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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."
It's zero protons held together with magnets.
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What do you mean? An African or European proton?
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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
Stop ruining his outburst with science.
And that is why we should return to the safe, natural goodness of gasoline.
I wondered the same thing, so I read the article (sometimes it must be done).
He was making the point that lithium is not heavy. Other than that, it's hard to know what else he was trying to say, because the article doesn't give much context.
Of course, it's also possible that since he's just a spokesman, he doesn't have much else to say.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
He was making the point that lithium is not heavy. Other than that, it's hard to know what else he was trying to say, because the article doesn't give much context.
I know it's not XKCD, but there's relevant SMBC and PHD comics.
Roughly speaking, outside of very dedicated science reporting channels by the time you go from the scientist's representative trying to dumb it down, to the reporter trying to dumb it down, to the editor doing it yet again, accuracy sucks.
Maybe they're trying for a hydrogen battery?
I don't read AC A human right
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.
I think you mean "fucking magnets" - how do they work?
To be fair he wanted to shoot someone in the face while bird hunting, but apparently Martha's Vineyard doesn't have the same easy attitude about misuse of firearms that Wyoming does.
Hmm, that was typed as sq rt 2 x i electrons but Slashdot made it a 3.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
I missed that it was lithium *ion* cells.
-- hendrik
I did read the article, though not before my comment. In it was really nothing new.
Oh sorry about that, I should have pointed that out; I forgot to mention that the article isn't actually worth reading lol
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
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.
It's not much of a risk. Every single battery chemistry has been played with, at one time or another. And by that I mean rigorously and exhaustively scientifically investigated. In consequence, not only has everything been tried, but we now know what works and why it works. That's why it's science, and not merely engineering.
Lithium will always remain a preferential element because it's the element that is the strongest reducing agent in the periodic table, short of hydrogen, which is too hard to hold on to. The stronger the reducing agent, the higher the voltage a cell can develop and the better a battery can be. At the other end, you want a strong oxidizing agent. Fluorine would be ideal, if it wasn't such a viciously strong oxidizing agent that it eats your whole battery, not just the electrons you want it to. Presumably this situation is what the spokesdroid was referring to, without explaining what the hell he was talking about.
Lithium is the cathode of choice since it's a metal that can be conveniently nailed down while still possessing a very good electrode potential. As an ion, it's nicely compact, being the lightest of metals, so it migrates through a battery most conveniently. What to pair it with is a little more complicated, and the subject of much research. This is where manganese, cobalt, and carbon come in. Various combinations of those elements and their immediate neighbors on the periodic table are used to make anodes. Some work better than others. Some may work better yet depending on how they're assembled.
Rest assured, whatever develops in terms of battery assembly, lithium will remain the cathode, and much of the macroscopic assembly will be the same or close enough to the same that the gigafactory will always be busy. The assembly and packaging to be done is fairly common, regardless of chemistry.
RTFA
It mentions they are trying to replace the lithium ion anode with "pure lithium" - i.e. lithium metal.
... 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.
By the time they do that driving a car manually will be illegal and you might not even own a car - just call one for each trip.
It isn't by electronegativity, though. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...
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.
I don't know what the parent was thinking but what if there ended up being two elements with the same number if protons but different phisical properties due to some yet to be discovered reason.
Well, we already have a word for atoms with the same number of protons but differences in some other property: isotope. Whether a difference in something other than number of neutrons would use the term "isotope" or some other new term is a decision that will have to be made if and when the discovery is made.