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Samsung Unveils New Electric Car Batteries For Up To 430 Miles of Range (electrek.co)

Posted by BeauHD on from the new-and-improved dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: At the Frankfurt Motor Show (IAA Cars 2017) this week, Samsung's battery division, Samsung SDI, showcases a new "Multifunctional battery pack" solution to enable more range in electric vehicles as the Korean company tries to carve itself a bigger share of the growing automotive battery market. Most established automakers, like Nissan with the LEAF or even GM with the more recent Chevy Bolt EV, have been using large prismatic cells to build their electric vehicle battery packs. Tesla pioneered a different approach using thousands of individual smaller cylindrical li-ion battery cells in each pack. Earlier this year, Samsung unveiled its own '2170' battery cell to compete with Tesla/Panasonic. Now they are claiming that they can reach an impressive energy density by using those cells in new modules: "'Multifunctional battery pack' of Samsung SDI attracted the most attention. Its users can change the number of modules as they want as if they place books on a shelf. For example, if 20 modules are installed in a premium car, it can go 600 to 700 kilometers. If 10 to 12 modules are mounted on a regular sedan, it can run up to 300 kilometers. This pack is expected to catch the eyes of automakers, because they can design a car whose mileage may vary depending on how many modules of a single pack are installed."

13 of 90 comments (clear)

  1. Multifunctional? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    So it also works as a road flare in case of emergency?

  2. Fine as long as. by deviated_prevert · · Score: 3, Funny

    The packs are not made from all the recycled Samsung cell phones.

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  3. Relevant questions by elrous0 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Compared to existing batteries:

    1) How much does it cost?
    2) How fast can you charge it?
    3) Are any affordable cars going to support it?

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    1. Re:Relevant questions by Rei · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Beat me to the punch ;)

      Gravimetric energy density is one of the least important aspects these days. Back in the lead-acid days, improving it it was a huge deal because lead-acids made cars impractically heavy for a reasonable range. Those days are gone. As noted in this post:

      The base curb weight of the Tesla Model 3, according to the official press kit, is 3549 lbs, which is 1610kg. 1730kg is the LR version, the heavier version. The BMW 3-Series ranges from 1475-1770kg. The A4 ranges from [wikipedia.org] 1410-1695 kg. I can't find an official total range for the C300, but find values ranging from 1630 kg to 1688kg to 1695kg to 1715kg. While the 1630kg is described as the "base weight" (analogous to the M3's 1610kg), I have no clue what the heaviest C300 config is, there could easily be configurations heavier than the 1715kg one.

      To sum up:
      Tesla Model 3: 1610-1730kg
      BMW 3-Series: 1475-1770kg
      Audi A4: 1410-1695kg
      Mercedes C300: 1630-1715+kg

      To repeat: The Tesla Model 3's curb weight comes in at pretty much the same range as other midrange compact sedans (BMW 3-Series, Audi A4, Mercedes C300, etc).

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    2. Re:Relevant questions by Rei · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Actually, it's really not. Note the above with the Model 3, for example: adding ~41% more range from batteries increases the vehicle mass by only 7%, which in turn translates to a loss of range at highway speeds of 2-3% 41% vs. 2-3%; it's not that meaningful. It'd be more like 5% for city driving, but then again, nobody cares about EV range in city driving - EVs go much further in city driving regardless, and who drives 310+ miles in-town-only per day?

      --
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    3. Re:Relevant questions by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      When you are trying to squeeze out as much range as possible, curb weight reduction is very important.

      It's less important than you think. Mass matters little on long trips, unless you have poor throttle control. And EVs have regen, so if you drive correctly, it matters less than you think it does in the city, too.

      How it compares with ICE weight is meaningless.

      False. Totally false. How it compares with ICE weight is totally relevant at all times. Making a car more massive means you need more tire to pull the same number of lateral Gs, which means more rolling resistance which means poorer economy. As such, EVs tend to have narrow tires which compromise handling. Even without exotic materials, you can build a sports car under 3,000 pounds with a gasoline engine.

      People commonly described the original Prius as handling like a 1970s land yacht. It wallowed, it slid sideways going over cracked pavement in a turn, and it didn't really want to turn. Making a vehicle heavy and compromising its traction is always a down side. The up sides might well outweigh that, but a lighter vehicle is always going to be more fun to drive. It's going to remain relevant as long as we are permitted to drive ourselves.

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    4. Re:Relevant questions by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      From what I can tell it's nothing revolutionary chemistry-wise. They adopted the round cell form-factor similar to what Panasonic/Tesla use, but the real innovation here is that the battery is modular. You can relatively easily add and remove capacity, meaning you can build identical cars on your production line and then fit whatever size battery the customer wants at the last minute. Customers can also pay for upgrades later, or even rent some extra capacity.

      So the battery itself isn't that interesting, it's the BMS (battery management system) and mechanical construction that is quite clever.

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  4. The figure that matters... by Rei · · Score: 5, Informative

    .... is not Wh/kg. It's $/kWh. That is by far the number one aspect for increasing adoption. Tesla for example gets a constant stream of companies pushing new battery technologies, wanting to talk about every aspect except for that one: cost per unit energy. They're always asked to cut straight to the chase.

    Of course, we're not even given Wh/kg here in this article.

    After cost per kilowatt hour, the number two factor is longevity. Because it correlates directly with cost. Generally it means you have to have shallow cycles (low DoD) if the battery isn't durable, meaning more batteries. In particular, longevity in varying temperature and charging condtions is important. In short, longevity works out to just another aspect of cost.

    Barring some unusual problems, cell safety is usually #3 or #4. Not higher, because failures can, and already are, controlled. See for example fire tests of Tesla powerwalls. A combination of physical isolation, active quench (circulating coolant), passive quench (coolant / structure thermal mass, expansion space, venting), and a wide range of other mechanisms mean that you really have to pull out all the stops to burn the packs; there have been Teslas which burned to the ground, down to smouldering wrecks, still without managing to ignite the pack.

    (Honestly, it amazes me that it's considered acceptable to store massive amounts of gasoline just in one big open tank - no isolation / compartmentalization / quench systems. Just dump it in and there you go! Not surprising that there's ~200k car fires in the US alone every year)

    The other big competitor with safety is power density - the mix of ion mobility (how fast it's physically possible to charge / discharge the cell) and efficiency (how much heat you have to remove from the cells to do so). The heat removal rate is also affected by the heat tolerance. Charge speeds are a more significant limiting factor to the number of purchases than range, and the power output of the packs and high torque they allow are one of the big selling points of EVs.

    Heck, Wh/kg (gravimetric energy density) isn't even the most important energy density measure. Practical EVs are not limited by their weights - heck, the Model 3 SR slots right into the middle of its class (compact midrange sedans in their various configurations, and the LR, while on the heavier side, still has some heavier ICE competitors). Their ranges are limited by how many cells you can physically fit into the pack without making the skateboard unreasonably bulky. For example, the Model 3 skateboard, at current cell volumetric energy densities, simply can't scale to higher than 75kWh. Doesn't matter what the gravimetric energy density is - if you want more, you need to improve the volumetric energy density.

    --
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    1. Re:The figure that matters... by hey! · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Obviously both Wh/kg and$/kWh are important. Until the Wh/kg and Wh/m^3 figures for a new tech get good enough to make it physically practical, $/kWh is irrelevant; but beyond that with most new tech there's usually an adoption curve.

      After you've done all the lab based tinkering you can to make new tech affordable, there comes a time when the only way to make it cheaper is to make it in quantity. But unless you are lucky (or persuasive) enough to be swimming in unlimited investor dollars, chances are you don't have the money to set up an operation on that scale.

      That's why you target niche applications and early tech adopters. Elon Musk was smart about this: he didn't set out to build the electric equivalent of the Model T; he started out with an exotic roadster and then a near-as-exotic high end luxury sedan.

      But then Henry Ford didn't start out with the Model T either; his first car was the Model A. The original 1903 Model A cost $800, at the time when the median US income was $543. He sold about 10,000 of them. The Model T was introduced in 1908 for $825, but five years later he managed to drop that price down to $440; sales increased twentyfold. By 1925 he'd managed to drop the price to $260 (the equivalent of less than $3700 in 2017 dollars) at a time median income had risen to $750. Not surprising he sold nearly two million of the things that year.

      That's the power of the adoption curve. Early adopters bootstrap economies of scale you need to make something cheap enough for everyone.

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    2. Re: The figure that matters... by Rei · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Exactly; when you run the numbers it's easy to see the profit margin on them. They buy power at industrial rates (huge bulk), which in the US average something like $0.06-0.07/kWh, and sell it back for $0.20/kWh. The demand charges can be significant at low/uneven utilization rates, but that's not what we're talking about here, we're talking about "when electric vehicles become more popular". The station is much cheaper than a gas station to build; a typical 8-stall supercharging station today costs around $250k on average, and we're nowhere near mass production now. Punch in the numbers at say 30% average utilization and you find that it's easy to show significant profitability.

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  5. Re:so...? by ClickOnThis · · Score: 4, Funny

    Will it take AA batteries?

    This car does.

    --
    If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
  6. Electric Pinto by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Electric Pinto -- enough said.

  7. Re: Better range by Rei · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Technically inferior.... lol. A form factor half the size of a CHAdeMO but delivering three times the current, "technically inferior"? Yeah, try again.

    CHAdeMO is a pefect example of how not to design a connector. CCS combo is okay, but still a Frankenconnector, needlessly large and awkward, and with too little current support.** Tesla has by far the best connectors. Even in Europe where they were mandated to include a Type 2, they modified the Type 2 so that it can handle both low power AC and extreme power DC charging in the exact same connector. Rather than CCS which decided that you needed to add a big two pronged "growth" onto your connector to do so.

    ** - There are a very small number of high power CCS stations, ~150kW or so. But they do this by increasing the voltage, not the current. Which is great if you have a mythical EV with a 1000V battery pack. Even the nominal ~50kWh stations often play the voltage game; that 50kW is often assuming that you're charging at 500V, but most packs have a well lower voltage than that.

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