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Li-Ion Batteries Hit Final R&D Phase for Plug-in Cars
An anonymous reader writes "Tesla finally delivered its first production model of the all-electric Roadster this month. Coinciding with that, researchers from the big automakers and their outsourced startup labs are hitting stride in the development of cheap, high-powered lithium-ion batteries. These may actually end up in our garages. Toyota, in fact, says it's got enough of the chemistry down to roll out a test fleet for the plug-in Prius before the end of 2009. It's mass production of battery tech that's the holdup — which might mean Mercedes' electric hybrids beat the Prius to market en masse by 2010 or 2011."
I'm still waiting for the Ariel-Atom-based Wrightspeed X1.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
Looks nice to me!
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Please, please, tell me they are not getting their batteries from Sony!
"50 cars caught fire on I-4 today."
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No matter how well R&D goes for these vehicles, I don't see how we can successfully convert people to electric cars without some sort of infrastructure in place. Sure, you can charge your car at home for the daily commute, but what about road trips?
Plug-in hybrids are a good compromise, though.
How safe is your huge tank of extremely flammable gasoline in case of a car crash?
c++;
Actually, a lot of research has gone into making those tanks as safe a possible.
In a crash: they will bend, not break.
How often does a car catch file after a crash? Only very rarely.
OK, so rather than pollute the air as we burn fossil fuels, we'll fill up landfills with bazillions of batteries. Electric cars might not be as "green" and wonderful as people like to think.
These batteries are probably recyclable but it isn't cost effective, based on what I rad. So, the potential to recycle is there but are people actually going to do it?
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How well to these batteries fair in the cold? If they are like the Li-ions in my video camera you'll get to the end of the street then they'll die.
In the not too distant future, next Sunday A.D.
...and hopefully good riddance. Say, did you know that an electric vehicle was the first to travel at 100km/h...
...in 1899!!!
I've run into this education issue personally. I have a sand rail (what most people call a "Dune Buggy"). The gas tank is right behind the passenger's heads, inside the roll cage. My mother freaked when she saw that - she was concerned it was so close to passengers. "What happens in an accident?" she asked. I pointed out that the best place for the tank is where there's the most protection, and that's near the people, inside the roll cage. If it were outside, you'd guarantee a ruptured tank (no body skins on this vehicle, just tubular frame). Inside, your body would take as much damage as it takes to rupture the tank, meaning you'd probably be dead of blunt force trauma before a fire started from a ruptured tank.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Heat is a problem with Li-ion batteries. If they get too hot they explode. Leaving a phone in a car with direct sunlight is enough.
Seems a bit odd they would be used in cars.
Wasn't that the point of him saying "How safe is that tank ..." ?
Anyway - any technology that stores a lot of energy is going to have some potential (ha ha) for danger. There haven't been that many problems with LiIon batteries when you take into account the number of batteries that exist in the world.
With that said, there's this problem of obtaining lithium which isn't nearly as abundant as nickel. I still like NiMH batteries for EVs, and I'm sure they will give lithium a run for the money (if not for weight). Even NiCd batteries are pretty good for electric cars, and the technology is practically antique. The issue with large NiMH cells (>10Ah) is that Texaco owns the patent.
Um, to the Telsa Motor's site, and they'll have answered this already. Basically a cell in the battery pack can be on fire, and it won't affect the other cells.
It's called product development.
Or, with an analogy, how will new computers hold up vs the current computers? If something was wrong with the current computers, you would think they should have built the new ones to start with.
(I do realize I'll be hanged for making an analogy without cars in it on Slashdot. But the argument is already about cars! Adding more cars into the analogy would probably cause a pile-up crash or something.)
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
Lithium iron phosphate batteries (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_iron_phosphate_battery) are supposed to be pretty safe, at the expense of storing a bit less energy per size and weight than current Li-Ion batteries.
They are also made from relatively cheap and plentiful raw materials, so I'd expect them to become the most frequently used batteries in electric cars.
C - the footgun of programming languages
How often does a car catch file after a crash? Only very rarely.
Wrong. Everyone knows that cars always explode after a crash. Sometimes, though, the explosion happens after the driver and occupants escape to a safe distance.
I've seen it myself hundreds of times, both on TV and in movies.
Or, perhaps an increased demand for electricity might spur on searches for alternative ways of producing it rather than through the burning of coal. Geothermal, wind, solar, hydro and even nuclear power all hold some immediate promise in this regard as potentially more environmentally friendly alternatives. At least with an existing electric car infrastructure, as the centralized methods used for generating the electricity might slowly change over time, the infrastructure of existing cars wouldn't need to be upgraded with it.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Is that to prevent people developing an alternative to petrol?
That's why I recommend a wind generator be installed on every car. That way you can charge as you drive. Ever hang your hand out the car window and think "Wow, if I could just harness this power, I'd be rich!"
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
The electricity to charge all those batteries has to come from someplace. all you are doing is shifting the the consumption of fossil fuel from one place to another. The energy required to manufacture these batteries in VERY large quantities has to come from someplace as well.
Last time I checked there are not many rivers left to damn up for hydro so the juice has to come from someplace and since fusion power isn't quite ready for prime time you are going to have to build a hell of a lot more power plants to transfer the power generation from a facility on 4 wheels to some very big stationary ones.
That being said, you can gain a hell of a lot of efficiency because large power plants do much better then the internal combustion engine, but they still have to burn something, either that or be prepared to have a big nuclear power plant coming to a neighborhood near you.
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
Come on. This is not always about shoving stuff down the little guys throat. There are plenty of communities that would love having a power plant in their town. For many more rural areas of the United States, they provide the only steady local jobs, provide taxes to help run the town, and sometimes even subsidized electricity (they do in the town next door to mine).
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One of the huge bonuses associated with electric cars is reduced maintenance. There are no timing chains to break, no radiators to leak, no oil to be changed. Electric motors are highly reliable and very easy to fix. In the documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car?" they discussed that the dealers did not like the electric cars at all because of the tremendously lowered need for maintenance and repair. (Of course the mechanics loved them because the cars were easy to work and and the mechanics didn't end up covered in oil and grease all the time)
If you really do a lot of extended road trips, you should get a gas car or hybrid, but for everybody else the electric car + renting a gas car occasionally would be the much better choice.
Using a car analogy when the topic itself is cars would be recursion.
It would be even better if you could say that analogy with a LISP.
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As for Lithium batteries, they do need to be protected by electronic circuitry and mechanical enclosures but no more so than a fuel tank. If you shoot a bullet through it, they could produce a thermal runaway (fire). But if someone is shooting at you, you have bigger concerns.
Net is we need to move cars off of Saudi oil and onto our grid, then we can have independent discussions on how we power our grid. In CA, we are ~ 50% renewable. Search for eGrid and you will find data that supports the fact that burning coal and natural gas in power plants is many times more clean than in cars, 2-stroke weedwackers, and other gas applications.
Neil Maguire Alternative Energy Engineer
Carbeque!
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
...there's this problem of obtaining lithium which isn't nearly as abundant as nickel. Lithium is about half as abundant as nickel, which isn't that great a difference. For comparison, boron, only half as abundant as lithium, is thrown away with the wash by people who use Borax.Considering that the lithium used will eventually be recycled, I don't expect lithium availability to be a major long term bottleneck.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)