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How Argonne National Lab Will Make Electric Cars Cheaper
ashshy writes Argonne National Lab is leading the charge on next-generation battery research. In an interview with The Motley Fool, Argonne spokesman Jeff Chamberlain explains how new lithium ion chemistries will drive down the cost of electric cars over the next few years. "The advent of lithium ion has truly enabled transportation uses," Chamberlain said. "Because if you remember your freshman chemistry, you think of the periodic table -- lithium is in the upper left-hand corner of the periodic table. Only hydrogen and helium are lighter on an atomic basis."
We don't know everything about the universe. There might be another lighter element between lithium and hydrogen that we don't know about. It might be out there in space and we have to go explore the universe with 3D printers to make better batteries.
Computers got better, and someone was wrong once, so anything is possible and you're a Luddite if you don't believe it.
"Because if you remember your freshman chemistry, you think of the periodic table -- lithium is in the upper left-hand corner of the periodic table. Only hydrogen and helium are lighter on an atomic basis."
This is true, but I'm wondering if this is a non sequitur for electric batteries.
Okay, I admit being beyond my depth, but I have often wondered if lithium is necessarily the best choice. Yes, it's light, but might there be a more efficient choice based on some other elements with a different set of reduction potentials (i.e. a larger reduction potential gap between material x and y than LiPo has, for example)?
The goal is really about cost effective energy density rather than strictly the mass density of components. In fact, it's probably something like cost per J/g or something.
...which is why we put them in self-driving cars that communicate with each other to avoid accidents.
......................hackers communicate with the self-driving cars to tell them to crash into each other.
Yeah Science, B-tch!
So does Sodium. But do you notice how table salt doesn't burn in water?
There's no lithium metal in lithium /ion/ cells. The whole lithium catching on fire thing is to do with them having a rather volatile solvent as part of the electrolyte (something similar to ether).
Sent from my PDP-11
First of all, many thanks for the link
Second of all, this ---
Obama spoke from his vacation on Martha's Vineyard and played golf immediately after delivering his remarks
Elemental lithium does, yes.
Lithium compounds in batteries, not so much.
Stop ruining his outburst with science.
"The advent of lithium ion has truly enabled transportation uses," Chamberlain said. "Because if you remember your freshman chemistry, you think of the periodic table -- lithium is in the upper left-hand corner of the periodic table. Only hydrogen and helium are lighter on an atomic basis."
Well, now that we're clear as mud with this justification for using lithium, I guess I should try and figure out how I can get my helium-powered turbo bolted on to my engine. Or perhaps I should go with a hydrogen-powered supercharger instead.
Some new game changing battery/supercapacitor breakthrough might be just around the corner. If so, all that investment in the battery megafactory could get wiped out. Ditto with investing in lithium mining.
So the megafactory might be still happily minting money 25 years from now, or it might be nearly worthless 5 years from now. Presumably this means we'll be paying a risk premium on lithium and lithium batteries. It seems to me that it would be smart for Tesla to be investing in the very technologies that might disrupt their factory, as an insurance policy. That way, if the fortune you've invested in the factory evaporates, hopefully you'll have a new replacement fortune due to having a stake in the new technology. However, this strategy requires that you have the funds for this speculative investment, and has you encouraging the very research which will ruin your factory investment. (Also, maybe you won't have invested in the right places and won't have a stake in the new technology.) In the case of Tesla, they are major consumers as well as (soon to be) major manufacturers of batteries, so there is an additional up-side to investing in the hypothetical tech breakthrough.
Is lithium mining expanding fast enough to feed this factory when it comes online?
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
And that is why we should return to the safe, natural goodness of gasoline.
Considering the only alternatives are gasoline and hydrogen, it looks like all cars will be flammable for the near future.
I think electric cars are the future. Some will debate me on that, but I'm not interested in that debate.
Where are we likely to be in 15 yrs? 2x current capacity? 4x current capacity? 10x current capacity? Where are the growing pains?
How much better/cheaper can lithium ion batteries get? What will they be replaced with? What's the end game?
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
They'll make electric cars dramatically cheaper just like they brought us fusion reactors!
... when I can buy an all-electric car that is just as sexy and just as performant as the Tesla Model S for under about $45k in today's dollars.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I missed that it was lithium *ion* cells.
-- hendrik
"lithium is in the upper left-hand corner of the periodic table. Only hydrogen and helium are lighter on an atomic basis."
I'm wondering if this is a non sequitur for electric batteries.
Not a non sequitur at all.
An important factor for batteries is energy density: How much energy is stored per unit mass. This is particularly important for electric cars: The higher the energy density, the less mass you havce to haul around for a given amount of "fuel", which means the less "fuel" is spent hauling your "fuel" around, so it's a more-than-linear improvement.
Lithium is both extremely light and a very reactive nonmetal. So you're talking about a lot of energy per unit mass for the lithium-based electrode's contribution to the reaction.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
RTFA
It mentions they are trying to replace the lithium ion anode with "pure lithium" - i.e. lithium metal.
Lithium is a metal.
Well, you could always try making a battery with a lithium anode instead, that's coated with carbon nanospheres to stop it from reacting to stuff, and forming dendrites over time with charging and recharging. Funny thing is, Stanford's doing just that, and I believe I may have even gotten this link from slashdot a couple weeks ago: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_...
Thanks for replying. Can you address the rest of my post rather than simply taking my first sentence out of context?
Specifically, the inquiry regarding the possibility of better choices than lithium due to a potential increased difference in standard reduction potential leading to superior energy density vs lithium-based cells. If the energy density is increased sufficiently, it doesn't matter if the technology uses, say, lead instead of lithium because an equivalent battery pack would be lighter than a lithium one.
That was my post's question in a nutshell.
P.S. Simply asserting that lithium is a light metal is insufficient to support an argument to use it in a vehicle battery pack. That's the non sequitur.
Volume is also important. If you can store as many picojoules in a hydrogen atom as in a lithium atom then still lithium is more useful as the same amount of hydrogen atoms is way bigger.
You don't want a 3 m3 battery, even if it is lighter.
Lithium is a metal.
Oops. Right. Sorry.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Another 'new battery' article. I've read about a trillion (feels like it) of those lately.
I'm developing a helium battery, if it's big enough, your car can fly.
Nuh uh! There are also compressed air cars - they only explosively decompress upon tank failure! ;)
At least with batteries, flammability or explosiveness aren't a fundamental requirement of how you're trying to propel the vehicle, just an unfortunate side effect of some variants of the technology (even not all types of li-ions are flammable). There's lots of people who assume that flammability is a consequence of electrical energy density, but that's just not the case. The actual charge/discharge lithium batteries via intercalating into the anode or cathode is more an atomic-scale equivalent of compressing air into a tank, you're having little affect on the substrate flammabilities and you're not even changing their chemical bonding, you're just cramming lithium ions into the space between their atoms. The flammabilty of some types comes from side effects, such as flammable electrolytes or membrane failures leading to lithium metal plating out; these aren't a fundamental aspect of the energy storage process.
Now, li-air, that involves an actual lithium metal electrode, and that is fundamentally flammable. Of course, so is gasoline. I have no doubt that they can reduce fire risks on li-air cells and keep them properly contained to prevent failure propagations. My bigger issues with li-air are its terrible efficiency, lifespan, and cost. I'm certain the latter would come down, and I expect that they can improve the lifespan, but I'm a bit uneasy about how much they can improve its efficiency. Right now, they're as inefficient as a fuel cell. : Who wants to waste three times as much power per mile as is necessary?
Musk needs a safer hobby than Twitter. Fire juggling? Cage fighting? Solo hot air balloon trips?
The weight of lithium is pretty irrelevant. There are no currently existing battery technologies where Li is more than 10% of the total weight of the battery, and standard battery types are significantly below that. If the active ion weight were the prime factor, there would be more interest in beryllium batteries (just 30% more weight vs. twice the charge per ion).
Tesla Motors, Inc. Is Itching for More and Better Batteries by: Anders Bylund
And then at the very bottom of the article:
Anders Bylund owns shares of Tesla Motors. The Motley Fool recommends General Motors and Tesla Motors. The Motley Fool owns shares of Tesla Motors. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days.
God I hate these ad pieces disguised as news.
The battery pack is not the bulk of the price of an electric car. It's all the other bits.
So it is not going to drive down the price, not by any reasonable amount.
What is needed is a single company making the motors and standardization. If the Govt demanded that all cars follow a standard motor design then suddenly costs will drop. Ford,GM,Toyota,Honda are NOT going to standardize unless forced to. And prices will not drop until there is a standard that is interchangeable.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Table salt is NaCl, not pure sodium. Sodium will burn in contact with air.
So does Sodium. But do you notice how table salt doesn't burn in water?
There's no lithium metal in lithium /ion/ cells. The whole lithium catching on fire thing is to do with them having a rather volatile solvent as part of the electrolyte (something similar to ether).
That's not necessarily true. When lithium batteries are charged at a low temperature, lithium metal plates the anode. This could certainly be a problem for electric cars, as they may not be in a warm garage as they are charging.
Enigma
I propose that we go back to foot-powered automobiles as shown in that documentary called The Flintstones. Bonus: We'll save energy by getting all sorts of trained animals to do things for us instead of powering machines to do them.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Yes, so it does. I stand recorrected.
-- hendrik
Still, the 400 lb battery pack in the Chevy Volt only has the energy of about 1 gallon of gasoline. If you allow that electric motors are 5x more efficient, that's still only the equivalent of 5 gallons and it still takes all night to recharge. In my econo box, I can drive 300 miles, stop at a gas station, fill it up and be on my way in 10 minutes.
The economics don't make sense either (for now, at any rate). If you bought a Chevy Volt and operated it for 10 years, which would include 1 battery replacement, you could have bought a Chevy Cruz Eco, drive it for the same 10 years, then bought another one and still have money left over. (Based on EPA fuel economy estimates, normal maintenance and equal insurance.)
Won't we run into some kind of lithium shortage if the demand for li-ion batteries raises ?
Or at least a increase in raw material price offsetting the decrease in manufacturing costs.
I wonder if that is part of why the Tesla battery warranty has a void if kept in very low temperatures clause.
So does Sodium. But do you notice how table salt doesn't burn in water?
There's no lithium metal in lithium /ion/ cells. The whole lithium catching on fire thing is to do with them having a rather volatile solvent as part of the electrolyte (something similar to ether).
I hate to tell you this, but for the battery to do anything useful the lithium can't all be in a low energy state like table salt. You get power out of the battery by switching the lithium from a higher energy state down to one of those low energy states. A fully charged lithium ion battery certainly does contain lithium energetic enough to start a fire.
Talking of dragging fuel around, what we could do with is fuel that we could suck straight out of thin air (or at least part of it). I guess that will never happen.
"Hell, Dr. Fred, if we put enough energy into the damn stable thing, just think how big an instantaneous charge we can drain out!"
where's the Kickstarter link?
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Just think how much more advanced electric car technology would be today if the Electric Vehicals mandated and produced in California more than 10 years ago had not been killed by the big oil and automotive industries. If instead of both of those industries doing everything possible to delay, supress, and defeat such technology, and instead had done everything possible to promote and advance that technology. We could have electric cars with greater range and shorter charging times. And they would cost far less too.
Mine is charging in the garage.
I'll admit it's been a few decades since I did high school chem, but WTF does it matter to be in the upper-left corner?
Helium's in the upper right and it's lighter than Lithium.