Who knows what the next discovery will be. If someone finally figures out a cheap way to manufacture graphene the future could be super capacitor batteries instead of chemical ones.

I know, right? It just goes to show that the economy is not based on what is best for society or the environment. It's based on a market to sell and make money. Most people still think 30mpg is great fuel mileage.

Yes, but what range would that be? I've done several 140 mile daily trips in my Leaf. I drive 70 miles to work, let it charge off L2, then drive back home.

I wouldn't need a big range. I'm eyeballing used Leafs and the Ioniq electric. The very few times my drive goes past their range I'd need a stop along the way anyway.

A relatively large amount of our cars are plugins or EVs (maybe 1 or 2%) and the charging infrastructure reflects it. Almost any car park has charging points. It ceases to be an issue.
When the majority of cars get electrified then charging points will be as common as lamp posts...