EV battery can reach full charge in 'less than 10 minutes' A new type of silicon-anode lithium-ion battery could be the solution the EV market is waiting for, as it can apparently charge from empty to full in less than 10 minutes. Designed and built by California-based Enovix, the battery also maintains 93 percent of its capacity past 1,000 charges and was minimally affected by six …
If that's from empty then for a typical EV battery of around 60kWh capacity that implies a charge rate of 360kW (about 50% more than Tesla's current biggest "superchargers"). Large-scale support for that is going to create quite a logistical challenge for charging stations (as well as needing some fairly chunky cables).
Don't try this at home, kids!
Replaceable batteries is not an easy task.
Apart from extracting the custom shaped battery pack from the vehicle in an easy and timely manner, just imagine the H&S issues with 400 volt (or more) high amperage connectors on flying leads in the hands of minimum wage numpties? Stand well back!
In fairness, Tesla demonstrated a fast battery swap. Once. In California. In order to harvest a healthy additional subsidy on every vehicle they sell there. But they don't actually offer a battery swap service at their charging stations. Presumably because you don't need to offer the service to get the subsidy.
Shirley many people traveling that kind of distance are on VACA and have a full trunk/boot? We're not talking something the size of a flashlight/torch here, you know.
Speaking purely for myself, when I make a typical 500 mile+ round trip in a day, I'm usually traveling full at least one way. Often both ways. No room for a "spare" battery.
indeed. having just done 1100 km each way drives across empty arid areas to boggy floodplains of all things, the 4WD was loaded with essentials. Not a hope of carrying a stack of batteries. BTW, how do EVs handle corrugated butchered surfaces caused by illegal use of closed roads ? Not to mention the odd bit of deep water and copious mud ?
As for recharging away from major centers, bwah hahah. Even the east coast of Oz cities are now discovering the joys of subsidising China. I dont think any existing network can handle the loads required. How many amps per charge point, by how many vehicles by how many towns by how many charging stations ? Unless one works at a nuclear or coal power station perhaps
A limited-distance spare battery wouldn't help me much, either. When I'm doing local errands, a regular EV would probably work fine (though you need decent ground clearance for our private road and many others in the area, and in the winter AWD is often helpful, if not usually strictly necessary, so those limit my choices).
But I routinely make a trip that's 640 miles / 1025 km each way, much of it through essentially uninhabited areas. It will be a long time before charging stations are available on that route, and I'm not keen to add 90 minutes or more to my travel time, so charging (or battery swap) would have to be fast.
Also, my vehicles aren't garaged, so those packs would have to withstand large daily temperature swings, with highs well above 100° F / 40° C (in the battery compartment, sitting inside the vehicle that's sitting in the sun) and lows below 0° F / -20° C (not on the same day, of course, but those are the seasonal extremes).
I'm glad to see continuing improvement in battery technologies, and some day I expect we'll be using photovoltaic plus one of these home battery packs for a bunch of our domestic use. But EVs don't look like they'll be practical for me for a long time yet.
And in any case I don't ever want another new car. New cars are horrible these days, with their ghastly touchscreens and built-in spyware and the rest. It's used from here on out.
"How about a backup battery dropped in the boot? "
If materials for making the cells to be installed in new cars is a limitation, standby back up battery production, distribution and management isn't likely. EV's are very good at estimating range. If the driver is very poor at looking at the "fuel" gauge, that's their own lookout.
The only way it could work is by legislation, the manufacturers have little incentive otherwise.
Firstly a common form factor would need to be adopted and vehicles would use multiples according to requirements, say one unit for a bike, 4 for a small car, 6 for a light van up to a pallet full for a HGV.
Units could have shuttered connectors for safety (see UK mains socket) and be robotically loaded from the sides of the vehicle.
All technically possible but it will never happen as getting all the battery and vehicle manufactures and the filling station operators on board and in agreement would be an impossible task, far too many vested interests.
I had this discussion with my MP about 3 years ago, when he was in the Transport Dept. Absolutely no willing on their part.
I pointed out that if the EV had improved as much as the ICE in the past 100 years then the battery could be replaced one handed at a "fuel station" and last 1000 miles, before swapping again with one charged from renewables at another station. And you would probably have spaces for two batteries when you bought the car (bought without batteries), and only deplete one at a time. If the 'quality' of the replacement batteries were always monitored at the stations then range could be guaranteed. (I say replacement, but it is more of a short term rental until the charge is used.)
Sometimes you just know by looking at the eyes that nothing is going into the brain!
"Sometimes you just know by looking at the eyes that nothing is going into the brain!"
And sometimes your just sick of hearing stupid idea's from thick constituants, so glaze over while waiting for the stupid waffle to stop.
swapping is just a stupid stop gap to fill in for crappy non fixable EV problems.
How about a batteries not included model. You buy the car without battery, the dealer kindly fits you one for a modest price, which is not guaranteed new, but a guaranteed minimum capacity.
The battery-swap shops handle inventory, either offering the faded packs to those who don't need a big charge at that moment for some discount (2-tier battery-swap shop), else throwing them into the recycling system once they are less than the minimum mandated max capacity (1-tier battery-swap shop). BaaS.
Bad comparison.
If your phone lasted but a few hours before needing a recharge, then a replaceable battery would give you instant power again. What difference does it make if you swap it for a 1 cycle battery or 100 cycle battery, assuming you're guaranteed a minimum say 80% capacity? Furthermore you're assuming a typical modern phone where batteries aren't (easily) replaceable, so no you wouldn't expect the dealer to fit the battery, you could do it yourself. Again, difference being you can take away a new phone, without battery, to the battery-swap shop. How are you planning to take your batteryless EV to the swap shop?
As it is, phones typically last a day, then you let it charge overnight which is a convenient cycle. Cars can be the same, but when you step out of the standard commute routine then it's nice not to have to stop for an hour every 4 hours to charge.
If the price was right, yes
Because if the dealer can fit a battery, so can another dealer at a different time. And so on and so on. So my daily used and charged three and half year old S9 could behave a lot better than it does now with a simple battery swap.
So your question shouldn't be so much about whether you'd be happy with a battery of unknown providence, but whether you'd be happy with it for now.
As was mentioned above, if batteries came with a guarantee of 80% capacity minimum then, sure, that's potentially a fifth less. But in few years of use your fixed custom battery won't be looking so great, so maybe that 80% would be attractive. It would also, no doubt, be quite a boost to the second hand market as well.
"So your question shouldn't be so much about whether you'd be happy with a battery of unknown providence, but whether you'd be happy with it for now."
It's the same question, really. My existing battery will take me (say) 300 miles on a charge. How can I be absolutely certain the swapped (used) one will take me the same? The difference in range between 150 miles and 125 miles might not seem all that great to you, but to me it means running out of power between Cloverdale and Healdsburgh on the way home to Sonoma. Why would the proverbial Thinking Man accept this as "normal"? (The far end of this particular road-trip is an off-grid property with no provisions for charging electric cars.)
Especially seeing as the swap-station gets a brand-new battery in exchange for an older one. Sounds lucrative, to me.
Is that 300 (example) miles on a new battery or your once-new worn in battery? Assuming new, and you exchanged it for a minimum 80% spec battery, then you'd get 240 miles minimum. If that's not sufficient for your trip between Cloverdale and Healdsburgh, then feel free to stop somewhere inbetween for a few mins to pick up another pack, which may take you 300 miles, but you know it will at least take you 240 miles. Kinda like when your fuel estimate says you've got 100 miles left, do you fill up then, or wait till it says --- then decide to fill up?
Let's assume you don't swap out your once-new battery. After a few years you'll no longer be able to travel between Cloverdale and Healdsburgh, ever, without stopping to recharge. Sure you can fork out for another brand new pack for the next few years, or sell on your car and buy a new one.
"Especially seeing as the swap-station gets a brand-new battery in exchange for an older one. Sounds lucrative, to me."
What will the swap-station do with this brand-new (actually once used) battery? Put it on display? Sell it to the highest bidder? Or just some lucky person gets to drive away with it, who then drops it off at another swap-station.
It's the current battery in the vehicle. Makes no difference if new or old, it can take me 300 miles (or a 150 mile round trip).
Cloverdale to Healdsburg is about 17 miles. There are no services, and few houses, along that stretch of road. If you get stuck there, you are stuck. The mid-point is (roughly) 45 miles from where I type. The off-grid property is (almost) exactly 150 miles from here. Begin to see the problem yet?
If I were running such a swap-shop, I'd sell all the new battery packs to the highest bidder, and use the proceeds to purchase older "80%" units to swap into the vehicles of the suckers. This is a part of doing business, it is called "maximizing the return on investment". Share-holders tend to demand it.
"Begin to see the problem yet?"
Your problem is that there is a 30 mile journey you do without a charger?
That's really not a problem in any real sense of the word. Would you go there with only 20 miles remaining on your ICE range indicator? No, you'd top up the tank before you hit that section of road... so why is an EV any different.
The EV is different because my ICE vehicle can do more than 400 miles on a single refueling, and the refueling infrastructure is already mature and widely deployed. And refueling the ICE takes only a few minutes.
Until EVs catch up to that, ICE will have that advantage for long trips on rural routes. Your continual protestations that such a use case is irrelevant are as empty as your other unsupported arguments.
"The far end of this particular road-trip is an off-grid property with no provisions for charging electric cars."
Sounds like this person isn't a good candidate for an EV. They aren't a drop-in replacement for every situation. The off-grid property sounds like it might be a good spot for a solar PV and battery system unless it's too insecure and likely to be ripped off or doesn't get enough sun.
The essence of a battery swap scheme isn't the battery, it's the charge. You're buying so much charge. The battery is just the container and is owned by the business that sells the charge. Obviously one of the requirements for making such a scheme work would be a suitably accurate means of measuring the charge - both what's left in the battery that's swapped out as well as what's in the battery that's swapped in. The cost of the battery gets split across the many times it will be used during its life.
But swapping a pack (should) take a fraction of the time compared to charging (comparable time to pouring liquid fuel into a tank). With this system, nothing's stopping you charging at home overnight, but also nothing's stopping you swapping out a near empty pack for a full one in the middle of the day.
Charging takes less time than pouring liquid fuels for the vast majority of the year, and is close to comparable for the occasional long journey.
Most of the year you charge whilst doing something else (sleeping, working, shopping, whatever) - so it takes a handful of seconds to plug in and unplug - far better than liquid fuels, since you never even have to go anywhere special to charge).
On a long journey you can* DC charge at better than 300kW (charging low to ~80% with a warm battery) which is enough to get you the next two hours (140 miles at 4mkWh) in under 7 minutes. And that's just about enough time to visit the loo, probably not long enough to grab another coffee.
Filling a tank with fuel takes a few minutes, and you need to be supervising the process, then you might also need to pay in the booth (which is a whole different advantage), then you need to go and get that coffee.
Of course you also don't need to fill with fuel each time you stop for a comfort/safety break - but that doesn't really affect the time taken for those breaks.
* Depending on the car, but more and more chargers are 350kW rated.
So the question is - do I pay extra for the car to get the fastest possible charge times a few times a year, or am I happy to make the rare long journeys a little more leisurely, and have a slightly more substantial break - we take a picnic lunch for the only journey we regularly (a few times a year) do that needs DC charging. So again, the car is charging whilst we are doing something else.
Hopefully the charging speeds supported by the basic models of cars will increase over time - there has been little point in putting in chargers over 100kW when most vehicles couldn't take more than 50, but there is a real push in the industry for 300kW+ sustained charging.
Your anecdote is a good example of "it works for me so it works for everyone" bias.
But your maths is also wrong: a fuel tank fills in a couple of minutes and will provide about three times the range of your seven minute charge. Also, how many 300kW chargers do you think can be supported without requiring additional generating capacity at peak times, which is what you need the grid to be able to provide.
A tank fills in probably about three minutes, and I already pointed out that that doesn't need to happen on every comfort/safety break - no serious errors in the maths there.
You can support plenty of 300+kW chargers on the grid, they're already being installed. In fact they are often being installed with their own demand balancing batteries to mitigate exactly the issue you are hunting for. It's almost as if the engineers and designers of these systems have managed to think about these things.
Oh, it's so nice to be patronised…
Your maths is still off as you asset that charging the car is faster than filling the tank: wrong on both accounts - it takes longer and you need to do it more often. More importantly, taking as least twice as long to charge as to fill means needing twice as many chargers as fuel pumps to provide the same capacity. This will make a big difference as the number of electric vehicles picks up, currently tiny in most countries. Here in Germany we're already starting to see limits on household charging points because the grid can't cope with lots of them on the same street. Again, you have to provision for the maximum draw.
It also provides the lie to your assertion that 300 kW lines aren't a problem. I routinely see lines of cars waiting to fill up at petrol stations: batteries will be quickly flattened if the number of electric vehicles gets anywhere near that of petrol cars.
But it's also nonsense to play hydrocarbons against electrics as they are undoubtedly a much better form (energy density, flexibility) than batteries.
"Your maths is still off as you asset that charging the car is faster than filling the tank"
In the last month I've spent under a minute charging my car - I asserted that to do that milage in an ICE vehicle would have taken longer at the pump.
You see what matters is the time it takes *me* - and whilst I am asleep the car gets charged without me having to be there.
I also said that the time spent DC charging can, and should, be very similar to a comfort/safety stop anyway. At the point where you aren't finished going to the loo before the car has charged then it again hasn't cost you any time at all. I am for the moment assuming that you don't wee into a bottle whilst driving along the motorway, and am assuming that you take regular stops as per standard advice (it's been in the highway code for many years).
300kW+ chargers are not going to be home use, they won't be at workplaces either. They'll be the equivalent of motorway services. And they have beefy grid connections, and install beefier connections as needed.
I'd like to see microreactors at most service stations - they're already well connected to the grid to either top up needs or to export, they're mostly far enough away from populations to get around the nimby crowd, they have a ready use for much of the waste heat (the service station buildings) and it would allow them to be net exporters of power - even with a bank of fifty or a hundred 350kW chargers.
"I routinely see lines of cars waiting to fill up at petrol stations"
So it doesn't take you only three minutes to fill up? It takes some multiple of "three minutes + however long the person in front you takes to pay, and then get back into their vehicle, adjust whatever it is some drivers seem to adjust when they have filled up with fuel and then move on".
I haven't queued to charge all year, even on the ?four? occasions I've needed DC charging (two journeys).
"But it's also nonsense to play hydrocarbons against electrics as they are undoubtedly a much better form (energy density, flexibility) than batteries."
Well, they're dense, not necessarily flexible, but they're also terrible in many ways - their usage is highly inefficient. So much so that if I burned them in a power station I'd get more miles out of my EV (after all transmission losses are accounted for) than you would burning them directly. They're also pushing durty, smelly, pollutants into highly populated areas as well as being noisy.
Using electricity, via batteries, is actually a win on all counts. You get more miles to the gallon than you would with direct burning, you get much lower local pollution. And since much of our energy is actually renewable (or nuclear) on the grid you end up with lower global pollution as well. Yes - there is a cost of mining minerals, but there is also a massive cost in pumping and moving oil.
EVs also have the capacity to be an excellent contributor to grid demand balancing.
An EV battery is typically on the order of 50kWh... we should be making EVSE equipment that can charge and discharge that battery - even if only at 7kW (i.e. through a 32A breaker) - to balance load throughout the day. Most cars spend most of their time parked - so you select a charge you don't want to dip below and allow your vehicle to supply your house with power during the day (24 hours of a typical house is only 20% of the 50kW battery) leaving you with plenty of range for daily driving, and it can charge when demand is lower than potential supply.
This will need the smart grid to be really smart, telling my car/house/EVSE when it's good to charge my battery rather than discharging it on a really granular scale - probably using a financial incentive to make it worthwhile, like the octopus Agile tariff.
One person doing this doesn't matter, but hundreds of thousands of vehicles doing it *will* make a significant difference - it's distributed grid scale storage.
"I'd like to see microreactors at most service stations - they're already well connected to the grid to either top up needs or to export, they're mostly far enough away from populations to get around the nimby crowd,"
The approvals process and lawsuits would likely be exactly the same as what it takes for a big power plant. It's not NIMBY or even just that, but wonks that will push back on any nuclear power plant regardless of where in the country it is. It will take a new reactor technology such as LFTR or something similar and a pack of politicians that have no choice but to approve the use. Once they've banned petrol/diesel cars, shut down all fossil fueled power plants and realize that renewables are really too intermittent like they've repeatedly been told and there are no more rivers to dam, they be forced to go to the only non-carbon power source no matter the taste.
"The approvals process and lawsuits would likely be exactly the same as what it takes for a big power plant."
It really shouldn't be, and that's a legal process not a practical limitation. It will take political will, which seems utterly lacking at the moment.
I still want to see it looked at properly: ~100 motorway services, and ~300 off major A roads... Not all of them will be suitable, but many will be.
The advantages of the micro reactors, even over and above SMRs, is that their small size directly benefits their safety.
We know how these things operate, we've been building them into warships for decades, and they are particularly harsh environments. We don't have to make them particularly silent, or particularly small, or particularly long duration between refuelings, which keeps adding up to safer...
""I routinely see lines of cars waiting to fill up at petrol stations""
Yes, that's not hard to understand. The big reason is that every ICE vehicle needs to go to a filling station for fuel. None of them can be refueled at a person's home or office. They can't be refueled while parked at a train station or airport. It's a special stop to put liquid fuel into a vehicle and needs to be closely watched for safety. It's so much easier to install a charging post near a restaurant or cinema for people to use while they dine or watch a movie in comparison to liquid fuel.
"Well, they're dense, not necessarily flexible, but they're also terrible in many ways - their usage is highly inefficient. "
Please excuse me for pontificating in imperial units. Poor upbringing.
A US gallon of gasoline takes 7.46kWh of electricity to refine it from crude oil according to a study by the Argonne National Laboratories. That amount of power will push an EV 25 miles (give or take). My compact econobox gets 30mpg on average. That one gallon of gas is only giving me 5 more miles of range. As an engineer, I'd have to say that sucks. In 2023 and again in 2024 I have a long trip planned to go watch the dragon eat the sun where it would be a multi-charge trip. I don't care. It doesn't add any more days to the itinerary, just lengthens the travel day a bit while at the same time costing me less if I have an EV to do the trip with. Instead of sleeping in a tent this time, I'll be able to afford the rapacious hotel costs along the line of totality and afford enough beer to make me unworried about my horrible dancing and poor singing voice as I inflict both on others watching the event.
Pontificate in whatever units you like...
7.5kW is closer to 30 miles (my running assumption for a reasonably achievable car efficiency is 4m/kWh, if I can get that in an MG ZS then it's widely achievable).
That same gallon contains over 33 kWh of energy available through combustion.
UK average (RAC 2020) is just under 40 mpg, so that's ~1.2 m/kWh (using a heavily refined fuel).
Though you could reasonably expect a more modern small vehicle to get 50 or 60 mpg, as high as 1.5-1.8m/kWh (of course a more modern, smaller, EV will also do better than 4m/kWh).
"That same gallon contains over 33 kWh of energy available through combustion."
True, but an internal combustion engine throws most of that away as heat. The numerous rotating mechanical parts rob more energy through friction.
Many hybrids do much better than my older car. There remains the fact that it takes a fair whack of leccy to refine oil that could push an EV a good distance down the road. If your car can go 4mi/kWh, that's pretty good. If you live someplace with lots of hills and/or just can't keep your foot out of it, you could get less. I've seen some "city" EV's with smaller (lighter) batteries that do better. There is a balance between range and efficiency. Most people don't get that and cry for an EV that's going to travel 600mi on one charge not understanding that the other 51 weeks of the year their efficiency due to that big pack is going to suck.
For every 25-30 miles travelled by EV, that's 7.5kWh that isn't being directed at oil refineries. When people ask where the power will come from to charge an EV, there's one place they don't consider.
In this rural area there are many houses which have no off-road parking. There is no possibility of them being able to provide home charging. Can people charge them at work? That means a charging point at every car parking space because the driver would need assurance that a charger would be available and first come first served isn't going to work if, say 10% of spaces have chargers. And that would not be off-peak charging.
And your issue is... that you need lots of chargers?
That's not a significant issue.
And given that they're at a workplace... where the car will be for ~8 hours at a time, and that the average car does 20m/day they'll need to supply ~7kWh a day (got to build up some spare for the weekends) so 900W.
Minimal charge speed according to the spec is 1400W, so let's use that and just stagger the cars through the day.
Or of course you could not supply 100% of spaces, and have a scheduled system in place. We used to go and move vehicles around the car park for people quite frequently twenty years ago - wasn't hard then, and could be done easily now.
7kW will provide you with more than week's driving each day, so you only need 20% of the spaces to have a charger, less any for those who can charge elsewhere...
No off road parking isn't necessarily an issue either - kerb side charging is nearly as easy as workplace charging. Simple RFID tag to allow the user to be identified would work well in either scenario.
Oh I forgot, you're in a rural area with exclusively terraced housing, no parking anywhere, and everyone commutes at least a hundred miles each way.
Because of planning policies local mass employment (mills) is extinct. Commuting is likely to be several tens of miles each way. And good luck getting most workplaces to install an adequate number of chargers and then getting staff to be responsible about sharing them.
"Commuting is likely to be several tens of miles each way."
I know there will be areas with longer than usual commutes, but the typical commute in this country is much less than ten miles (surveys suggest 75% of people have a commute under ten miles, and many of those over 10 miles will be taking the train).
"good luck getting most workplaces to install an adequate number of chargers"
Should be a requirement on any new site, and retrofitting should be strongly encouraged (and yes I do mean than it should be financially encouraged). It's really not that hard.
Rather than benefits to bricks, maybe a "right to install chargers" should be added.
"getting staff to be responsible about sharing them"
You must work with a complete bunch of imbeciles if you don't think that you'll be able to share with colleagues.
"You must work with a complete bunch of imbeciles if you don't think that you'll be able to share with colleagues."
There's always one that's learned to be a total diva when it comes to their "needs". Too many times people just give them what they want to shut them up instead of a hearty slap.
"Or of course you could not supply 100% of spaces, and have a scheduled system in place. We used to go and move vehicles around the car park for people quite frequently twenty years ago - wasn't hard then, and could be done easily now."
The EVSE (it's not really a charger) for level 2 tells the car how much power it can provide to the on-board charger. There are fleet units that can be managed so cars can plug in and power is allocated according to how many cars are requesting power vs maximum supply. As cars finish, another car can start. When there aren't too many cars needing to be charged, each one can be supplied with more power. It's not that hard to install more managed points as the wiring doesn't get too crazy in size. There can also be a pay-for-power option for those that really need recharging right away. Shuffling cars might be too distracting for some employers to put up with unless it's only done midday at lunch.
"In this rural area there are many houses which have no off-road parking."
Rural? Many? Really? You'd expect less off-street parking in a dense big city.
If you have 250 miles of range and travel 20 miles M-F for work, you may be able to charge while doing your weekly shop and still be just fine if there is a fast charger available. Since you wouldn't have a burning need to charge Every night, getting a charging space every few days would be adequate.
EV's aren't a drop-in replacement for everybody. If you live in a flat with no off-street parking, you may want to buy a really cheap ICE car to get around and save money to be able to move. At some point the government is going to make is very expensive, nigh on impossible to drive an ICE. You'll be stuck at that point if you can't move to someplace where you can make an EV work for your needs. It will be an eBike and monthly pass, not your own car.
"If you live in a flat with no off-street parking, you may want to buy a really cheap ICE car to get around and save money to be able to move"
Why would it have to be ICE?
There are vanishingly few places where an EV can't be at least as convenient as an ICE vehicle. And if you live in a flat with no parking then pretty much by definition you live in a highly densely populated urban area. Blocks of flats I have lived in or visited have had off street parking, it might not currently be dedicated per resident, but there has (almost?) always been off street parking.
Why would you switch to a vehicle that you had to go to the chemist to get fuel for when there are oat deliveries every day from a choice of three vendors?
EVs are the future of personal transport. I'd love e-bikes to make up a large part of that, but that's actually a completely different issue.
Public transport also needs to be properly funded, and equipped to deal with the needs of the public, rather than shareholders.
There are plenty of solutions, but burning proverbial dinosaurs doesn't need to be one of them.
Well, they're dense, not necessarily flexible, but they're also terrible in many ways - their usage is highly inefficient.
You continue to make assumptions and extrapolate from your own experience. Really, scaling up the current EV infrastrucure to that needed for the millions of vehicles in modern countries will bankrupt us and that's without the subdsidies. Oh, and parked cars are a great example of underused assets…
It's not hydrocarbons that are inefficient, it's combustion engines. This is why, I expect a move towards hydrocarbons driving turbines providing power for immediate use and battery buffering, though it would also be nice to fuel cells. Hydrocarbons provide high energy density storage that is easy to transport. We won't get 100% in the cycle from renwable electricity to hydrocarbon to electricity but we don't need to, we just need to displace burning fossil fuels.
>>Well, they're dense, not necessarily flexible, but they're also terrible in many ways - their usage is highly inefficient.
>You continue to make assumptions and extrapolate from your own experience. Really, scaling up the current EV infrastrucure to that needed for the millions of vehicles in modern countries will bankrupt us and that's without the subdsidies. Oh, and parked cars are a great example of underused assets…
Not really all that many assumptions - they're dense but using that energy is highly wasteful, that's just the physics of the matter.
I don't see what infrastructure is going to bankrupt us, the grid is already well developed, and can carry alot of energy around the country (and further).
Parked cars are indeed massively underused assets, but you know what a parked EV can be? Part of a distributed grid scale battery (i.e. not unused).
Hydrocarbons are seriously inefficient, even in "good" thermal engines.
Hydrogen is notoriously difficult to store and transport (though there are some interesting ideas in progress which could seriously change that). It probably will have a role to play for HGV sized vehicles (which can relatively easily afford the additional space and complexity) - but I don't see it as a significant contributor to our addiction to cars.
Things like Al/Air batteries (which have a "charge cycle" efficiency comparable with an ICE) look morel likely to be a useful range extender device for cars - they should be relatively cheap to implement (since it's just another power source in the HV electrical system).
"Dirtier" fuels (such as methane) exist, and are easier to store/transport, but I'm not aware of any really decent commercially viable cell designs yet.
"More importantly, taking as least twice as long to charge as to fill means needing twice as many chargers as fuel pumps to provide the same capacity."
That argument would only be valid if everybody was using a charging station. It's mediated by many people being able to charge at home/work and only rarely using a public charging station. Even some people that are parking on the street are starting to have options. I was just watching a show in EV's and there was a clever channel that could be installed across the pavement so cables aren't a tripping hazard. With street lighting being switched out to much lower energy LED lighting, there is surplus capacity that can be used to charge a street parked car with the proper cable set.
There is no place provisioned for the maximum power draw on a street. If everybody on a street was drawing the maximum their drop/panel could support, there would be problems. There are many strategies that can help with balancing the load. A good way is for cars to trickle charge overnight rather than charging as fast as the onboard inverter can support. You don't need your EV to charge in two hours if you plan not to need it for at least 10. For a draw that is half that of a kettle, most people would replace all of their used range every night.
About half my annual mileage is done within a few miles of home. The other half is done on holiday over a couple of weeks per year. I could easily live with an EV charged at home for the first half. For the second I'd need to have confidence in an infrastructure that would enable me to find and use a charger as conveniently as a normal petrol station. If we're talking about a 20 to 30 minute charge at a service station then it means that almost every place in the car park would need a charger so as to be sure of finding one. If we're talking about fast chargers at "filling stations" then we need a similar network to those currently selling petrol. That's the sort of infrastructure that's needed.
No - you don't want a fuel station model for electric charging.
Because fuel and electrons are fundamentally different. You don't want or need the same infrastructure.
You want a reasonable number of ultra fast "hubs" (as they seem to be calling them) on main routes (motorways essentially) where there are maybe 25 ultra rapid chargers (350kW) and 25 merely rapid (150kW) - these are great for long journeys, with massive grid connections, and sufficient capacity to handle high throughput.
You also want at least a few of the same levels of charger at most service stations in between (because not everyone will be passing a hub on their journey, and you might want to top off just before you turn off).
Then you want destination chargers *everywhere*
So on your holiday you go to the beach, and charge whilst you're there, you go to a restaurant and charge whilst you're there, if you're in a hotel then you charge whilst you're there. You go to a museum, a concert, a show, an activity centre, a theme park, any tourist attraction at all... you charge whilst you're there.
You don't need a handful of petrol stations in every town if you have destination chargers everywhere. You might have a few 50kW chargers at supermarkets etc... but they're not what you would be using outside of "emergencies".
Those destination chargers - that's a very substantial infrastructure that you've got to persuade everyone to build. I've seen one small hotel that had one charger but due to the awkward layout of the premises you'd need to be almost first in/last out to use it. Another, again with one charger. When I rolled up that happened to be the only parking space free so I ended up blocking it. Token charging points aren't going to cut it and 25 charger equipped places in a typical motorway service station will be tokenism. You're going to have to have a situation where nearly every parking space has a charging point so that those in desperate need of a charge can be assured of one being free.
The ultra-rapid filling station model might be the most practical.
But only a handful of chemists will ever want to supply petrol...
Don't get fixated on the solutions to a fundamentally different problem - you don't need specialist underground storage tanks for a flammable, volatile, liquid.
Building them is pretty expensive.
"You can support plenty of 300+kW chargers on the grid"
It also has to be understood that even cars that can charge at very high rates don't sustain those peaks for very long. DC fast charging stations often incorporate power sharing that matches what power service is supplied. One car could get 350kW, but if another plugs in at the same time, each car will get half and so on if the station can only support up to 350kW of power delivery.
I'm also seeing reports of some stations using battery backup so when they aren't using the entire supply to charge a car(s), the battery is topped up and can provide a certain amount of boost when needed. This means chargers can be installed in places that would otherwise require lots of new lines to be laid on.
"DC fast charging stations often incorporate power sharing that matches what power service is supplied. One car could get 350kW, but if another plugs in at the same time, each car will get half and so on if the station can only support up to 350kW of power delivery."
Most are 350kW each - no power sharing between chargers.
There are some dual capable units, but they are very much in the minority.
300kW can be sustained for a reasonable while, and this article was specifically about a battery technology which would allow for higher sustained rates - i.e. pull that 350kW for as long as you can.
"* Depending on the car, but more and more chargers are 350kW rated."
Yes, but few cars can charge that fast. The Hyundai Ionic 5 tops out at 228kW and can charge from 10-80% in less than 20 minutes. That's about the time for a comfort break and the purchase of beverages. A Chevy Bolt tops out at 50kWish so takes longer. Some 800v cars do a clever switching trick so they can use high current 400v chargers, but only get the best charging speeds on the newest chargers. You get what you get. I'd love a Niro or Kona EV. Those charge up to around 75kW. Since I'm not making frequent 1000km trips, any one of those cars would be fine if I could afford it. Most of my charging would take around 30s. I'd get home, plug in and let the car start charging when the off-peak tariff comes into effect. Paying a premium and having to go to a charging station isn't part of my normal plans. Yes, I'd have to stop for about 20 minutes with a Bolt when I come back from visiting my mother until the community she lives in installs some more chargers. If we go out to lunch, I can charge all I require while we dine.
Just below your quoted line:
"Hopefully the charging speeds supported by the basic models of cars will increase over time - there has been little point in putting in chargers over 100kW when most vehicles couldn't take more than 50, but there is a real push in the industry for 300kW+ sustained charging."
I wonder if manufacturers will start offering different charge speeds for different tiers of each model?
= Pick battery size
= Pick DC max rate
= Pick alloys
"I wonder if manufacturers will start offering different charge speeds for different tiers of each model?"
Of course. And they are drooling at the thought of the tiered monthly subscription fee they will be charging for each level of faster charge above the low standard rate.
"But in few years of use your fixed custom battery won't be looking so great"
During the meanwhile, the stealerships are claiming 10 years of battery life. Most of today's kids (shall we call them "Zoomers"?) seem to change their leased cars out 4-5 times in that time frame. If not more. So perhaps the short-sighted twits will actually fall for this scam[0]. I guess we'll find out.
For the record, I don't have a battery powered vehicle, and probably never will. I make my own ethanol and methanol, and have re-tuned my petrol powered fleet to run off this nearly free resource[1]. I'm just playing devil's advocate.
[0] The same Zoomers usually pay more money in RENT than they would on a mortgage, so we're not exactly talking about the most brilliant of generations here ...
[1] The alcohol fleet will also happily run on E85, if needs be.
[0] The same Zoomers usually pay more money in RENT than they would on a mortgage, so we're not exactly talking about the most brilliant of generations here ...
.
I think that whole Sub-Prime thing kinda dowsed young people's faith in getting a mortgage, even if they are paid enough to qualify, which is not always the case.
That goes for the whole of Credit Finance Late Capital.
Leasing is one use case where you don't really care about the battery as like you say you'll be rid of it before any noticeable degradation. Also seems to be a rather popular way for Joe Bloggs to get his hands on one of these cars.
I also don't have an EV, just a dirty diesel bought new in 2013 that happens to get around 90 UK MPG on my daily commute. I may take an EV as my next vehicle though, hopefully by that time the infrastructure will have improved to be able to supper this.
"[0] The same Zoomers usually pay more money in RENT than they would on a mortgage, so we're not exactly talking about the most brilliant of generations here ..."
This is due to the lack of education. It was the same decades ago when I was in school and hasn't improved. The lesson that isn't taught is that it doesn't matter how much your paycheck is every couple of weeks, but how much you have left at the end of each month. While many high paying positions are in large cities, those large cities are even more expensive to live in relation to the improved pay packet.
If you pay rent, every bit of money you hand over is completely lost every month. If you bought a home, even a cheap one and it never appreciated in value, you have a good chance of selling it down the road and will have lived rent-free to that point. Even if you sold the property for less, it still might have been a better deal than paying rent. Mates of mine that bought the worst home in a good neighborhood when we were young and fixed it up, did it again and again are now debt free in very nice homes where their grandkids can come visit. My home is paid for but I bought much later in life and it's nowhere near as nice and I'm a bit further out of town. Not to worry, I'm happy with what I have and glad I was able to get out of being on the rent merry-go-round. Household finances should be a mandatory requirement for the last two years of school. I see too many younguns putting money into a retirement savings account that ties that money up while making very little interest while at the same time carrying credit card debt and car loans that wipe out any interest they earn. They'd be way better off hiding the card and brining it out only for an emergency while putting money towards a home. Maybe that means taking the high paying job in the city while living cheap in somebody's closet for a few years. I was used to that from Uni so it wouldn't be that hard at that time. Once the down payment was earned for a home someplace reasonable, it would be time to buy a home and take a big pay cut while at the same time winding up with more money at the end of each month after bills.
Yeah - people understand this... but house price increases have far exceeded wage increases for decades.
Rental also makes you much more mobile, which is a benefit to many since there are few "jobs for life" any more...
If you buy and then move house then you pay about £5k for the privilege:
- nearly £4k in tax (stamp duty on the median house in the UK is £3750)
- about £1k in fees (conveyancing and searches cost ~850 - 1500 first site I found)
It doesn't take very many moves before you've cost yourself more than you could hope to have paid off in terms of the mortgage in the first decade - and that's important because that's probably the decade when a) money is tightest and b) you are likely to move... training, new jobs, life changes, possibly moving in with a partner, need more space than a one bed flat... each of those changes potentially costs you £5k
"Yeah - people understand this... but house price increases have far exceeded wage increases for decades."
So they've gone and signed up for a handful of online services that auto-pay from their bank account every month and stop off each morning for a cup of coffee that costs more than petrol liter for liter. They never learn to cook and spend a fortune on take-away.
I realize there are many cities around the world where the average wage earner will never be able to save fast enough to afford a down payment and will never qualify for the mortgage. It's the penalty box for people that never learned math and personal budgeting. Since they see they will never be able to afford to buy in that area, they piss away money that would be better saved. Instead, they'd be better off given the advice to look for someplace better to live where they do have a chance of buying their own home and to stop wasting money they are going to need if they ever get married, have kids and need to pay for braces, college, dance classes, football gear, etc.
Yes I realised I not sidestepped, just forget about that question.
If the battery was user-replaceable and there was a discount for taking home a pre-used good condition battery vs a brand new battery then I'd take the cheaper option. Others would pay for the shiny new battery. But battery swapping negates any initial battery investment.
Still the difference would be where for a micro-fee, think the cost of putting energy in to charge the battery plus the 'subscription' (not an ongoing thing, more the slight charge every time you use the service), you could swap out your battery for a charged battery of reasonable capacity for the life of your phone. Nothing's stopping you charging at home should you so wish, but when you're out & about, just stop in to any convenience store to get a comparable battery to yours that's pre-charged.
Think sodastream refills, you pay for the CO2 inside, and also pay for the initial bottle, and some of the fee you pay to swap out the bottle goes to ongoing costs above the cost of the CO2. You technically don't own the bottle, although if you melted it down for scrap metal nobody would care. This is similar to the battery, as CO2 bottles need regularly pressure testing and certifying. If you fully own your own bottle and take it to get refilled, then every so often you need to pay to get it pressure tested and certified. If you buy a used bottle, you'll potentially need to get it certified very soon (less value than a new bottle) - buy a new one and it's certified for the max period.
Would you accept a refilled sodastream bottle when 'buying' a new one, or demand a fresh out the factory, first-fill bottle when making the initial payment? Hint - there's no perceivable difference, and once you've exchanged it there's no difference at all.
Ditto, cheers!
CO2 helps when serving for a keg though, indeed some like to use the bought CO2 to carbonate in the keg, I'm happy to let the yeasties do that and just a small CO2 bottle to push out the beer for serving.
Of course this was just another comparison :)
"How about a batteries not included model. "
There have been a couple of manufacturers that had/have a leased battery option where you pay each month and if a battery you are using drops below a certain capacity, they fit a new one for you. Sounds great until you have a rough patch and can't pay your monthly battery rent or when the time comes to sell the car and any new owner would have to qualify and sign up for a similar plan. If the price has gone way up since the particular pack isn't used in new models, you may wind up with an unsellable car. Not everybody is going to keep their car until it's completely unserviceable and one hopes that isn't only 8 years from when it was new.
it's a matter of scale and how it's handled.
Battery replacement stations could work if :
- the battery is considered to be the fuel, and not a compnent of the car.
This would allow cars to be sold without batteries, even if a battery with enough charge to drive a bit
would be provided ( like the few liter of petrol/gas you get with a new car )
[ if I went in corporate talk I'd say the battery is not a CAPEX like the car, but an OPEX like the gas/petrol
for the car ]
- the battery format ist standarized globally and for all the cars
lets say 2 or 3 battery size depending on the car size, all car maker will have to use these sizes
- the battery connectivity to the cars is standardized globally for all the car models.
- the current petrol/gas stations would have to adapt and provide a battery swapping service.
the fee would be the cost of a battery charge along with a small overhead for equipment maintenance.
- the swapping stations would have to be sized large enough that at least one fully charged battery of each
size is available at any time.
- the battery swapping would preferably be an automated process.
from the user point of view :
your battery is getting low, you go to the station, choose the relevant battery size booth, pay for the battery swap, wait for the swap to be done, and then move on... and when that new battery gets low, you pull again at a station, rinse, repeat.
The whole battery change process can eventually be longer than refilling a tank, but if designed well it shouldn't be much longer.
Now I agree that there's a lot of *if*.
"Now, in reality, who's going to be first to DRM the battery to the car? <sigh>"
Tesla. Most everything that can be is already. I'm wondering about that circuit board that's inside the headlight housing of the Model 3, but not curious enough to shell out the money to find out.
"The whole battery change process can eventually be longer than refilling a tank, but if designed well it shouldn't be much longer."
Until the PFY at the swap stations doesn't quite get it right and a mating connector melts into a puddle of slag and you're stuck while a new connector is on backorder. When dealing with high voltage and high current connections, it's best not to cycle them unless absolutely necessary.
In addition to whatever technical problems exist with replaceable batteries, there's this economic problem.
A large part of the cost of an EV is the battery. And batteries get tired over time -- especially if they are abused by whatever it is their particular chemistry doesn't tolerate well. Too many quick charges. Too many deep discharges, etc. So if you haul into the charging station with your brand new Whizbang Dominator and swap out the battery. You may get out of there in a few tens of seconds. But if you've you've swapped a brand new battery for a battery that is near end of life and worth a tiny fraction of the battery you exchanged for it, you're also leaving with your wallet many thousands of dollars/euros/pounds/drachma lighter.
Maybe there's a way around that, but I'm not sure what it is.
Oh yeah. And I doubt your new car warranty covers that replacement battery. Or any damage it might cause if it fails before your next swap.
You get credit for the capacity of the pack that's removed, and pay for the capacity of the pack that's inserted, plus the charge for the actual ... well, charge.
If actual effective capacity can be reliably measured quickly, then that becomes cost-neutral to the buyer. If the "refueling" stations can keep packs with a range of capacities in stock, then patrons can decide how much they want to pay to get packs in better or worse condition. Aside from that, it's a matter of preventing fraud, which isn't exactly a solved problem but is one we have to deal with for ICE fuels too.
As you can tell in other posts above, I'm not an EV evangelist, nor do I expect to ever own one; they're currently not suitable for my use case and I loathe pretty much all the available models, for reasons unrelated to the powertrain. But this particular problem – the arbitrage for swapping battery packs of varying quality – I think is solvable. (It would almost certainly require government regulation, though; I don't see the industry pursuing it, except in China for specific market segments.)
Biggest problem isn't peak demand - in many areas it's the network infrastructure will be the issue. This sort of demand is the equivalent of building a new small housing estate, which may require serious upgrades to the local substations etc.
...and for something that isn't used very much.
A large majority of EV users will charge their cars at home (or work, or the supermarket) where they can quite happily have a slowish charge that takes a few hours. The only real demand for 5/10 minute charges will be at motorway (or equivalent) charging points where people are on a long journey. And if you're putting several dozen of these on the same site you might as well install a mini-nuke next door.
In the UK, houses will have 60A fuses in older houses / flats and 100A in newer houses.
So in the best case and at 240VAC, that's 240 x 100A = 24kW peak for the whole house. There is no way that anyone will upgrade the whole grid to provide such large currents so there is no way anything like this will end up on domestic households, so its not a solution for the vast majority of potential customers. Notwithstanding the need for a whole bunch of new power stations (nuclear) to cope with the vastly increased loads for cars and domestic heating that is also supposed to be going on the same bits of copper wire in your house.
So, if its not in your house, then where ?
Would I want to go to a fuel station and have the same sort of crazy high power flowing into a couple of cars a lane away from the petrol / diesel pumps - no thanks. What about the heat generated during charging ? Will the car be driveable immediately after charging, or will the batteries need time to cool ?
I'd be interested to see what the lifespan of these batteries will be since we all know that phone batteries, tablets and laptops that use lithium batteries only have a 3-5 year span. So, what will the used car of the future look like with dead batteries that only go 20 miles or suddenly go from 100% to 10% in seconds.
You are correct, no one will be able to upgrade a home to supply such high energy.
However as the owner of a Tesla S I can assure you that no one would want to really simply because there is no need. It would be a waste of money. In almost all situations the daily use can easily be handled by existing home supply capability in developed countries. Apartment dwellers can have a problem because they may have to depend on charging away for where they live but overnight lower power charging would still be attractive it street level charging was provided.
The need for fast charging mostly only exists for the case of people doing long trips and that is real in that case but for most people infrequent.
"Apartment dwellers can have a problem"
Also those living without off-street parking or in terraced houses (running a cable across the pavement can be an issue if you can park outside your house, and if you have to park half-way down the street, it's a problem), modern developments with centralised "car parks" away from the houses, etc. :(
"(running a cable across the pavement can be an issue if you can park outside your house, "
Not anymore. There is a cable trench made to span pavements so cables from a home to a car on the street aren't a tripping hazard. Just saw that on TV. Very clever. I believe that the council was putting them in for free as a trial in addition to other sorts of solutions to charging when people don't have off-street parking.
There are already a lot of Petrol Stations with high power (350kW) chargers installed and operating.
A prime example is the BP station on the A4 Westbound at Hammersmith. There are at least 6 high power DC EV chargers there as well as traditional filling station pumps.
Even the BP station at Bagshot (A30) has two of these chargers a few feet from the petrol pumps.
Why not take a trip to one (while you are filling up with fossil fuel naturally) and see for yourself?
Petrol stations have been saying for ages that there can be no mobile phone use on the forecourt due to the perceived issues around RF and the possibility of sparks, yet at the same time, they allow the installation of hidden mobile phone masks within the forecourts that send the exact same signals, just at a higher power level, but those are apparently OK.
I'd be 900% confident that the risk of dirty great batteries being charged at high current and in close proximity to petrol vapour is a far higher risk. One spark due to a bad connection or something electronic releasing the magic smoke and suddenly there will be a lot more smoke.
Yes, I know that the electronics will be handling charge currents and ramping it down to 0 before a disconnect etc, but what about in fault conditions.
"that implies a charge rate of 360kW (about 50% more than Tesla's current biggest "superchargers")"
Electrify America chargers are rated up to 350kW. The downside is that it takes lots of copper in a really big power lead to charge that fast. With that much current, just a bit of corrosion or a bad connection and there is a puddle of melted stuff under the car.
Tesla keeps saying it is developing its own batteries in house and plans to use them in their vehicles. If this cell does what it claims, it will show that being super vertically integrated might be a big mistake. Every other EV maker will pivot to this type of cell for their battery packs without having to abandon a big pile of capital investment.
"Tesla keeps saying it is developing its own batteries in house"
Their last big innovation was increasing storage of each battery by 50%.
In a genius move they did it by making the battery 50% larger in volume.
the other changes in chemistry are pretty much pissing in the wind and make little difference.
As much as believing in magic is nice, basic chemistry limits actual reality.
Still no help for those who live in terraced housing i n UK. No cables across the pavement: parking nowhere near your home. Leccy installed c 1948 in the pavements so no upgrades there ( pie-in-the-sky charging pads embedded in the road)
Basically we ' plebs ' ( nod to B de Pfeffel J) are no longer supposed to have vehicles...unless you are lucky enough to live in Primrose Hill or Dulwich - in which cse you will be looked after...
The last few times I was back down in London, I noticed that the local council had upgraded the street lamps in a few of the streets near our flat -- the lamp posts are now slow charging points on the Ubitricity network. No need to stick a cable across the pavement to your house, still accessible if you're parked a couple of streets away. If your council isn't doing something like this, it's time to give them a prod.
Cable size can be managed by "step up" intelligent voltage control, like USB-PD. With USB, the current in the wires is limited by increasing the voltage, so that you never have to send more than 5A through the Type C connector's power wire (but you do it at 20V).
So the basic Tesla super-duper-charger provides 480VDC, so by the magic of Ohm, we can calculate that they're carrying up to 520A on those cables with the 250KW charging service. We can easily double that by using 1000VDC supplies, but now we have the step-down thermal losses to consider...
... but we're anchored to the ground infrastructure (by definition), so it's not unreasonable to consider a charging system that provides power _and_ a coolant loop, so heat dissipated by the charging circuit becomes the charger's problem, not the vehicle's.
(Tesla chargers mechanically lock the connector before becoming live, so the risks are controlled. Theoretically!)
I have a mental image of pulling into the service station, flipping your car upside down, opening the battery compartment, and pulling out & replacing 5000x AA batteries, one at a time.
And woe betide you if any of them are installed the wrong +/- way around.
Or if the little plastic lock tab that holds the battery cover closed should break.
Heh, yeah. But that *is* what a Tesla model S battery pack looks like, except 18650 instead of AA cells and 444 to a rectangular pack.
Unfortunately, it turns out the Enovix solid silicon electrode isn't amenable to packaging in any cylindrical format, which is why they're going after things that can take a prismatic battery (EVs, laptops, phones, smart glasses)
"I was just having a whinge in a comment on a different article the other day about how all these new "magic" batteries never seem to make it past the theory or lab stage."
So many of those technologies turn out not to scale very well or the uni students are trying to measure femto units and don't realize the noise is orders of magnitude more than the signal. I've had profs that would plant little engineering gems on tests where the answer would be something faster than light or hotter than the interior of our sun if you just blindly do the math and write down what's on the calculator readout.
I'll be convinced when these are sold to a major automaker, passed the tests and are inside cars on a dealer's lot.
That is 1000 charges from 0% to 100% which no one in their right mind does on a regular basis.
It is recommended that you charge from 10% to 80% when on long trips.
I never charge more than 60% when I'm doing local trips and 85% in preparation for a long journey.
My EV battery is almost 4 years old and has lost 5% of its usable capacity. Slow charging (like at home) can extend the life of the cells.
Yes, on a long trip, that's exactly what I want to do – cut my range by 20%. The future is looking bright indeed.
Now, if someone would sell a sensible hybrid with just an electric powertrain and onboard ICE generation rather than a ton of batteries, and it didn't have a fucking touchscreen and it didn't phone back to the manufacturer, I might be interested.
"That is a very low number of charges, which means it needs to be replaced every year or two, depending on your mileage and the size of vehicle."
There are 365 days in a year. Charging from flat to full every day would be a bit more than 2.7 years. Many EV's have a range around 250 miles which calculates to 250,000 miles. I'm not taking into account degradation or other variables. My current car is 16 years old with 230k on the odometer. I don't see that 1,000 charges is all that low unless the capacity at charge 990 is only 5% of new. Most often, manufacturers use around 80% capacity as a cut off point. BTW, 80% on a 60kWh battery is still going to weld two pieces of metal together very quickly. The battery would have a decent resale value even if it isn't that great in the car anymore.
People moan about the amount of damage to the environment caused by cryptocurrency, but think on the amount of power needed to charge all the cars in the world (#cars x #total miles travelled x kw/mile.) Where do we get that all that power from? Not from your solar panels when half the world is under cloud.
Electric cars, while a neat idea, are a cul-de-sac technology unless an infinite supply of free electricity can be tapped into.
If you are still using fossil in your vehicle, ignore the fossils who are dictating we all go electric and wait for the development of fuel cells, which can be swapped out without people whittling on about getting an old one in place of new. Here's a glimpse of what might be...
https://www.amazon.co.uk/2034-UnEarthed-Robert-Wingfield-ebook/dp/B0B1GG2J2D
"People moan about the amount of damage to the environment caused by cryptocurrency, but think on the amount of power needed to charge all the cars in the world"
The power is already being used. It's called refining crude oil into transportation fuels. You expect that each new owner of an EV is exchanging travel in an ICE. That means that the leccy that's going into the EV is not being used to refine oil into petrol/diesel.
It would be interesting to find a study from somewhere like California where there is a higher than average number of EVs (or so I understand). I would like to know if there has been a drop in petrol sales and if there is a measurable difference in electricity usage since there are refineries in the state. It might not yet be something that can't be teased out of the Whole General Mish Mash yet.
New battery technologies are unlikely to be revolutionary, marginal increases in capacity and more rapid charging, perhaps more duty cycles. They can only hold so much energy until they are no longer a fire risk but an explosion risk and a big explosion at that.
A more promising way to extend range is by using what power there is more efficiently. Modern motors have really helped there but the next step is to improve regenerative braking and other ways to harvest waste energy. That and more consideration to aerodynamics could in time increase range by 50%.
"Modern motors have really helped there but the next step is to improve regenerative braking and other ways to harvest waste energy. That and more consideration to aerodynamics could in time increase range by 50%."
I don't see that there is much more margin left in either of those. Using Supercaps for the regenerative braking and re-acceleration might be something to look at. Those caps can charge and discharge safely at much higher rates than Li batteries. They just aren't very energy dense in comparison when charged.
I can see lots more improvements in the entire electrical system. EV's can wind up being a major component in making intermittent renewables more useful and for grid backup. The easiest way to do that is make it financially attractive. Software is the easiest part. If many cars are plugged into even lower power charging stands, the amalgamation can be very significant. Owners would outline how much power they are willing to sell from their car for a certain payment and the price they'd pay for charging in the wee hours.
To see what's possible you need to look at racing, mainly F1 and Formula E.
Gen 3 Formula E cars for the 2023 season will have no rear brakes, the regenerative system must provide enough braking on it's own.
While the Gen2 could regenerate up to 250kW, the Gen3 increases this dramatically to 600kW....
... a typical consumer-grade road EV will offer around 60kW of regeneration ‡
Would not be surprised if Gen 4 or 5 lose the front brakes too.
‡ https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesmorris/2022/05/07/formula-1-could-be-all-electric-by-2035-says-fomula-e-boss/
This is not as good as another battery tech, aluminum graphene.
https://graphenemg.com/energy-storage-solutions/aluminum-ion-battery/
It can take a 100 percent charge from 0 percent in 10 minutes, has 3 times the power density of lithium batteries, ie existing EVs with a same-size Al battery would have a 1000 mile range, and shows a 1 percent degredation in storage after 7000 charges. And, it has no problems with heat or cold temps, nor is it a fire risk. As soon as they start production, I'll start looking seriously at getting an EV. 1000 miles of range, there goes my range anxiety.
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