[HN Gopher] Ford's answer to EV supply chain hell: Cheaper batte...
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Ford's answer to EV supply chain hell: Cheaper batteries
Author : elsewhen
Score : 133 points
Date : 2022-07-24 05:44 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.axios.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.axios.com)
| Animats wrote:
| More useful story with less paywall: [1]
|
| [1] https://financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/ford-to-buy-
| cheap...
| gandalfian wrote:
| Following the story of a family who bought an eight year old ford
| ev. $11,000. Needs a new battery, $14,000 plus labour and isnt
| actually available because Ford have discontinue it. A bit scary.
| https://www.ntd.com/battery-replacement-of-familys-ev-ford-f...
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| That's almost a prototype unit, which I would expect to be
| difficult to repair.
| witheld wrote:
| I don't think heavier batteries with less battery life are gonna
| do much for Americans.
|
| Not unless we can get into small vehicles real quick- and given
| that the chicken tax has been imposed by executive order since
| 1964 I don't see that happening.
| sofixa wrote:
| I don't see how a tariff on larger vehicles means that the US
| market can't switch to smaller vehicles. Isn't it even the
| opposite because smaller cheaper cars can be directly imported
| from overseas? I agree the US market is incapable of switching
| to smaller cars in the near future, but i doubt the Chicken Tax
| has much to do with it.
| witheld wrote:
| The chicken tax is a tax on small trucks, not large ones
| sofixa wrote:
| For me a small car is a three door coupe like the Renault
| Zoe, not a "small" truck.
| deepdriver wrote:
| For others who didn't know:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax
| hughes wrote:
| This is one of the stupidest things I've ever seen
| missedthecue wrote:
| _" To circumvent the tariffs, imported Ford vehicles replace
| rear windows with metal panels and remove the rear seats and
| seat belts. The removed parts are shredded and recycled in
| Ohio."_
|
| What an unbelievable waste. Why hasn't this cold-war relic
| been long abolished?
| ehnto wrote:
| I think the smaller EVs currently on the market can fill a
| niche in America for city commuters, but only if they're cheap,
| and I think you'd be stretching their limits for faster highway
| commuting or longer travel. The sedan sized EV is I think the
| smartest choice for EVs in the American market, but they're
| still too expensive.
|
| Plug in series hybrids might be a good stop-gap, as they're
| cheaper and solve some of the range and size issues current EVs
| have. You can have a smaller car, still capable of good speed
| and range, and at half to a third of the cost of an equivalent
| performance EV.
|
| For anyone not aware of the term, a series hybrid is an EV
| drivetrain that has a smaller battery and an auxiliary petrol
| generator onboard to fill the battery if it gets low, or you
| demand more power from it. At first thought, that sounds
| ridiculous, but we're talking about compromises to fit
| specialty requirements here, and in that context they make a
| lot of sense. (also good EV conversion potential, since all you
| do is upgrade the battery and ditch the petrol engine once
| battery prices make sense)
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| The main reason those cheaper EVs are not widely available
| yet is that the more expensive vehicles are more lucrative
| and the whole market is supply constrained. So, most
| manufacturers are just churning out big expensive SUVs as
| fast as they can and are allocating all their battery
| supplies to that because they make more profit on those. As
| the market continues to double in size for the next few
| decades, inevitably, they'll start churning out
| cheaper/smaller/lighter vehicles as well. Basically, the
| market is far from saturated yet so that might take a few
| years.
|
| Hybrids have a role in the market for the brief period of
| time that battery production capacity is not large enough yet
| to replace them with cheaper EVs. But they are inherently
| more complex and costly to manufacture and drive. So, that's
| not going to last long.
| wongarsu wrote:
| It's not ridiculous at all, past a certain size basically all
| diesel vehicles are diesel-electric, meaning they run diesel
| engines to produce electricity to run electric motors.
|
| All diesel trains do this to avoid needing giant gearboxes,
| mining trucks use it to cut weight, modern ships use it to
| enable articulating motors.
|
| Now we are slowly reaching the point where it becomes
| desirable even for car-sized vehicles.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Price and performance are all that matters. Americans like big
| cars but they also like cheap cars. So, a lot of the big cars
| on the road aren't necessarily very good cars. They just look
| big. Because size is the key selling point. Americans buy the
| biggest car they can afford; not the best or the most
| economical car.
|
| How do you make a big car move further? Simple, you put a
| bigger battery in it. Those nice trucks that Ford is producing
| now come with enormous batteries. The main issue with that is
| that it drives up the cost and reduces the market size. So,
| Ford is doing what Tesla is doing: find cheaper/heavier
| batteries and offer the same product with less range in the
| lower price segments and reserve the premium batteries for the
| more expensive models. That way they can sell big cars to
| people that want to buy the biggest car they can afford. Never
| mind it will only go for 150 miles or so. You want 300+? Buy a
| better car. With a lot of the EVs in the market, you can spend
| tens of thousands of dollars on extended range versions. The
| difference is mainly the battery size and weight.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| how did that chinese dry wall work out during the 2000s housing
| boom?
| curiousgal wrote:
| > _Ctrl - F recycle_
|
| > _0 matches_
|
| It feels like we are trading one poison for another from a
| climate change perspective. Just passing down the buck.
| dv_dt wrote:
| Not sure what your ctrl-f is hooked to:
|
| https://brandessenceresearch.com/blog/top-5-lithium-ion-batt...
| Gustomaximus wrote:
| TheLoafOfBread wrote:
| You are correct. Nobody is recycling LFP, because there is
| nothing valuable to recycle.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Actually, the vast majority of LFP batteries are still
| perfectly fine and not in any need of recycling. There's
| indeed nothing to recycle yet. At least not a lot. And it
| will be some time before that starts changing.
|
| Recycling of failing batteries and discarded cells that did
| not survive quality control in the factory is of course a
| thing. These don't end up in land fills. The materials inside
| them are way to valuable for that.
| tuatoru wrote:
| Recycling is a last resort.
|
| The mantra goes "reduce, re-use, recycle". In that order.
|
| Recycling is a last resort. Please don't jump to it first.
| That's what people who want to virtue-signal do, not what smart
| people do.
|
| Electric cars definitely cause less harm to the natural
| environment and people's health wellbeing than fossil fuel
| powered cars, so "reduce" is covered, even if not optimally.
|
| People are also definitely re-using lithium batteries.
|
| Since lithium batteries are a new thing, there is not yet a
| great enough flow of worn-out batteries to justify recycling at
| industrial scale as yet. Those as exist are being stockpiled
| for this, though. And a lot of R&D work is being done to set up
| for recycling.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Each kilogram of battery in an EV removes a need for about a
| 100kg of gasoline.
|
| I'm sure they'll be recycling those batteries in about 25 years
| when they'll be starting to wear out, but even if they don't
| we're still leaning hard on the "reduce" in the three R's
| mantra.
| cjdell wrote:
| I'm not sure why we aren't making EVs with small but
| _upgradeable_ batteries.
|
| Like for example a $20k car with a 10kWh "good enough for now"
| starter battery that can be bought today. Still good enough for
| 90% of trips and upgradable to 50kWh with additional after market
| battery modules should the user decide. As simple as upgrading
| the RAM on an (old) laptop.
| ZephyrOhm wrote:
| Profit motive. Planned obsolescence and the need to buy another
| within a certain time period.
| NullPrefix wrote:
| We already have upgradeable ICE engines. How legal is it to
| swap a more powerful engine from the same model car? Car
| companies hate that sort of thing because anything that extends
| the life of a used car directly translates into a lost new car
| sale
| bonzini wrote:
| 10 kWh is less than 40 miles / 60 km. It's good enough for
| grocery shopping but it would be akin to always running with
| your fuel light on and with 1/20th of the fueling stations (ok
| you would charge at nighttime). I wouldn't be comfortable with
| that unless I am going to pay for it half of an equivalent ICE
| car.
| hattmall wrote:
| That's like 80lbs of LFP batteries, I really don't see why
| there isn't some easy way to add this to existing ICE cars.
| bonzini wrote:
| Retrofitting is a completely different story, I agree.
| kissiel wrote:
| I've used a PHEV with 40km of range on electric. It was 100%
| enough for doing daily driving. I would love to see a small
| town-oriented not shitboxy EV that's cheaper than
| fiat500/mini-e.
| bonzini wrote:
| Sure, but it's plugin so there's a backup. The parent
| didn't mention plugin, and a pure electric with a 10 kWh
| battery might not even be enough to pick up someone at the
| airport or to visit a friend in the weekend.
| traviswt wrote:
| Batteries are limited by charge/discharge C rates, which is
| relative to the size of the pack. Which means not only would
| your range go down, but so would performance and charge speed.
|
| You can push batteries harder, but they'll generate more heat
| and degrade faster (lower cycle life). This ends up
| counterintuitively in a higher long term cost of ownership.
|
| Good news is C rates are getting better over time.
| mtrimpe wrote:
| I think we should start thinking in battery cargo trailers.
| When do you want extra range and battery? When you're going on
| holiday. What do you want apart from extra range when you're
| going on holiday? Extra storage space!
|
| So why not just start selling battery cargo trailers which can
| provide your main car with extended range when needed?
|
| It's also much easier to swap and rent out physically,
| financially and emotionally than your main car.
| quesera wrote:
| Most drivers can't handle trailers. The roads would be so
| much more dangerous if trailers were commonplace.
|
| Trailer hookups can be legitimately difficult. Even in the
| simplest case, they can be time-consuming.
|
| Humans are notoriously bad at backing up with a trailer
| attached.
|
| Heavy trailers (batteries) are extra dangerous -- tail-
| wagging can be scary!
|
| Cars with trailers don't fit in parking spaces.
|
| ...
|
| A replaceable battery has to be in the underpan of a car. Or
| split across several battery modules, but keeping the center
| of gravity low, and between the axles.
| tln wrote:
| This makes a lot of sense, except that driving with a trailer
| isn't very enjoyable. I bet the aerodynamics would suffer too
| Gustomaximus wrote:
| Have you seen the video of the bike battery swap.
|
| https://youtu.be/yGwmPcClWrE
|
| I wonder if a good solution is a smaller fixed battery for
| lower cost then "range extenders" like this for the bike you
| can swap in for longer journeys or a topup on a busy day type
| thing.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Not only that, but the weight of EVs is a huge toll on the
| infrastructure, esp. in more historic centers
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| Compare the weight of a Tesla Model 3 SR (most popular
| version) and a BMW 3 Series (its most comparable model to the
| Tesla Model 3). Weight difference is negligible.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| BMW sold 50,000 3-series in 2021 whereas Tesla sold
| 900,000+ Model 3/Ys.
|
| Compare the Model 3 to a Camry (300k units), Civic, (260k
| units), Corolla (250k units), or Accord (200k units), and
| you'll see the lightest model 3 available weighs more than
| the heaviest trims of all four, and the 3 is on the lighter
| side of 250+ mile EVs by a pretty decent margin.
|
| Is the BMW causing just as much road damage as a Model 3?
| yes.
|
| Does the weight of the average sedan go up substantially as
| we convert to EV? Absolutely
| verisimi wrote:
| It's almost as if EV is just an excuse to get the consumer to
| spend waaay more than is needed, wasting all the energy in
| production in producing cars that cannot be upgraded, than
| about about minimising the environmental impact. And that's
| because it is.
|
| Corporations do not care about the environment, but they do
| know a good story when they see it. If they can get you to buy
| the same car multiple times, this is great business for them.
| If they can lobby governments to encourage the scrapping of old
| but serviceable cars, eg by fining non-EVs for their emissions,
| that means you will be forced to buy sooner.
|
| It's all business. Neither corporations nor the governments
| that service corporations care about either the people or the
| environment. I wish people would recognise this fact, but
| corporate-government schooling/science/culture has everyone
| believing that government is here to help!
| noja wrote:
| Like these mopeds with one or two swappable batteries
| https://electrek.co/2021/11/01/gogoro-electric-scooters-swap...
| msadowski wrote:
| This idea reminds me of LiGo batteries
| (https://ebikes.ca/product-info/grin-products/ligo-
| batteries....).
|
| I think when it comes to the car this idea could be viable but
| I think the risk is potential change with the weight
| distribution. You could probably have some weights that are
| replaced with batteries when you upgrade to keep the weight
| constant but then you are reducing your range.
| iasay wrote:
| I would prefer to see this because the current ability to
| replace batteries in EVs is crap.
|
| I've owned enough second hand laptops to know what second hand
| EV ownership is going to feel like.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| You're commenting on an article about LFP batteries which
| have an expected lifespan of about 750,000 kilometers.
| iasay wrote:
| When they deliver them and have been on the market for 10
| years we have data. Until then it's vapourware.
| adrianN wrote:
| Laptop batteries and EV batteries have a completely different
| performance profile. The data we have suggests that the
| battery will retain 80% of its maximum capacity for about as
| long as the rest of the car is expected to survive.
| ngrilly wrote:
| Is it mainly because cars are idle/off most of the time,
| unlike laptops and smartphones, or is there something else
| at play here?
| cjdell wrote:
| Big batteries have much more sophisticated battery
| management systems that are designed to be as kind as
| possible to the cells. Also they reserve a capacity of
| 10% on either side, leaving 80% usable capacity available
| to the user. Li-Ion batteries don't like being fully
| charged or fully discharged.
|
| Also due to their capacity most EVs are charged at about
| 0.1C whereas phones (especially with rapid chargers) are
| charged anywhere between 1C and 3C.
| iasay wrote:
| You miss the point.
|
| Most people don't buy new cars. Most people buy second hand
| vehicles. They now risk degraded batteries and a huge
| incidental cost.
|
| My car cost me PS5000 second hand. The cheapest EV battery
| replacement here is PS12,500. I could write that car off
| twice for the price of a battery and still have enough
| money to go on holiday.
|
| When you buy the bottom end of the second hand EV market
| which is realistically what most people will have to spend
| on, you're looking at the 160 mile range leaf. With an 80%
| battery that's 128 miles of range. Which is near useless
| for the average user. I couldn't even drive to see my
| mother in it without charging twice on the way.
|
| I will not own an EV as the incidental risk trade off is
| too high and the up front cost of a new EV is too high.
| Peanuts99 wrote:
| Most journeys (80%+) are under 15 miles.
| princeb wrote:
| > 80% battery that's 128 miles of range
|
| i know i am not an average user but that's like a month
| of driving for me.
| rightbyte wrote:
| > 128 miles of range. Which is near useless for the
| average user
|
| Maybe if that is your only car. As a commuter or grocery
| car it would be fine.
| iasay wrote:
| Why would you want a car that can be used only for those
| tasks leaving you to seek other forms of transport for
| leisure and family?
|
| The main positive factor of vehicle ownership is
| destination and route flexibility and if you trade that
| away then the advantage is gone.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| We have two combustion cars, a Corolla and an Outback.
| The Corolla gets everyday use, the Outback goes on long
| trips or if I need to haul some furniture.
|
| An EV to replace the Corolla would be ideal. Perfect spot
| for this scenario.
| rightbyte wrote:
| The main cost for cheap 2nd hand cars is the fuel in my
| experience. So you can have a cheap fuel commuter car and
| a "real" car for trips and towing your boat.
|
| Requires parking for two cars though. But since we are
| talking about an EV it requires a house anyways since
| most apartments have no charging.
| iasay wrote:
| Yeah but you can manage the fuel within your cash flow.
| Difficult to get credit and manage the purchase of a
| large expensive car. And having two cars is too expensive
| as well.
| rightbyte wrote:
| True. The setup kinda requires that you need two cars in
| the first place.
| jsjohnst wrote:
| > And having two cars is too expensive as well.
|
| Maybe so, but the average American family has about 2
| cars. Lots of sources for that, but here's one from top
| of search results:
|
| https://housegrail.com/how-many-cars-does-the-average-
| americ...
| iasay wrote:
| America is not the world and is not the entire market.
| qwytw wrote:
| Some families have to 2, 3 or even 4 cars. So it might
| not be such a bad idea.
| wpearse wrote:
| My EV is 1/10th of the cost to run and maintain than my
| diesel car. I'm more than happy to spend an extra 20-30
| min charging on a 4 hour drive when I choose to drive the
| EV.
|
| My diesel has also done just over 340,000km and it's
| pretty shot. Hard to start on cold mornings and I've had
| to sort out some leaky injectors and seized joints on the
| driveshaft. There's another couple of hundred thousand
| kilometres left at best.
|
| The EV is coming up to 100,000km and it stills drives
| just as spritely as the day I got it. The battery is
| showing 100% state of health and I'm convinced it'll
| happily do a million kilometres or more.
| NickNameNick wrote:
| Replacing major components of an internal combustion
| vehicle will frequently cost more than the car is worth.
|
| That's usually the cause of scrapping a vehicle in places
| where structural rust didn't get it first.
|
| What would it cost to replace the engine or gearbox of
| your car?
| iasay wrote:
| They do below a certain point yes. But at that point you
| just buy another one and drive it until the engine falls
| out. This is how most people operate.
|
| On my vehicle an engine costs about PS1275 to put a
| refurb in it. Gearbox about PS550.
|
| There is no rust anywhere on my 8 year old vehicle.
|
| People run like this out of financial necessity. They
| don't have enough income to run an EV.
| dfadsadsf wrote:
| May be UK is especially cheap for car repair but costs
| you mention are unrealistic for major repairs on those
| components. I had gearbox problems on 10 year old car and
| independent mechanic suggested to sell car to scrap yard
| - in his opinion trying to fix it will end up costing
| more than car is worth. It was before Covid inflated used
| car prices though.
|
| From quick check in google: If you are extremely lucky,
| you'll get your transmission replacement completed for
| $2,500 all in. If yours is one of the more expensive
| types, it could easily range to $6,000 or even more.
| mmaurizi wrote:
| So batteries on EVs generally don't fail dramatically,
| they slowly lose range over time.
|
| So someone buying a used EV will presumably buy something
| with enough range for them to get around, and then over
| time if they notice the range starting to decline to the
| point that it might be an issue, they'll have some time
| to save up & trade in their car for a better one. Their
| current car won't be worthless on the used market and
| someone who doesn't have as large of range requirements
| (e.g. a 2nd car for commuting) will still buy it.
|
| There are other issues that can prevent an EV from
| charging at all, but they have usually cheaper fixes than
| a whole battery pack replacement like you're talking
| about.
| turtlebits wrote:
| EVs aren't for everyone, especially if you have long
| range requirements. My daily work commute is under 6
| miles round trip.
|
| That said, 20% degradation after 10 years isn't a huge
| deal for me. I'm sure in that time, battery
| replace/refurbishment will be much cheaper. There is a
| company in Oregan that will replace a 40kwh Leaf pack for
| $7000 .
| jsjohnst wrote:
| > With an 80% battery that's 128 miles of range
|
| Sounds perfect for the average American as a daily
| commuter / errands car. Yes, no road trips without
| inconvenience, but that still doesn't make it useless, it
| makes it a great secondary car instead.
| tzs wrote:
| > The data we have suggests that the battery will retain
| 80% of its maximum capacity for about as long as the rest
| of the car is expected to survive.
|
| How long is the rest of the car expected to survive?
|
| I rarely do long range driving, and my commute was short
| for years (a couple miles each way) for about a decade
| before we switched to work from home a couple years before
| the pandemic, and I'm not interested in travel so my usage
| is not going to up much when I retire in a few years. I
| anticipate a need for at most 100k over the rest of my
| life, which almost certainly will be less than 25 years.
|
| Would a current EV be likely be able to handle that with
| just reasonable maintenance?
|
| I'm currently driving a 2006 Honda CR-V that I bought new
| and could probably reasonably keep driving another 10-15
| years. That's what I want out of an EV.
| ulfw wrote:
| ...except that this 'RAM' would weigh hundreds of kilos more
| and completely and utterly change driving dynamics but yea
| sure.
| tokamak-teapot wrote:
| I'd love a car with a tiny battery for 99% of the time when I'm
| just driving locally and the ability to have an extra, large
| battery that can be slotted in when I want to make a longer
| trip. With only the short range battery most of the time, my
| car's weight is low and efficiency high.
|
| Maybe I could keep that battery in my house and use it to store
| solar electricity most of the time. It seems like it should be
| possible to design a system for slotting it in that doesn't
| require me to physically lift its weight.
|
| I'd also be happy to drive into somewhere local that rents me
| that long range battery and slots it in with machinery designed
| for the purpose.
| hattmall wrote:
| Or you just rent the battery for the trip. Sort of like
| propane tank exchanges. Drive to the station add a 600 mile
| battery, drive somewhere, swap or charge it and drive back.
| Most people would only need 40/50 miles of range 90% of the
| time. And that range could charge very rapidly as well.
| rvdginste wrote:
| I don't know if any company is exploring what you are
| mentioning, but battery swapping for electrical scooters
| (Gogoro) is in common use in Taiwan. Instead of you charge
| your scooter, you drive to a battery swap station and
| exchange your empty battery for a full one. see [1].
|
| But some companies are also investigating battery swap
| stations for cars. So, you might not be able to swap a short-
| range battery with a long-range battery yourself, but I
| imagine that would be possible with those battery swap
| stations. See [2]. Battery swap stations means that you have
| full range again for the same time it takes to fill a car
| with gas. But obviously, you need to have enough of those
| stations to make it usable. And if every car brand is gonna
| create its own mechanism for battery swapping, then that
| would probably only be interesting in city areas where it's
| worthwhile for the manufacturer to run those stations.
|
| [1] https://www.electrive.com/2022/01/18/battery-swapping-
| statio... [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-61310513
|
| Edit: typo.
| gabbyvilloria wrote:
| We've been doing this in the Philippines since 2013!
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9aEWxexrMI
|
| Just started raising VC this year lol
| snthd wrote:
| >I'd love a car with a tiny battery for 99% of the time when
| I'm just driving locally
|
| That's basically what an electric cargo bike is,
| functionally.
|
| >I'd also be happy to drive into somewhere local that rents
| me that long range battery and slots it in with machinery
| designed for the purpose.
|
| Rent the whole car...
|
| >my car's weight is low and efficiency high.
|
| ...and you don't have the weight the rest of the time.
| the_biot wrote:
| > Maybe I could keep that battery in my house and use it to
| store solar electricity most of the time.
|
| That's utopian. These things weigh a ton, you'd need a
| forklift.
| jasonjayr wrote:
| Sure, but there are jacks that can be purchased for home
| use that can easily lift a ton or two. If this was a thing,
| the battery would have to self-lift itself into place, or
| have home-installed battery swap station.
| squarefoot wrote:
| > With only the short range battery most of the time, my
| car's weight is low and efficiency high.
|
| That would however subject the smaller battery to more
| charge/discharge cycles for obtaining the same mileage.
| Wouldn't that shorten its life?
| tokamak-teapot wrote:
| I'd be happy to have a shorter life on my small, cheap
| battery because it should be cheap to replace.
| alexisread wrote:
| ...say like a battery trailer with a CCS socket, and with
| extra storage as well, for long journeys?
|
| Low tech FTW.
|
| Smartrail is still a better soln but we have to be realistic
| here.
| lorax wrote:
| I have heard of proof of concept camping trailers that not
| only have batteries but also motors in the wheels so the
| can provide extra power when you drive (restoring the range
| you loose when towing) and also regen braking. Not low
| tech, but would be really useful
| https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1133124_towing-with-
| an-...
| NickNameNick wrote:
| Will any electric car let you drive while it's plugged in?
|
| I'm pretty sure Tesla's Rivians get locked into park when
| the charger is connected.
| jsjohnst wrote:
| > Will any electric car let you drive while it's plugged
| in?
|
| That's what I was wondering too. Like you, I'm pretty
| sure the major EVs don't let you drive while charge, but
| I haven't actually tried it.
| alexisread wrote:
| I think you're correct, my Fiat certainly doesn't. That
| is, however a firmware update away provided the type2 or
| CCS protocol can distinguish between a mobile or static
| charger, or be extended to do so. My OP was a slightly
| off the cuff post to highlight the use of a trailer for
| say cheap city cars, rather than a removable battery.
| danans wrote:
| No, even my PHEV doesn't let you drive while plugged in.
| cjdell wrote:
| I love the idea of using those extra cells for solar or
| perhaps renting them.
|
| I can't see why no one is exploring this gap in the market.
| It might only appeal to nerds at first but that is true with
| most technologies in their infancy.
|
| We need what is effectively a giant version of a double AA
| battery. Yes we also need battery management systems and
| heating/cooling to go with these things but these are solved
| problems, just not standardised yet.
|
| Please someone take note and do this!
| clouddrover wrote:
| > _I 'm not sure why we aren't making EVs with small but
| upgradeable batteries._
|
| NIO is:
|
| https://insideevs.com/news/591837/nio-battery-swapping-stati...
|
| https://insideevs.com/news/392660/nio-battery-swap-loved-by-...
|
| https://insideevs.com/news/583809/nio-baas-battery-swapping-...
|
| https://insideevs.com/news/596640/nio-500kw-ultra-rapid-char...
|
| > _Like for example a $20k car with a 10kWh "good enough for
| now" starter battery_
|
| 10 kWh wouldn't get you very far in a car. In a scooter or
| quadracycle 10 kWh can be useful.
| cjdell wrote:
| Thanks.
|
| > 10 kWh wouldn't get you very far in a car.
|
| Tell that to Chevy Volt owners. It's amazing how much all
| electric driving can be achieved with just a little bit of
| careful driving. I barely use my range extender now, it's
| just for the odd long trip.
| klondike_ wrote:
| Modern EV design has the batteries integrated into the
| structural frame of the car. This is because the batteries are
| the heaviest part of the car, so you want them to be close to
| the ground and secure from impact. This also makes it very
| inconvenient to replace.
|
| Lots of companies (even Tesla) have attempted the replaceable
| battery concept but none have been able to make it work
| efficiently.
| snotrockets wrote:
| Tesla was never serious about replaceable batteries. They
| could get more tradeable credits for replaceable batteries,
| so they told everyone they'll do that, got the credits for
| the cars that were supposed to have replaceable batteries,
| and never followed up with the actual tech.
| signatoremo wrote:
| I did recall Tesla wasn't serious about battery swapping
| but can't find any information about getting credits for
| doing that, let alone just announcing it. Can you back that
| up?
| marvin wrote:
| The statement is worded critical of Tesla, but IIRC
| there's some truth to it. They engineered the Model S to
| be battery-swappable, and there was some advantage wrt.
| the regulatory credits to doing so. Can't find a link,
| but I remember reading it.
|
| They rolled out this service to a couple of spots in
| California, which was probably sufficient for the the
| credit regime, but ended up not expanding the program
| further and terminating it after a few quarters. The
| official explanation was that it was not widely used.
|
| https://youtu.be/H5V0vL3nnHY?t=57
|
| There may have been other business reasons. I have no
| idea what was discussed on the executive level but
| wouldn't be surprised if they considered some tradeoffs
| of complexity, costs and customer attractivenes to not be
| worth it. Honestly, it's very rare that you actually
| _need_ or strongly prefer to have this kind of service
| rather than just recharging at 150kW for 15 minutes. So
| if it adds considerable cost or complexity, I could
| understand the decision to drop it.
|
| A short time later, they started welding an extra metal
| shield onto the bottom of the Model S, to act as an extra
| layer of protection against collisions with highway
| debris that caused some high-profile battery fires. I had
| the impression that this precluded battery swap, so at
| that point the business decision must have been made to
| not expand the program further.
|
| If the regulatory incentives was key in the decision to
| do this and then later drop it, that's a fundamental
| property of incentives to do something that might not be
| a good idea in isolation.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| That's FUD as far as I'm concerned. If they were just
| aiming for regulatory credits it weighs have been far
| cheaper to use human labor to do the swaps than to develop
| the robotic apparatus they developed.
|
| Tesla did a decent market test on batteries, the test
| failed and they moved on.
| dangrossman wrote:
| The "market test" was a shack across the street from a
| 100% free Tesla Supercharger station. To use said shack,
| you had to be one of a select group invited, make an
| appointment days in advance, pay a fee, and risk that
| you're trading your $20K battery for a worse one out of
| someone else's car. They invited a couple owners and
| journalists to do a few swaps for the magazines,
| collected their extra ZEV credits, and then disconnected
| the phone and let the one person staffing the place go
| back to his normal job. If that looks like an honest
| market test to you, then I don't know what else to say.
| kryptiskt wrote:
| NIO is doing battery swapping at scale in China. Here's a
| random article about how it works:
| https://insideevs.com/news/591837/nio-battery-swapping-
| stati...
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| All the more reason to ditch the 5000lb car and go for like a
| 50lb emoped instead.
| cjdell wrote:
| Would it not be significantly easier if we're using 4 or 5
| independent modules instead of a giant monolith? Aren't cars
| routinely lifted into the air when being serviced?
|
| I understand that the structure of the car's body may be
| suboptimal and require extra reinforcement but if we're
| really serious about EV adoption and reducing battery cost
| then perhaps a trade-off worth making?
| chiph wrote:
| For an EV the main design constraints are aerodynamics and
| weight. If you need to add additional reinforcement to make
| up for the battery packs that haven't been installed,
| you're carrying that weight around all the time and taking
| a range penalty.
|
| So assume your vehicle has 3 packs. You normally run it
| with just one pack because that's all you need to commute
| and run errands during the week. When you go visit the
| relatives in Florida, you install the other two packs to
| get the additional range. The car needs additional
| structural elements to meet safety standards when the extra
| packs aren't installed and they add 5% additional weight.
| That's weight you're carrying around every day, and that
| has a range cost.
|
| Could it be worth it to swap out the extra structure
| elements when you install the extra packs, so at least you
| aren't taking the range penalty while driving long
| distance? Yes, but the manufacturer isn't going to want the
| liability of a customer removing what is a passive safety
| device, and then forgetting to reinstall it when they go
| back to city travel using only one pack.
|
| NHTSA will also have input to this. From what I can tell -
| the applicable FMVSS is this one that deals with EV side
| impact protection, electrolyte spills, and electric shock.
|
| https://www.nhtsa.gov/document/final-rule-occupant-
| protectio...
| NickNameNick wrote:
| If you want the batteries to be removable, I suspect the
| extra couplings in the water coolant loop would make that
| problematic.
| silversmith wrote:
| Check out how tractor hydraulic attachments handle liquid
| couplings. And hydraulic systems work at much higher
| pressure than simple coolant loops.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| We'd only need a compromise here. The concept that failed,
| afaiu, was batteries you'd swap at the gas station on a trip,
| which you probably want to take no longer than refilling your
| good old ICE car took. That seems impractical for several
| reasons. But if you had a range extension pack that you could
| add/remove in 30 minutes before a longer trip, maybe that
| would be more realistic?
| noja wrote:
| https://www.theengineer.co.uk/content/archive/august-1897-th.
| ..
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| If the answer to your supply chain "hell" is to switch to a
| supplier with cheaper prices and a product that is in some
| respects better then I'm not sure it qualifies as "hell".
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| Due to crazy car prices I was able to sell my 2021 Tesla for the
| same price as a 2022 factory new Tesla with lfp battery. I'm
| really excited to get it and be able to charge to 100% all the
| time and also have a much longer battery life at the same time.
| The previous battery was a nightmare of having to micromanage the
| battery charge for long trips and constant worry about if the
| battery pack was going to crap out after the warranty.
|
| I think the car is a bit slower with the lfp but I really don't
| care.
| oldjavacoder wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium%E2%80%93air_battery
|
| "However, an electric vehicle with aluminium batteries has the
| potential for up to eight times the range of a lithium-ion
| battery with a significantly lower total weight."
|
| It just needs silver for a catalyst. :-(
| gizmondo wrote:
| Being non-rechargeable sounds like a bigger issue.
| [deleted]
| bell-cot wrote:
| > Automotive giant Ford is shoring up its battery supply chain --
| partly by importing lower-cost, iron-based batteries popular in
| China -- as it sprints to increase electric vehicle production.
|
| Old geezer's perspective: Back in its heyday, Ford Motor was one
| of the most vertically integrated (large manufacturing) companies
| in the world. They owned and operated their own fleet of ore
| carriers (cargo ships), to haul iron ore from the mines to the
| steel mill that was part of their all-Ford integrated
| manufacturing complex. (
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_River_Rouge_Complex - though
| Wikipedia barely scratches the surface on this. ) Back in the
| early 90's, I knew a couple guys who had spent their careers
| working on those iron ore carriers.
|
| Current-day Ford Motor having to go begging to China - for a
| major, iron-based component needed to produce more cars - that is
| laughable, and beyond pathetic. In a dark, miserable sort of way,
| if you care about America or its future.
| cumshitpiss wrote:
| What's wrong with trading with China?
| clouddrover wrote:
| China arbitrarily bans trade when it wants to "punish"
| nations:
|
| https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/china-turns-to-lobsters-wine-
| and...
|
| China has made it clear that it is an unreliable business
| partner.
|
| It is a mistake to do business with nations that don't share
| your values, as Russia is also currently demonstrating.
| princeb wrote:
| America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests
| pacija wrote:
| This is the price, those are the terms. If you don't like
| them go buy somewhere else or produce yourself.
| stale2002 wrote:
| So then yes, you agree completely with the statement that
| was made, which was "It is a mistake to do business with
| nations that don't share your values".
|
| Yeah that's the point.
| pokepim wrote:
| clouddrover wrote:
| > _And what values are exactly that?_
|
| Democratic nations which abide by international trade
| agreements. Nations you can do business with which are
| governed by the rule of law instead of the whims of a
| political party or dictator.
|
| > _We just had president who was white supremacist who
| called other countries shitholes._
|
| America can turn itself into whatever it wants to be. If
| America can no longer be trusted in business then it's
| correct not to do business with it.
|
| > _When business with China was good nobody cared they
| still had communist party ruling the country._
|
| Yes, that's a mistake.
| wowokay wrote:
| What the heck? Do you somehow only watch the super
| opinionated stuff on both Fox and CNN, giving you polar
| opposite trash talk from both sides of the aisle? Lol
|
| If anything The first one wasn't a white supremacist
| because "he had alot of Mexican friends" and the other
| isn't cozying up to a dictator because our gas supply
| offset wasn't shifty to Saudi backed oil supplies, not to
| mention all his work his son has done with sketchy
| characters that he tries to distance himself from.
| pstuart wrote:
| The comment you replied to was unkind to both sides
| (appropriately) and you turned it into my team good, your
| team bad. This is why we can't discuss politics here
| because it goes tribal and off the rails.
|
| Our relationship with SA is fucked up and that is
| regardless of party in office.
|
| Parting shot: if you really cared about corrupt nepotism
| you'd acknowledge the prior son-in-law's self dealing
| with the SA as well (e.g., a recent $2B "investment").
| Let's investigate _both_ sides, eh?
|
| Edit: shitting on Trump in the OP also didn't help
| (because while true wasn't germane to the
| corruption/foreign relations).
| bell-cot wrote:
| Beyond the political issues already noted...
|
| - "We must travel to the most-distant place in the world, and
| the only source of $Thing, which we cannot survive without!"
| That sounds great, if you're writing epic fantasy quest
| stories. If you're talking supply chain management... _maybe_
| there is something profoundly wrong with your company?
|
| - Even if the CCP would never dream of squeezing Ford's
| battery life-line...the battery factory there could be shut
| down for yet another COVID outbreak, or the US could squeeze
| it (due to domestic politics or "Taiwan Troubles"), or etc.
|
| - The giant mess (huge delays, staggering price spikes, etc.)
| that global shipping has been in the past few years. Shipping
| car batteries from China to the US via air freight does not
| sound like a money-making plan. My old World Atlas suggests
| that shipping by rail is probably not an option.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >My old World Atlas suggests that shipping by rail is
| probably not an option.
|
| Is that the same atlas that says there's not an option for
| rail from UK to France as well?
| bell-cot wrote:
| Great quip, but it's more complex. The Chunnel is
| delicate infrastructure, with neither a backup nor a
| short repair time if something bad happened. I have not
| examined their Dangerous/Forbidden Freight List for "bulk
| rechargeable batteries" - but such lists can change.
| OTOH, there are dense freight rail networks on both sides
| of the Channel, and similar for ports, shipping, etc.
|
| Vs. you'd need to build a few thousand miles of freight
| RR in Siberia, Alaska, and other places "unfriendly to
| economical RR construction and operation" in order to
| ship from China to the US via rail.
| phtrivier wrote:
| China spent the last two years demonstrating that they're
| "fair weather partners" when it comes to trade. And winter is
| coming.
|
| So obviously it's not bad _per se_ to rely on China ; but if
| it's not possible to diversify sourcing, this is begging for
| a disaster next time whatever geopolitic hits the fan.
| CyanBird wrote:
| > Fairweather
|
| What do you even mean, it wasn't them whom started the
| whole tradewar... It was the US gov
| phtrivier wrote:
| I meant that in any situation where china has to choose
| between interior market / upholding CCP plans / regional
| partnership vs trading with the global west, they will
| chose the former in times of crisis. Which is not a bad
| thing, again, it's just that everyone is relying on them
| as if they are an infinite factory of everything with
| unlimited supply, and it seems that, well, it's not true
| any more.
|
| But if they decide to stop trade with Russia tomorrow,
| I'll reconsider.
| criley2 wrote:
| How did they spend two years demonstrating they are fair
| weather partners? Was it the part where they locked workers
| inside of factories producing goods for America to make
| sure that the Americans got their shipments in spite of the
| Covid-0 policy? Or was it how China is actually upholding
| most sanctions against Russia, despite giving less than 0
| f's about Ukraine?
|
| IMO the real disaster would be a total de-link between
| Chinese and American economies. Neither country can
| currently engage in any kind of meaningful hostilities
| while 10%+ of their economies are linked in trade. Trade
| prevents war because war would mean decimation of their
| economies and lead to likely depressions, although I
| suppose the results of Russia's invasion and how their
| economy handles de-linking will inform this logic going
| forward
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| > Trade prevents war because war would mean decimation of
| their economies and lead to likely depressions
|
| 1913 is calling and wants its optimism back.
|
| If the fertilizer hits the fan re Taiwan, the CCP will
| not hesitate to cut off all trade with everyone who
| supports Taiwan.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| They won't stop trading with Taiwan supporting countries.
| They don't have any plans of that as far as anyone knows
| and never threatened it. The threat is that the US
| executes it's public plans of sinking ships trading with
| China in such a contingency.
| phtrivier wrote:
| That will sound tongue in cheek, and to some extend it
| is, but if the last few years have shown us anything,
| it's the perils of starting a sentence by "xxx won't yyy"
| (for several values of x and y.)
| sudosysgen wrote:
| That's an extrapolation. There hasn't ever been in a
| country that decided to sanction themselves within
| wartime from most of the world economy, and leaked
| documents show that one of the reason China wants Taiwan
| to begin with is to make their trade more secure.
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| I don't even know what the first sentence is supposed to
| mean. Germany knew they would be blockaded by the Brits
| in WW I and II and proceeded to go to war anyway, so
| didn't they "decided [sic] to sanction themselves within
| wartime from most of the world economy"?
|
| Japan continued with their China war in the 1930s,
| despite sanctions from the US and the West, so didn't
| they?
|
| As for the "leaked documents", the claim on Taiwan is
| that it is an inseparable part of China, and not that
| they want "to make their trade more secure."
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| War is hell.
|
| In WW I, the Germans didn't move to "unrestricted
| submarine warfare" until 1917. The fact that the CCP
| doesn't plan for it _now_ means absolutely nothing.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| First of all, this isn't WW1. Secondly, there is a
| difference between using violence to impose an embargo on
| someone else (what Germany did and what the US threatens
| to do) and embargoing yourself, which no country has ever
| done ever.
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| I think you are just embarrassing yourself now. You say
| "This isn't WW I" but then you claim that there hasn't
| ever been something.
| partiallypro wrote:
| > Was it the part where they locked workers inside of
| factories producing goods for America to make sure that
| the Americans got their shipments in spite of the Covid-0
| policy?
|
| They did this because it would cause their economy to
| collapse and there are social repercussions against the
| CCP if that were to happen. Had 0 to do with the US or
| the West or any sort of altruism. They also welded doors
| of apartments shut so people inside couldn't leave during
| the initial lock downs. China has a much more robust
| class system than the US and the lower class/rural people
| are taken advantage of at an astounding rate because they
| aren't the right kind of Chinese.
|
| > Or was it how China is actually upholding most
| sanctions against Russia, despite giving less than 0 f's
| about Ukraine?
|
| China is essentially the sole reason Russia is still
| occupying Ukraine and they have been skirting sanctions
| left and right; even going as far as partnering with
| Russia on a new inter-banking system. They've also used
| the Ukrainin War as a way to test the waters in the South
| China Sea and step up their territorial claims over
| international waters in violation of international law.
| timwaagh wrote:
| Themz commies something something pooh bear.
| NickRandom wrote:
| And of course as a further example of their supply chain
| integration no conversation on it would be complete without
| mention of Fordlandia [1][2]
|
| [1] Lost cities #10: Fordlandia - the failure of Henry Ford's
| utopian city in the Amazon
| https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/aug/19/lost-cities-1...
|
| [2] Wikipedia Entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fordlandia
| RustyConsul wrote:
| >the failure of Henry Ford's utopian city in the Amazon
|
| That title is extremely loaded.
|
| Ford rubber mining operations in the amazon fail when
| synthetic rubber is invented is the true story.
| NickRandom wrote:
| Hence the [1] and [2] provison of sources. It is an
| interesting historical factoid. Nothing more. Nothing Less.
| Animats wrote:
| Ford is building other battery plants. Huge plant going up in
| Tennessee, "Blue Oval City", for lithium-ion batteries.[1] The
| battery technology comes from S. Korea. The lithium will come
| from Ioneer in Nevada.[2] Another plant is going up in
| Kentucky. Plus there's existing electric production at the
| Rouge plant in Detroit. Ford is serious about electric trucks.
|
| Tesla's Cybertruck initial delivery was just delayed another
| year.[3]
|
| [1]
| https://www.commercialappeal.com/story/money/business/2022/0...
|
| [2] https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-
| transportation/ford-b...
|
| [3] https://observer.com/2022/07/tesla-cybertruck-production-
| del...
| solarkraft wrote:
| > Current-day Ford Motor having to go begging to China - for a
| major, iron-based component needed to produce more cars - that
| is laughable, and beyond pathetic.
|
| They're lucky China is answering. They're incredibly late to
| the EV game; considering that they're doing remarkably well.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >They're incredibly late to the EV game; considering that
| they're doing remarkably well.
|
| When you're not the trailblazer, it's easy to make catch-up
| progress to those that went before you in much much less
| time. Why this is constantly a source of amazement is funny
| to me. By the time Ford got involved, the path was no longer
| a beaten down path, it was fully paved 8-lane highway.
| Instead trying to figure out how to make an electrified car,
| they just took all of the learning before them and then
| turned it into something fancy. While Tesla is "working" on
| self-driving and not doing well with it, Ford said, nah,
| we'll just turn our batteries into a generator for the home.
| They built an actual truck that looks like the same truck
| everyone is used to and say here it is as an electric. That's
| easy to do when you are riding coat tails
| throwtheacctawy wrote:
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| All of this is true except for the part where no other
| manufacturer (other than Tesla) has a reliable source of
| batteries -- so they're subject to intense supply chain
| constraints that limit inventory drastically. And so they
| were unable to meet the consumer demand for EVs. Hence you
| simply can't even _get_ a Ford F150 Lightning even though
| it looks like a great vehicle.
|
| This all pre-dated the COVID related supply chain issues,
| BTW. Lack of battery supply is behind the lackluster
| inventory (and therefore sales) of all non-Tesla vehicles
| for over half a decade.
|
| I say all this not as a Tesla fan, but as a GM electric
| vehicle owner. GM was unable to produce more then a few
| tens of thousands of Bolts a year -- not because consumers
| didn't want them, but because there was simply no way for
| them to get them from LG Chem. VW/Audi group has had the
| same issue. They're both not late to the game on EV tech or
| production, but very late to the game on battery
| production.
|
| Being late to the game in this case has a huge cost. And
| various governments wasted time and money providing
| consumer subsidies for EV purchases thinking this would
| lead the market to magically "solve" the EV supply issue by
| increasing consumer demand when the issue that really
| needed solving was volume and cost of battery production.
|
| If we were going to involve public dollars in getting EVs
| to market we should have invested massively in encouraging
| battery production. Some governments are waking up to this
| now at least.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| Ford believes they have the battery supply for a 600,000
| EV/year run rate by late-2023 and are shooting for
| 2,000,000/year by 2026.
|
| Bloomberg projects VW selling more EVs than Tesla by 2024
| and they are planning to have 240GWh/yr of in-house
| battery production by 2030.
|
| BYD in China is fully vertically integrated on EV
| production, moreso than Tesla who relies on 3rd party
| mining and on Panasonic for chemistries/cell production.
| BYD is now the largest PHEV+BEV manufacturer in the
| world.
|
| Tesla might have had a head start but There has been a
| lot of catching up going on, and as we get closer and
| closer to resource constraints instead of production
| constraints they aren't in much better of a position than
| any other manufacturer.
| RustyConsul wrote:
| so what you're saying is they are not only copying the
| good parts of Tesla (Electrification) but also the bad
| parts (lying about future production?).
|
| Ford made 30k electric vehicles in 2021, 600k means a
| growth rate of %1900 in the span of 2 1/2 years (They
| need to be at the run rate in 2026)?
|
| Battery packs were a problem to Tesla in 2018 and now
| they've moved onto the bigger problem that no one is
| talking about.... There isn't enough lithium and nickel
| production to even make this possible.
|
| That's why Tesla launched its own mining operations in
| Nevada.
|
| Also, its not like Elon hasn't been screaming about lack
| of nickel and lithium production since like 2018, just no
| one seems to be paying attention.
| notatoad wrote:
| >Ford made 30k electric vehicles in 2021
|
| source? all i could find was this
| https://insideevs.com/news/596347/us-ford-ev-sales-
| june-2022
|
| > H1 production of nearly 34,000 units is below the level
| from 2021 in the same period.
|
| which is just talking about mach-e production, not other
| EVs.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| I think Mach-e is the only BEV Ford sold in 2021. The
| E-transit and F-150 Lightning both started sales in 2022.
| They were selling anumber of PHEVs but many people don't
| count those as "EV" production.
| notatoad wrote:
| presumably they built some in H2 as well though. the 34k
| number is only the first half of the year.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| For one, Ford also made 1.7 million total vehicles in
| 2021 (down from 2.5 million pre COVID) so using their EV
| only rate doesn't necessarily capture the whole picture.
|
| But mainly, they don't need to actually make 600k EVs in
| 2024 for it to be true that they have contracts in place
| to purchase that many batteries if needed.
|
| As for Tesla's mining chops, they bought mining rights in
| 2020 and as of April 2022 they haven't even broken
| ground, with Elon saying "price of lithium has gone to
| insane levels! Tesla might actually have to get into the
| mining and refining directly at scale, unless costs
| improve."
|
| I guess while Elon has been screaming about it other
| companies like BYD and CATL have been the ones actually
| scaling global production.
| electrondood wrote:
| Tesla hasn't ever lied about future production, not once.
|
| If you actually look at their guidance, it's "50% growth
| on average," and they've consistently hit it.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| > In May 2016 Tesla told its suppliers that it intended
| to double earlier-announced[clarification needed] Model 3
| production targets to 100,000 in 2017 and 400,000 in 2018
| due to demand
|
| > In October 2016 Tesla said its production timeline was
| on schedule.[115][116][117] Again in February 2017, Tesla
| said that vehicle development, supply chain and
| manufacturing are on track to support volume deliveries
| of the Model 3 in the second half of 2017.
|
| > As of February 2017, Tesla planned to ramp up
| production to exceed 5,000 vehicles per week in Q4 2017
| and reach 10,000 vehicles per week in 2018.[111]
|
| > By early November 2017, Musk had postponed the target
| date for manufacturing 5,000 of the vehicles per week
| from December 2017 to March 2018.
|
| - 100,000/yr in 2017: fail, occurred in 2018
|
| - 400,000/yr in 2018: fail, occurred in 2020/2021
|
| - Volume delivery in in 2H 2017: fail unless you consider
| 1764 to be volume
|
| - 5000/wk in Q4 2017/March 2018: fail, produced 187/wk,
| probably first broke 5000/wk Q1 2019 (total quarterly
| rate was almost 5k/wk)
|
| - 10,000/wk in 2018: fail 4,722/wk Q4 of 2018, probably
| first broke 10,000/wk at the tail end of Q3 2020 (total
| quarterly rate was almost 10k/wk) as long as we include
| model Y production as well
|
| Now I wouldn't call this lying, but its definitely not
| consistently hitting production goals either
| nr2x wrote:
| I think you're precisely identifying why Tesla is well and
| truly fucked. The big automakers know how to make cars at
| scale and once they decide to it's easy. They may be slow
| giants, but Tesla lost the advantage of being small and
| quick.
|
| German, Japanese, and American manufacturers were the
| biggest national security components of WWII. Tesla is a
| second tier interest of a CEO who prefers to be an online
| troll than keeping up with the auto industry.
| electrondood wrote:
| > Tesla is well and truly fucked
|
| Sorry, this is just absurd. Tesla is the only company
| designing for massive scale and ruthless simplification
| from the start. Their entire DNA is based on YAGNI.
|
| Every other legacy automaker is pinned between their
| dealerships, their dependence on consumer debt, their own
| massive debt, and the fact that they'll need to
| cannibalize existing business to pivot to EVs.
|
| No other company owns their own destiny by being more in
| control of their supply chain than Tesla.
| Amezarak wrote:
| > Tesla is the only company designing for massive scale
|
| In 2020 GM sold 6.8 million vehicles. The other
| manufacturers are already operating at massive scale. Or
| are you arguing the automotive market will suddenly
| dramatically increase in a way existing manufacturers
| can't deal with? That consumers will suddenly be flush
| with cash to buy more brand new cars than they are
| already buying and Tesla will be the most popular option?
| This is very hard for me to imagine.
|
| > their dependence on consumer debt
|
| ??? Teslas are not cheap. I will not be able to afford a
| Tesla for the forseeable future. Unless Teslas comes down
| below 25k, no Teslas are in my future, another ICE car or
| hybrid will be. How is Tesla not dependent on consumer
| debt? Or do you mean something else by this?
| sitkack wrote:
| Tesla assembly lines appear to be very well designed. I
| wonder what else they could make.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > That's easy to do when you are riding coat tails
|
| No, that really isn't easy to do when you're running
| something as large as the Ford Motor Company. In fact it is
| _much_ easier for a new entrant to make such big changes.
| electrondood wrote:
| > While Tesla is "working" on self-driving and not doing
| well with it
|
| Maybe you missed the footage of FSD perfectly navigating
| San Francisco during rush hour [1]. I'd say they're doing
| pretty damn well.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yh8AV3OMWYs
| justapassenger wrote:
| Incredibly late? EV are still tiny % of global sales. And
| compared to what some EV startups want people to think,
| building good EV isn't that hard for traditional OEMs, once
| company commits to it. F150 and MachE are very good EVs.
| epistasis wrote:
| It's at around 9% of market share and doubling annually.
|
| https://www.iea.org/commentaries/electric-cars-fend-off-
| supp...
|
| They are missing out on the easy part of the S-curve of
| adoption, and will have a far far harder time securing key
| competitive tech and supply chains by entering too late
|
| There are currently ~8 major battery manufacturers, and
| right now a large bevy of battery startups. But right now
| is probably the last time in history to enter the market,
| because you can't just innovate on electrolyte or anode or
| cathode and enter the market, you have to do it all. And
| the lead times for development of new products, even in wel
| established companies with solid pipelines, is around five
| years.
|
| The US did innovate quite a bit in this space, but
| political interference and strange political beliefs about
| batteries, like the physics prevents them from being used
| in all the ways we are currently using them, has
| significantly held back the US from leading as much as it
| could have in this space.
|
| This is I n large part because industry leaders like Ford
| were so anti-scientifically anti-EV.
|
| We kneecapped our future to let current rentiers,
| masquerading as gigantic industrialists, collect rent.
| justapassenger wrote:
| You don't need to be manufacturing batteries to make EVs.
| Even vertical integration darling, Tesla, is buying most
| of their batteries (and the tech behind them) from
| suppliers like BYD and Panasonic. Their in-house efforts
| so far are not yielding any massive success.
|
| Batteries at the core are commodities, where you have
| laser thin margins and supplier model that is pulling R&D
| costs from many companies is basically only long term way
| to go.
|
| Electric part of an EV is easy. It's a car that's hard
| part.
| epistasis wrote:
| When batteries are the primary bottleneck on production,
| the primary source of innovation, change, and price
| drops, then in that case batteries are not mere
| commodities but a key technology in the car.
|
| The rest of an EV is pretty simple. Drivetrain is no
| longer a really hard component, as electric motors are
| far more straight forward.
|
| > > It's a car that's hard part.
|
| Countries that try to kickstart a new car industry often
| outsource the drivetrain, as it's the most difficult part
| to build.
|
| With EVs, batteries are by far the touchiest and most
| difficult part to build. Companies that outsource battery
| design, or at a bare minimum are not intimated involved
| with the batteries for their own packs, will be left
| behind.
| RustyConsul wrote:
| >Batteries at the core are commodities
|
| I would argue that might have been true 5 years ago, but
| now it's proving to be the competitive advantage.
| Batteries and the materials that produce them are no
| longer selling at 'Razor thin margins' because the
| 'Commodity' is extremely constrained. No EV manufacturer
| can get enough batterys to produce the cars they sell.
| justapassenger wrote:
| It's a temporary state. There's nothing at the core that
| would make batteries not a commodities, production just
| needs to pick up (and both suppliers and raw materials
| producers are making huge investments to make that
| happen). Plus we're in a weird state where COVID supply
| chain issues and overheating of economy makes it very
| hard to reason about true state of the market.
|
| But please tell me who has that competitive advantage?
| Tesla? They're Panasonic/CATL shop, with negligible
| amount of in house production.
| throwaway9870 wrote:
| Ford bought New Holland back in the 80s. New Holland was very
| vertically integrated and Ford, after taking the reins,
| declared that they were going to teach New Holland how to
| become recession proof by outsourcing as much as possible and
| pushing the risk onto the suppliers. Yes, there is some logic
| in that plan, but on the other hand, it comes with a whole
| other set of risks.
| fredsmith219 wrote:
| From the U.P. To Rouge it was Ford all the way. Did they own
| the mines as well?
| bluedino wrote:
| Doesn't sound like it
|
| http://www.miningartifacts.org/Michigan-Iron-Mines.html
| dghughes wrote:
| And if I recall correctly Ford was the only US vehicle
| manufacturer that did not request a bailout in 2008.
|
| That was impressive at the time and it made Ford look like
| solid well-run company that planned ahead.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| IIRC, Ford explicitly said that if it hadn't been for the
| effect of the bailouts of an other manufacturers on shared
| supply chains, it would have needed a bailout.
| sitkack wrote:
| Could you explain this with a couple sentences, I don't
| understand.
| throwaway_4ever wrote:
| Say GM and Chrysler weren't bailed out. Then they
| wouldn't be able to support the trade between other third
| party car parts manufacturers that rely on them. Those
| companies would lose economies of scale and/or go out of
| business too. Then wouldn't Ford be able to make their
| cars without those third parties and would need bailing
| out to not go bankrupt also.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Totally made up example (with easy to follow numbers):
|
| Let's say GM, Chevrolet and Ford all buy 12V car
| batteries from BatteryCo at the rate of 1,000,000 a year
| (each). BatteryCo has fixed annual costs of $3,000,000
| and per battery costs of $1. Right now, Ford pays
| $2/battery. If GM and Chevrolet both go out of business,
| Ford's 1,000,000 batteries need to absorb the whole fixed
| operating cost of $3,000,000. Therefore, Ford's per
| battery cost doubles to $4/battery.
|
| You can imagine other numbers and other parts of the
| supply chain all working similarly.
| sitkack wrote:
| Thank you and @throwaway_4ever, excellent explanation!
| pixl97 wrote:
| When dominoes start tipping they can all fall over.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| It was a really well run marketing campaign, complete with
| clever nicknames (e.g. Government Motors)
|
| The truth is a bit murkier. The car division was not bailed
| out, but the financial arm did accept government assistance
| like all the other car loan companies.
| knubie wrote:
| > But Ford also wants to produce LFP batteries in North
| America, and plans to open a 40-GWh LFP cell factory by 2026.
| (That's in addition to three previously announced battery
| plants in Tennessee and Kentucky.)
| tedk-42 wrote:
| > Current-day Ford Motor having to go begging to China - for a
| major, iron-based component needed to produce more cars - that
| is laughable, and beyond pathetic. In a dark, miserable sort of
| way, if you care about America or its future.
|
| Sounds similar to Boeing where accounting for personal gain
| (promotions / raises) of upper managers and executives took
| effect over the long term advantage of the company.
| chiph wrote:
| Funny you should mention Boeing. Alan Mulally went to Ford in
| 2006 after working for Boeing for 35+ years. In my opinion he
| was a net positive for the company, securing a credit line
| just before the 2007 recession so that Ford did not have to
| get bailed out by the government. He also sold off
| Jaguar/Land Rover just in time before gas prices spiked and
| their sales slumped.
|
| I think he is one of the "good" Boeing execs, unlike the ones
| that came in with the McDonnell Douglas merger and mismanaged
| production of aircraft like the 787 and 737-MAX
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Mulally
| treeman79 wrote:
| Story my dad told of McDonald Douglass merger was that they
| intentionally hired a drunk incompetent ceo to scare away
| all of their business. So that the merger with Boeing could
| be approved.
|
| He had many stories to tell of engineering non sense there.
| Supposedly they just trained whomever to be an engineer.
| They offered to make my dad one since they liked him.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > McDonald Douglass merger
|
| Pray do tell more about that merger!
| vishnugupta wrote:
| It's mentioned in a well made Netflix documentary about
| the downfall of Boeing I think.
|
| "Downfall: The Case Against Boeing" is the documentary
| title.
| yetihehe wrote:
| I think that this documentary is about McDonell Douglas,
| not MacDonald.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Exactly.
| klyrs wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downfall:_The_Case_Agains
| t_B...
| heymijo wrote:
| > _In my opinion he was a net positive for the company_
|
| That opinion is well founded. In the book American Icon by
| Bryce Hoffman (Detroit News journalist) he chronicles that
| entire time period.
|
| Mulally pulled off one of the greatest challenges, a
| bonafide turn around. They had a company culture that was
| all about individuals protecting their own interests.
| Mulally changed it to one where they focused on making
| vehicles people want and thinking about the long-term.
|
| For example, Mulally held a weekly executive meeting and
| each head would give a color coded report of their domain's
| status (green for good, yellow for issues, red for
| caution). For weeks in this meeting every single executive
| reported their status as "green" for good. This in a fiscal
| quarter when Ford had a $6 billion loss! Mulally managed to
| change that culture, which for anyone who has work
| experience should speak very loudly.
| heymijo wrote:
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13132620-american-
| icon
| coredog64 wrote:
| Ford was never going to take the bailout: GM and Chrysler
| were prohibited from paying dividends, while the Ford
| family receives income from FoMoCo stock.
| Animats wrote:
| It was more than that. GM went bankrupt and wiped out all
| the stockholders' equity. If Ford did that, it would have
| ended the two-tier stock structure that gives the Ford
| family control.
| JTbane wrote:
| > Sounds similar to Boeing where accounting for personal gain
| (promotions / raises) of upper managers and executives took
| effect over the long term advantage of the company.
|
| Executive pay is out of control in general in the USA, and
| performance is equally trash.
| dotancohen wrote:
| But there was no McDonald Douglas absorbed into Ford to
| explain this shift. Yet it seemed to happen during a similar
| timeframe (late '90s, early 2000s).
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Wall St punished diversification, so anything that could
| slow growth had to go.
|
| We're shifting to a new era where cash is king. That's why
| Amazon built their own UPS and Apple will be a bank in a
| few years.
| MrMan wrote:
| why "a few years" why not now?
| bbarnett wrote:
| JIT MBA driven push came then, plus the whole "stay within
| your area of expertise" movement.
| justapassenger wrote:
| Offshore outsourcing of everything is as bad of an idea as
| vertical integration of every single aspect of your business.
| [deleted]
| rawoke083600 wrote:
| They also grow their own trees for the rubber required to make
| tires ! Next level !
| criley2 wrote:
| What a shocking final sentence!!
|
| "Current-day Ford Motor having to go begging to China - for a
| major, iron-based component needed to produce more cars - that
| is laughable, and beyond pathetic. In a dark, miserable sort of
| way, if you care about America or its future."
|
| I could not have summarized it more differently. Vertical
| integration and monopolies are absolutely terrible in many
| ways. Globalization and inter-reliance are very good in many
| ways! The ideal system for everyone (workers, buyers, the
| business itself, the society it resides in, and the world
| itself) is probably a healthy middle point.
|
| I'll go so far as to say this: if the US did not inter-rely on
| China over the past 30 years since they opened up their
| markets, with multi-national US corporations beginning to rely
| on various Chinese resources or products, then the US would be
| at a hot or cold war with China right now, just like they were
| with the USSR a generation ago.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| This is huge. To date, Tesla has been the only non-Chinese
| manufacturer talking iron. LFP is often touted for being cheaper
| than NMC, but given growing insecurity around battery-grade
| nickel supplies, using the far-more-prevalent iron and phosphate
| isn't just about cheaper cars. It's about having cars to sell in
| the first place.
|
| With respect to range anxiety, pretty much every EV in the 200 to
| 300-mile range is sold out. (I was looking.) And Ford deploying
| LFP doesn't mean it has to go 100% LFP in every vehicle. Just
| having the extra vehicles will win it market share.
|
| (As to why now, the last of the patents in a critical suite
| expired in April [1]. Steve LeVine writes excellently to this
| topic [2].)
|
| [1]
| https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1167178/000104746912...
|
| [2] https://subscriptions.theinformation.com/newsletters/the-
| ele...
| jackmott wrote:
| smaudet wrote:
| Meanwhile, Hydrogen Fuel Cell cars are putting gasoline
| vehicles and electric to shame:
|
| https://www.timesnownews.com/auto/car-news/article/toyota-mi...
|
| Of course, you can't readily buy or charge one yet, but you
| don't have the battery problem (at all).
| snotrockets wrote:
| There were plans in Japan for wide use of hydrogen as the
| fuel of the future.
|
| Japanese car manufacturers aligned on that, but weren't keen
| on building the necessary infrastructure.
|
| You could lease a hydrogen fuel cell car in CA. There was
| even a lot of state incentives if you did. But very few
| fueling stations (iirc, only two in the whole Bay Area)
| martin_bech wrote:
| Because the infrastructure needed would be bonkers, and
| creating fuelibg stations is not really a solved problem.
| You also loose a big amount of energy converting from
| electric to hydrogen and back. The cars themselves almost
| always have low storage because the tanks are very big.
| Hydrogen car performance is also a lot lower then pure EV.
| MerelyMortal wrote:
| The infrastructure needed to create a power grid for
| people to charge electric vehicles at home would be
| double-bonkers.
|
| Upgrading fueling stations seems much easier than mining
| all of the copper needed to add all of the extra lines
| for EV charging, and then upgrading the whole national
| grid.
|
| Supposedly one company has claimed 95% efficiency on
| creating hydrogen from electrolysis:
|
| https://newatlas.com/energy/hysata-efficient-hydrogen-
| electr...
|
| Power that by nuclear energy, and it's a green & clean
| winner.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| There are ancillary benefits to upgrading the grid that
| retrofitting pipes to pump hydrogen doesn't bring. Most
| of America and Europe would do just fine without
| upgrades, for most of the population. And the
| jurisdictions touting hydrogen ( _e.g._ Japan) have
| 70s-era anti-nuke greens in power.
|
| Hydrogen is a smart hedge to pursue. But thank goodness
| it's mostly Japanese tax dollars doing it.
| vel0city wrote:
| There's already tons of available lines going to a ton of
| people's homes. It only took a dozen or so feet of cable
| to add a 14-50 outlet in my garage.
|
| Their homes were built expecting them to be able to pull
| 150-200A of power. It doesn't take that much power to
| charge an EV overnight. Mine charges way faster than it
| needs to on 32A 240V.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Any grid good enough to air condition every house in the
| day time is good enough to charge electric cars at night.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Why do peopke always ignore the range, and specs, of the
| three separate car brand's H2 range, when making claims
| like this?
|
| You're wrong.
|
| And claims of energy loss!! Sure, no loss to heat in
| batteries? And batteries lose charge if they sit idle!
| 93po wrote:
| Fueling stations are a solved problem. There are compact,
| modular, on-site hydrogen generators designed for
| installation in places like gas stations. I recently met
| the founder of this company: https://genh2hydrogen.com/
| that is doing exactly this - they're currently taking
| pre-orders and looking for final funding, but they have
| the engineering and prototyping in place. The Department
| of Energy even offers interest-free 30 year loans for any
| stations that want to buy one.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Hydrogen fuel cell cars are in fact better than gasoline. A
| fact that I think often gets overlooked.
|
| But note, they do actually have batteries, similar to ICE
| serial hybrids.
|
| They key thing of course, is that building lots of batteries
| is not a 'problem', and it's lack of being a problem is
| exactly why BEVs are better than fuel-cell hydrogen cars for
| basically everything, except maybe long distance air
| transport.
| cogman10 wrote:
| > why BEVs are better than fuel-cell hydrogen cars for
| basically everything, except maybe long distance air
| transport.
|
| The place where BEVs have yet to prove themselves is when
| energy density is absolutely critical. Long distance
| transport of any sort (air, sea, train, semi) is really the
| next places for them.
|
| Semi is a maybe at this point. Train MIGHT make sense, but,
| IMO it'll probably make the most sense as an energy
| capture/getting the train up to cruising speed aid rather
| than as the sole power source. Heck, for train, it'd make
| sense to instead electrify the rail system. Sea seems
| unreachable (Sails make more sense at this point which is
| sort of wild). Air, IDK, there are definitely projects to
| hit it, but I don't see a large commercial plane doing BEV.
| Perhaps for smaller regional hops it'll make sense.
| hattmall wrote:
| Why not electrify the road, at least highways, in part.
| kortex wrote:
| How? Rail at least provides a direct conductive path.
| Electrified highways would require inductive charging at
| 65mph (not feasible) or building overhead pantograph
| systems (expensive but at least vaguely tractable).
| Either requires specialized vehicles.
|
| Europe could pull it off due to its density, but the
| stretches of American highway which would benefit the
| most from it, would be a huge challenge.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| It's mostly a matter of battery price, which is on a
| downward slope, meaning it's mostly a matter of time.
|
| > Rapid battery cost declines accelerate the prospects of
| all-electric interregional container shipping
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-022-01065-y
| Tade0 wrote:
| If my recent gas mileage figure after 1h of mixed driving is
| to be believed, I could get to within 10% of that figure in
| my Toyota hybrid.
| SigmundA wrote:
| A Tesla model 3 hypermiled like this Mirai got 606 miles [1].
| The Mira's normal range is about 400 miles.
|
| > you don't have the battery problem (at all).
|
| The Mirai still has a small lithium battery like a hybrid
| since fuel cells cannot put enough instantaneous power (only
| 128kw and has start up time) for normal driving they need a
| buffer battery that is recharged by the fuel cell. Since this
| battery is so small it can't benefit as much from regen like
| a normal BEV and has pretty poor performance as well (182hp).
| All this in a car that weighs more than an equivalent BEV due
| to heavy 10,000 psi hydrogen tanks and complexity with the
| fuel cell and buffer battery.
|
| I personally believe hydrogen is a dead end for automobiles,
| the end to end efficiency is much worse (creating and
| compressing hydrogen) vs just charging a battery not to
| mention the issues of storing a transporting hydrogen safely
| [2].
|
| 1. https://electrek.co/2018/05/27/tesla-model-3-range-new-
| hyper...
|
| 2. https://www.volkswagenag.com/en/news/stories/2019/08/hydro
| ge...
| speedgoose wrote:
| If range was the only important thing, we would drive Citroen
| 2CV with spare cans of gaz in the trunk. But we don't, and
| very few cares about the Mirai.
| zoltar wrote:
| I wish there was more enthusiasm around this tech. The
| Hyundai N Vision 74 is the first concept car I've wanted to
| test drive in a long while.
| pharmakom wrote:
| I really think the push for hydrogen (highly impractical at
| scale) by the right wing press is part of fossil fuel
| industry attempts to spread fud around battery evs.
| nl wrote:
| I hadn't realised until very recently that most hydrogen
| produced comes from coal: https://www.google.com/amp/s/thec
| onversation.com/amp/explain...
|
| Most of the time it isn't a green fuel at all and is just a
| way to keep mining coal.
| bbarnett wrote:
| http://news.hydroquebec.com/en/press-releases/1667/hydro-
| que...
| flumpmaster wrote:
| That is not correct. Globally 75% of hydrogen is produced
| from Natural Gas:
|
| https://www.iea.org/reports/the-future-of-hydrogen
|
| See section on production.
|
| The most commonly used process creates a mixture of
| steam, hydrogen and CO2. The water is condensed and the
| CO2 removed to purify the hydrogen product. The CO2 is a
| concentrated stream. This is sometimes captured and sold
| as a byproduct (eg food grade CO2 for beverages or dry
| ice).
| nl wrote:
| The gas based production is no better because of the CO2
| emissions of course.
| smaudet wrote:
| There is a promising electrolysis route as well now, zero
| emissions:
|
| https://newatlas.com/energy/hysata-efficient-hydrogen-
| electr...
| MerelyMortal wrote:
| Electrolysis powered by nuclear energy seems very clean
| and green to me.
|
| With the added benefit of not requiring an overhaul of
| the electrical grid to be able to handle everyone
| charging their cars.
| smileysteve wrote:
| Instead of overhauling the electrical grid, gas stations
| just have to maintain cryogenic pressure tanks?
| smaudet wrote:
| Exactly, my money would be on an inert storage format -
| if you could mass produce hydrogen and keep it around
| safely inert (with low energy cost to convert it back),
| EVs would be beat so bad in the long run it wouldn't even
| be funny...
|
| EVs are nice in short term but battery issues like these
| illustrate their (should be obvious) shortcomings.
|
| WRT to this battery technology, ironically the same
| sector being targeted by hydrogen might benefit, i.e.
| rail tech - if you stick a high number of cheap batteries
| onto a large, heavy motorcar, the energy differential is
| almost negligible as you make up for it in part through
| momentum, but also just scale (more passengers
| transported per watt, more charge available per trip).
| nl wrote:
| If you are doing electrolysis then solar/wind is a much
| better option than nuclear.
|
| Much lower up front investment and none of the huge
| downsides of nuclear.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| This is true, but hydrogen cars at scale are still more
| practical than historical fossil fuel approaches.
|
| Luckily we have an even better option available for
| transport so we can focus green hydrogen on replacing all
| the other uses of fossil fuels.
| bbarnett wrote:
| http://news.hydroquebec.com/en/press-releases/1667/hydro-
| que...
|
| This is just a start, Hydro Quebec will expand production if
| demand comes.
| smaudet wrote:
| I would buy one for my next vehicle (it will be a ways
| off), except my area will take a while to be covered, with
| the amount of driving I do I would not need to refill for
| several months, and I could still take it on cross country
| road trips without worrying too much about even stopping at
| a charge/gas station.
|
| As it stands, I will not be buying any EV, you will have a
| very hard time convincing me otherwise, too many drawbacks
| to not enough range, ridiculously high charge times,
| expensive battery repairs, in addition to not being much
| better than a gasoline vehicle as far as ECO costs.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| The entire world is gearing up to produce green Hydrogen in
| staggering quantities. It won't be used for wheeled
| vehicles though.
|
| https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/green-hydrogen-market
| bbarnett wrote:
| A prediction is not what will be, and that's all a market
| projection is.
|
| Just a single government providing grants for h2
| refueling infra can dramatically change things.
| SigmundA wrote:
| LFP Also has much more cycle life and can be cycled 0-100% with
| much less degradation than NMC meaning a much longer lasting
| battery. The LFP Tesla it is recommended to charge to 100%
| always rather than only doing 80% except on long trips on the
| NMC Teslas.
|
| LFP is also safer with much less chance for thermal runaway. So
| safer, cheaper, longer lasting, easier material sourcing, only
| downside is lower energy density (about 20% hit for same
| weight) but there is a huge effort to improve that.
|
| You can LFP's pretty cheap now for home backup or RV use. I
| replaced my RV house batteries with LFP for 4 times the usable
| capacity in half the weight of my old lead acid for about 3
| times the cost. You can get 48v 19" rack batteries very cheap
| for power backup uses. I think LFP's are going to take over
| most uses in including cheap commuter automobiles.
| rblatz wrote:
| Tesla recommends charging to 100% because otherwise it has
| trouble accurately estimating the vehicle range and battery
| state of charge.
| cogman10 wrote:
| True. Though the damage is low from hitting 100% which is
| part of the reason why this is a "just leave it at 100%"
| rather than a "hit 100% once a week".
|
| That said, I'd probably do 90% as the max and 100% on the
| weekend if I owned an LFP vehicle.
| dangrossman wrote:
| The average American, buying a ~250 mile range EV, would
| only need to plug it in to charge once a week. Maybe
| twice. So, just charge it to 100% every time you charge
| it.
| manmal wrote:
| There's also a downside to LFP batteries: They charge
| significantly slower. There was a report in Germany about
| Teslas with LFP packs only achieving 73kW on average. For
| some trips this means 50% longer charging times.
| influxmoment wrote:
| This is a very forward thinking move for 2018. I look forward
| to us all driving Chinese BYD cars at this rate of innovation
| ericmay wrote:
| We could solve that problem pretty easily by just not relying
| on cars.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Solving for battery chemistry is cheaper and faster than
| rebuilding all of America (outside of a few metros where
| cars aren't needed) around mass transit and walkability.
|
| Personally, I would _love_ if urban planning was structured
| in a way so that all new development was anti-car, and
| redevelopment slowly transitioned away from prioritizing
| automobiles, but that doesn't appear to be in the cards.
| syntheweave wrote:
| I think redevelopment can happen, and in fact the growth
| in BEV tech is the trigger. Ebike sales have been
| staggering since the pandemic era started, and high gas
| prices have kept the trend going. And while some may
| switch back in time, the entire calculus of what vehicles
| are feasible for tripmaking changes with small BEV - an
| assisted cargo bike can go pretty fast! While the
| highways are out, they use the available battery
| resources more efficiently than a car for nearby
| destinations, which are the majority of trips, so in a
| competition for tripmaking market share they will come
| out ahead. That makes them part of an emerging virtuous
| cycle, where more people see an opportunity to save fuel
| and maintenance costs, so they get bikes, so there are
| more bikes on the street, so there's more demand for bike
| infrastructure.
|
| This pattern has emerged in every city that has a
| bikeshare or other micromobility scheme: Consumers can
| dip into the waters and try it out without being
| "cyclists" and worrying about theft or maintenance. They
| can put up with poor infrastructure in other respects as
| a result and use it for the subset of trips where they
| feel it's appropriate to do so. And the operators(who are
| in a profitable, growing market) can provide the
| financial muscle to sway City Hall's policy and make the
| infrastructure better - because the resulting network
| growth goes right back into their pockets. And with
| learning effects, it becomes increasingly easy to deploy
| at a larger and larger scale. The first few years when
| these companies emerged and spilled e-scooters all over
| the streets made for disastrous PR, but their execution
| has improved greatly since then, with sturdier vehicles,
| better battery lifetimes, and closer working
| relationships with cities to address safety.
| zeristor wrote:
| Less car crash deaths too.
|
| But society will disintegrate if we move away from using
| cars, as opposed to disintegrating if we keep using them.
| glial wrote:
| > society will disintegrate if we move away from using
| cars
|
| why?
| coding123 wrote:
| Without a solid plan this is a dead end.
| ksec wrote:
| I will not be surprised if Ford enter into partnership
| agreement with CATL sometimes later.
| thisismyusrname wrote:
| They already did
| konschubert wrote:
| The only thing that tops range anxiety for me is battery
| degradation anxiety. I would probably be totally fine with a
| lower range if I know that my battery can do 100 000 cycles.
| tuatoru wrote:
| For a practical car, 200 to 500 full charge cycles per year is
| all that could happen. 200 for a suburban family car, 500 for
| an urban commercial vehicle.
|
| (200 cycles per year would be perceived by an owner as being
| "every day", because the days she's away on holiday or sick at
| home or WFH are not remembered. Nor would she remember that she
| only charges once on weekends.)
|
| 100_000 cycles is therefore 20 to (more likely) 50 years' use.
|
| That's a family heirloom, well outlasting the body, suspension,
| steering and interior of any car. I'd like to have that too.
|
| Edit: Er, that should be _200_ to _500_ years. Outlasting
| _several_ chassis and interiors. Definitely heirlooms.
| konschubert wrote:
| I think 20 years of use would be cool for a car! Of course
| you might be right that the steering would break first - but
| shouldn't that be replaceable? I can't see a reason while the
| car's body or the electric motors would not last that long.
| dfadsadsf wrote:
| You did math wrong. 100k cycles is 200 to 500 years of use
| using your assumptions. Indeed heirloom!
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| A full charge cycle is 0 to 100 and back. If you only do 20
| to 80 as most owners do you get about ten times as many
| cycles. So a typical owner does well under 100 per year.
| 250,000 km is a reasonable expectation.
| londons_explore wrote:
| At the battery control system design stage, these two factors
| are mostly trade-off-able.
|
| For example, you'll get far far more cycles out of a battery if
| you only charge up to 80% and discharge down to 20%. Early
| hybrid cars used this to an extreme - and always kept the
| battery between 45% and 60%. By doing that you can get 50,000
| cycles necessary to recharge and discharge every time you go up
| and down a hill.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| The LFP batteries in the article have an expected life of 6000
| cycles, which in real world usage corresponds to about 750,000
| kilometers. (6000 is worst case cycle, which never happens in a
| car with a proper BMS).
|
| You're asking for a battery with an expected life span of 12.5
| million kilometers.
| konschubert wrote:
| 750000 is amazing too!
|
| How many cycles does a normal car battery do?
| adrianN wrote:
| How much room for improvement is left on the consumption side?
| Electric cars seem to require around 15-20kWh/100km. Can we get
| that below 10 for regular highway driving, say at 130km/h? What
| are the numbers for city driving like?
| clouddrover wrote:
| > _Can we get that below 10 for regular highway driving_
|
| Mercedes did in the Vision EQXX:
|
| https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/mercedes-benz-vi...
|
| https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/mercedes-vision-eqxx-ev-c...
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BS1SBhBjAHY
| acd wrote:
| You can make a self driving truck/electric vehicle lane where
| the speed limit is 80km/h. Paint a green line in the middle of
| the ev-lane and it should make self driving more easy to
| implement. Reason for slower speed wind resistance is far less
| at 80km/h. Energy use is quadratic concerning speed. So make a
| movie streaming ev-lane.
|
| Also one could fit cars with rail gear and run them on rail
| tracks on the highway which would lessen the tire friction roll
| resistance losses. Technology for allowing cars to run on rail
| tracks already exists for railway maintenance cars. Self
| driving on rail track is also much easier to implement.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road-rail_vehicle
|
| Safety from car crashes would also be far safer at 80km/h than
| higher speeds.
| nl wrote:
| Self driving on open roads where 80km/h is possible is
| basically a solved problem.
|
| And if people cared about efficiency enough to drive at 80
| they'd do it now. Low efficiency stsrt/stop driving is the
| problem to solve.
| bittercynic wrote:
| I like to drive a little slower to conserve charge/fuel,
| but it would be too discourteous to all the other drivers
| on the road, so I just go at the prevailing speed. If there
| were a separate lane for lower speed driving I would use
| it.
| fallingknife wrote:
| If it's a self driving only lane, the speed limit should be
| increased, not decreased. Self driving on a highway where all
| the cars are self driving is already a solved problem.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Before you put them on rails, it might be easier to add
| panthographs to charge from overhead wires while driving in
| electric lane.
|
| Germany has a short section of highway testing that setup for
| trucks
|
| https://www.sustainabletruckvan.com/pantographs-for-
| trucks-s...
| adrianN wrote:
| If people wanted to travel 80km/h they could do so today. It
| is well known that going slower improves fuel efficiency. I'm
| asking for things like improved drivetrain efficiency and
| better aerodynamics.
| tuatoru wrote:
| The laws of physics inconveniently get in the way.
|
| If your 90% efficient drivetrain-tyre system uses 20 kWh
| per 100 km, then improving that to 95% efficient maybe
| reduces that to 17 kWh.
|
| Pencils and javelins have lower drag coefficients than
| cars. Unfortunately people don't fit inside them. A
| javelin-shaped vehicle big enough to fit a person
| comfortably inside is a train.
| RustyConsul wrote:
| > A javelin-shaped vehicle big enough to fit a person
| comfortably inside is a train.
|
| or a cybertruck.
| stavros wrote:
| I don't mind going at 80 kmh if someone else is doing the
| driving.
| danans wrote:
| The Light-year zero is so efficient that it can gain 70km per
| day from its rooftop solar panels:
|
| https://lightyear.one/lightyear-0
|
| Initial model is > $300k but they plan a $30k model in the
| future.
| lazyjones wrote:
| > Can we get that below 10 for regular highway driving, say at
| 130km/h?
|
| Probably not with normal-sized cars.
|
| For the Model 3, the theoretical minimum is 13.8 kW. This
| increases linearly with drag coefficient and area (as seen from
| the front). You would have to build a significantly smaller
| (flatter, narrower) car and improve the drag coefficient (0.2
| has been achieved) to get there.
|
| Here's a calculator in German (sorry) for experiments:
| http://spare-benzin.de/Fahrphysik/Luftwiderstand/Luftwiderst...
| dbwjxufh7373 wrote:
| ben_bai wrote:
| 15-20kWh/100km is a gasoline equivalent of about 1,5-2l/100km.
| At 130km/h there is little room for improvement (thinner
| wheels, better aerodynamics). All the individual electric
| components in the car are like ~98% efficient.
|
| I guess 10kWh/100km is possible at 90km/h on cruisecontroll
| behind a big truck.
|
| EVs biggest problem are the inefficiencies in the electric
| grid, there is like a 50% margin for improvement.
| acd wrote:
| Happy Ford is using more environmentally friendly Iron based LFP
| batteries. Cobalt in more traditional batteries is neurotoxic for
| humans and the mining of Cobalt is dirty. Very good that a large
| car manufacturer such as Ford is switching to Iron LFP. You
| should be able to fast charge LFP which will compensate for the
| lesser energy density. Since lfp is more stable they should be
| able to take the charging better than cobalt-based chemistries.
| Also Iron lfp is a more stable chemistry than cobalt-based so far
| less likely for battery fires.
| Roritharr wrote:
| Having driven the 2021 Model 3 Standard Range with LFP
| Batteries from China:
|
| It charged _much_ slower and had worse performance degradation
| in winter.
|
| This might be due to the software limitations Tesla put on the
| BMC, but since then it didn't improve by much.
|
| I wouldn't expect LFP be the panacea, but it should make EVs
| more affordable and is definetly in the "good enough" range for
| most families.
| freemint wrote:
| LFP is supposed to be less bad in winter. So that it isn't
| kinda confuses me.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| BYD has integrated heating elements to drastically reduce
| degradation in the winter. Charging speeds is just a result
| of cheaping out somewhere at the scales we're talking about.
| carapace wrote:
| To me it seems that batteries in EVs make less sense than e.g.
| alcohol fuel ICE or hybrids.
|
| The main consideration is energy density, but alcohol is easy to
| make and handle, carbon-neutral, and the exhaust is non-toxic.
|
| This wouldn't make sense for the whole of car traffic because we
| use way too much fossil fuel to replace it all with e.g.
| industrial ethanol. But it could work as part of a transitional
| strategy. Fuel co-op as part of a CSA farm.
|
| It's pretty straightforward to convert existing ICE cars to burn
| alcohol instead. You don't even have to wait for anybody else, or
| any new technology to be developed.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_alcohol_fuel
| dv_dt wrote:
| Almost all of the energy density advantage disappears in an ICE
| powertrain via largely unavoidable thermodynamic loss.
| carapace wrote:
| I don't understand, that seems physically impossible? The
| engine would melt?
| discordance wrote:
| Hopefully in 10 years all of these car batteries with 50%
| capacity left can be deployed as residential batteries for
| peanuts.
| antisthenes wrote:
| You can already DIY battery packs from used EVs in order to
| build a residential whole-house backup.
|
| It's not peanuts, but getting very close to it.
| potatochup wrote:
| At least at the moment, it's usually more efficient to recycle
| the good cells from an old pack into a new pack for automotive
| use. The chemistry between automotive and residential use
| diverges significantly because they are optimizing for
| different things: Car batteries minimize weight and maximize
| power input/output. For residential, weight barely matters at
| all, but # of discharge cycles and thermal stability matter
| more*. In 10 years, who knows what the economics will turn out
| to be though.
| gregwebs wrote:
| This move solves this year's problems but doesn't address the
| lithium shortage that is already showing up in the price of
| lithium going up 5x. Analysts predict that by around 2025 lithium
| will limit the battery market that is trying to grow 40x to meet
| electrification demands. Note that opening a new lithium mine
| takes 7 years. Maybe Ford will be able to start selling sodium
| based batteries then.
|
| https://youtu.be/5v-DTS-ibow
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| According to Musk, the bottleneck is refining the Lithium, not
| mining it. I imagine it's faster to open a refinery than a
| mine, but it'll still be a years long process. Expanding
| existing refineries is probably faster.
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