Next-Gen Samsung EV Battery Gets 300+ Miles of Range From 20-Minute Charge (techcrunch.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Samsung's SDI battery subsidiary announced a new battery cell designed for use in electric vehicles that offers improved density to manage a max range of up to 372 miles on a full charge, with a quick charge capacity that will help it regain 310 miles or so of charge on just 20 minutes of charging. Unveiled at the North American International Auto Show for the first time, the new battery tech come with a 10 percent decrease in the number of units and weight required vs. current production battery units made by Samsung SDI. Mass production isn't set to begin until 2021, but the tech should arrive in time to supply the first crop of autonomous cars, which are also targeting street dates sometime within that year from a range of manufacturers. A 20-minute charge delivering that kind of range would help considerably with making EVs more practical for more drivers; it's around the time you'd spend at a rest stop using the restroom and grabbing coffee or a snack, after all. By comparison, Tesla's superchargers currently manage to provide around 170 miles of range on a half-hour charge, so Samsung's planned tech could approximately double that.

Comments

Re:Exploding Option?

[TheReaperD]

Who said anything about optional?

How many charge/discharge cycles?

[mykepredko]

Avoiding the obvious comment/joke/pun regarding fiery past Samsung has with rechargeable products recently, the first thing I always want to see in regards to car battery technology is how many charge/discharge cycles can it handle?

If we were to assume the worst case, a vehicle could be driven 600 miles (two charge/discharge cycles) every day. Multiply that by 300 days in a year and an expected 5 (7?) year life, this is 3,000 charge/discharge cycles and what I see for most lithium battery technology is usually around 500 cycles. This doesn't include temperature extremes (say from -30C to 45C).

Can this (or any) technology provide this kind of life in a car environment? What do Tesla batteries claim to be able to do?

Re:How many charge/discharge cycles?

[Harlequin80]

At 900,000 miles I suspect that the state of the battery pack is the least of your worries..... On any normal car the entire running system has either been replaced or so heavily maintained that it may as well have been replaced.

Re:How many charge/discharge cycles?

[Ungrounded Lightning]

... the first thing I always want to see in regards to car battery technology is how many charge/discharge cycles can it handle?

That's the wrong metric for lithium ion batteries.

As I understand it, the main ageing mechanism that kills them is oxidation of the graphite anode, which starts when the cell is manufactured and isn't appreciably affected by usage except for being accelerated somewhat by being stored at high temperatures with low (20%) charge.

Charge/discharge cycling does cause some "wear", but it's generally a smaller effect. (That's why the advice for, for instance, laptop batteries is not to avoid using them. For long term storage unused they last the longest if put away at about 40% charge.)

This means that it's mainly the age of the cells, not their usage or charge history, that determines when they die. A pack designed for 7 years life will probably give you 7 years life unless you either run it nearly all the way down (which the battery management logic should prevent) or run it down to a low charge and leave it out in the sun for months.

Also: At least one new anode material appears not to age measurably at all.

Re:Cold weather?

[beelsebob]

I have no details about this battery in particular, but my experience with owning an EV, and knowing others who own them is that range drops around 15% at 0-5C compared to 20-30C.

Re:Cold weather?

[jrmcferren]

Only on startup will electric heating be required to heat the cabin. Once the battery is up to temperature heating can be accomplished the same was it is now by piping some of the battery coolant through a heater core. If designed correctly (and the driver plans correctly) initial heating can actually be done while the car is still connected to the charger.

Re:Cold weather?

[npslider]

Yeah... this weekend's weather forecast calls for 40 Below Zero in my town (Alaska).

I wonder how those batteries will do here. Our car batteries get a little cranky w/o either a trickle changer or a battery pad warmer at those temperatures.

In my parts of the woods, all cars plug in, just not all year round! ;)

There's a Practical Charging Limit

[foxalopex]

Although there's a limit to how fast a battery can be charged before it overheats and explodes or simply damages itself, don't forget that there's a practical limit to how much power you can realistically draw from a typical house outlet. A Gallon of gasoline is estimated to have 33.41 KwH! (A normal gas engine throws a good portion of that energy away as heat.) That gallon of gas is pretty close to what my typical household uses in the entire day for electricity! So to pull down the equivalent of a couple of gallons of gas in 20 minutes is going to take the equivalent power drain of a sub-station transformer. It's why you don't see a commercial fast Tesla charger at home. A typical house doesn't use a 480 volt industrial power feed. You don't want much more current in the hands of consumers. A small mistake could cause a nasty explosion / arc.

Re:Cold weather?

[short]

No, you need to warm the battery first only to charge it. This is why Tesla disables recuperation during initial drive with cold battery. When it is cold it only has reduced capacity + current but that does not matter as during winter you do not need super-sport accelerations; and after 30 mins of driving it gets a normal temperature from invertor+engine heat so that you can utilize its full capacity.

Re: Not to rain on the parade, but...

[Desler]

In 1913 the average income was about $15,000 and a car cost about $30,000, in today's dollars.

Not even remotely true. A Model T cost $525 in 1913 which is only $13000 in 2016 dollars. Also the average income was $800 or approximately $19700 in 2016 dollars.

Tesla Currently

[Thelasko]

Tesla's superchargers currently manage to provide around 170 miles of range on a half-hour charge, so Samsung's planned tech could approximately double that.

Sure, this technology will beat Tesla's current capability, but it won't be available until 2021. Does Samsung think Tesla won't make improvements by then? They are already quietly increasing the capability of their charging stations, and rolling out new batteries using production tooling.

Umbrella for the parade

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Charging that in 20 minutes will be around 300Kw, 300V and 1000A or 1000V at 300A or some variation thereof.
Any way you look at it the cable and connectors will be ridiculous.

Hardly.

Take 2000V 150A, for instance. 1/0 or 2/0 welding cable, insulated to that voltage, would be well within the current electrical code. The stiffness of such a two-wire bundle would compare favorably to a gas-pump hose - especially in states (like CA) where the hose includes a vapor recovery passage.

Most wiring these days is insulated to 600V by default because it's hard to make insulation any thinner without making it fragile. 2000V is not difficult at all.

You could even include a coaxial "shield" that would detect any failures in the inner cable's insulation, along with signal-level switch wiring that would detect whether the plug was fully inserted into a matching connector, to prevent the enabling of significant current unless the system is safe.

A gasoline pump, running at 10 GPM, is feeding your car about 22 megawatts of fuel heat-equivalent. What's such a big deal about feeding it a mere 300 kilowatts, nearly 2 orders of magnitude less, as electricity rather than liquid fuel?