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Toshiba's Fast-Charging Battery Could Triple the Range of Electric Vehicles (newatlas.com)
Big Hairy Ian quotes New Atlas: A key focus of electric vehicle (EV) makers is maximizing the range users can get from each charge, and for that reason new battery technologies are poised to play a huge part in driving their adoption. Toshiba has developed a new fast-charging battery it claims could allow EVs to travel three times as far as they do now, and then be fully recharged again in a matter of minutes.
Toshiba's SCiB (Super Charge ion Battery) has been around in various forms since 2007, with its chief claim to fame an ability to charge to 90 percent of capacity in just five minutes. It also boasts a life-span of 10 years and high levels of safety, and has found its way into a number of notable EVs, including Mitsubishi's i MiEV and Honda's Fit EV. The current SCiB uses lithium titanium oxide as its anode, but Toshiba says it has now come up with a better way of doing things. The next-generation SCiB uses a new material for the anode called titanium niobium oxide, which Toshiba was able to arrange into a crystal structure that can store lithium ions more efficiently. So much so, that the energy density has been doubled.
Toshiba calls the battery "a game changing advance that will make a significant difference to the range and performance of EV," and hopes to put it "into practical application" in 2019.
Toshiba's SCiB (Super Charge ion Battery) has been around in various forms since 2007, with its chief claim to fame an ability to charge to 90 percent of capacity in just five minutes. It also boasts a life-span of 10 years and high levels of safety, and has found its way into a number of notable EVs, including Mitsubishi's i MiEV and Honda's Fit EV. The current SCiB uses lithium titanium oxide as its anode, but Toshiba says it has now come up with a better way of doing things. The next-generation SCiB uses a new material for the anode called titanium niobium oxide, which Toshiba was able to arrange into a crystal structure that can store lithium ions more efficiently. So much so, that the energy density has been doubled.
Toshiba calls the battery "a game changing advance that will make a significant difference to the range and performance of EV," and hopes to put it "into practical application" in 2019.
We need either a patent unencumbered replacement for Lion which is far better, or multiple technologies which are far better. One technology which is far better will help fuck all for the next 20 years.
$30k new no subsidy, 300 mile range, 15 minute charge time
$20k new no subsidy, 200 mile range, 10 minute charge time
$15k new no subsidy, 150 mile range, 7.5 minute charge time
$10k new no subsidy, 100 mile range, 5 minute charge time
Until my demands are met, I will keep driving my IC and burning one pile of yard trash daily.
Fast charging is nice, but what we really need is long range on single charge, 600+. Lower the price. The cars must be below $30k for a middle income family.
One other side of the fast charge issue is the power requirement required to do so. A "five minute charge" will require a very high peak power demand and that is extremely expensive to deliver as most power companies charge based on peak demand. There will need to be some sort of battery buffering or the like to provide sufficient power at a reasonable cost...
The 6 minute charge time capacity is better than anything on the market or so it would seem. They say it is high energy density, but don't actually say what it is, you would think that if the specs were good they would be disclosed. Going off thier prototype cell in the link I calculate the volumetric energy density at about 540 watt hours/liter which is about 20% below the higher end of capacity on a volume basis. This battery may actually have the highest actual capacity at high discharge rates, which is why similar batteries have been used in racing electric designs, and be more robust to degradation than most lithium cells, which is why it was probably used in electric cars (cheapest battery per mile), but for slow economy cruising even the new battery is still on par with or below the performance (mileage per size/weight) of existing technologies.
This article is misleading. It makes it sounds like toshiba has made a battery that goes 2/3x as far, but the press release only mentions "range per 6mins of charging" while avoiding specifics on energy density. In reality it looks like they have a faster-charging battery, not a longer range for EVs.
But this one really is original: they figured out how to triple range by only doubling the energy density! Think of the possibilities!
Years of new battery announcements and still no new batteries. Still skeptical.
Well now there is interest in the area. There hadn't been much research in this area for generations, where we have been having minor incremental improvements. However knowing that products are being pushed to be using more batteries means there is more Research in the area.
The problem with these breakthrough that are getting released, is that it will take a few more years to get it out on the market, and the previous breakthroughs will get to the market earlier, so all we see is a smooth improvement over time.
Being that current electric cars can now range a one or two hundred miles, which is enough to be practical for most commuters allows enough growth towards the next generation to make such cars hit 300-400 miles range which is about the same range as our gasoline cars, combine that with fast charging, there will be less need to consider gasoline cars.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I googled niobium rarity and...
http://www.businessinsider.com...
Due to its relevance in aerospace and defense, Niobium is considered a “strategic metal” by the U.S. government, meaning there are few or no substitutes for the metal’s essential use. Furthermore, of all strategic metals, Niobium is regarded as one of the most highly critical. But its supplies are considered potentially at risk. This is because only a few sources throughout the world produce the metal. Almost 90% of the world supply comes from Brazil. Nearly all of that comes from only one mine. Most of the rest comes from the Canadian Niobec Mine, owned by IAMGOLD (NYSE: IAG).
They doubled it in 4 dimensions.
This is almost head-smackingly bad.
LTO (like Toshiba's SCiB) has only recharge speed and durability going for it. Everything else about it is terrible, including energy density (vastly inferior to other li-ion chemistries - their best ones are something like 100Wh/kg), and the most important aspect, price. LTO is extremely expensive ($1000/kWh at present; most EVs use batteries in the ballpark of ~$150/kWh).
So now Toshiba has announced that their next generation is going to include.... niobium? A metal that costs about $200 per kilogram?
I guess that they better get this one out on the market before the come out with their next battery based on cesium, holmium and platinum ;)
I'll BUILD someone to replace you. Some kind of gamma-powered monster, with a heart as black as coal!
If someone makes a battery that incorporates ALL of the breakthroughs, then we should be set for life!
I may not be an electric rocket surgeon but last time I checked, "three times" did not equal "doubled".
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First, no EVs use the SCiB batteries so doubling their capacity means nothing for EVs. Second, SCiBs have a lower voltage (by 1 volt) than typical Li Ion batteries so saying 50 Ah by itself means nothing without this.
I like being able to charge that rapidly. However it does not seem to be practical for widespread installations. The numbers just don't add up.
A cheap (Leaf, eGolf) EV has about 20-30KW battery (giving 80-130 miles range).
The current widespread commercial chargers are generally 6KW (the kind you find at parking lots, offices, etc). They will charge the car in about 4 hours from a depleted state. (The home chargers are 3KW or even 1KW but let's ignore them for the moment). To get 6KW, the charger supplies 204V @ 30A. (For a comparison, the only other device at your home would be the oven or the dryer that is using the same level of power).
The "superchargers" provide about 100KW (they range from 30KW - 120KW). To do this they use 408V @ 100+A. However they require commercial installation, since this is more power than several houses combined together. They allow charging 80% of battery under 30 minutes for the smaller cars. Teslas are at the high en of the spectrum (120KW), and they can charge the 60KW versions in just above one hour.
To get 5 minutes charging we would need to jump to 1,200A @ 408V, or 100A @ 4080V. The first choice is not practical. (At 1m this requires a cable width of 50cm! / 20in). The second one requires larger electric components in the car. Also even with 1% loss due to heat (which is wishful thinking), the excess heat would be 10KW, which is in the commercial oven range (i.e.: standing near the cable / car would easily roast a chicken, or make kabobs).
Overall it is nice to think about these technologies, however there are limits in physics that make this very impractical in the short future.
It improves the capacity in terms of volume not in terms of weight. Which do you think matters most?
That should be an immediate concern because titanium and niobium are many times heavier than lithium. I am not saying you canâ(TM)t use a heavier element to store more charge per weight but itâ(TM)s not going to be easy.
This is not universally applicable.
For example, there's Peukert's law - as rate of discharge increases, total available energy decreases.
Lithium Ion typically mitigates that by warming up and thus raising the voltage, but for large high-draw systems like vehicles you need to actively cool them to prevent thermal runaway.
A battery cell technology with a low k value would provide far lower systemic losses when used at very high draw, which would in turn provide higher effective energy density at the same nominal energy density.
Although unlikely, their claim actually IS plausible.
Admittedly I know practically zero about batteries. But I've used A123 batteries in my RC aircraft and they performed really well while having fairly short recharge times while doing that task safely (as opposed to LiPo batteries where you need a fire resistant bag for charging).
How would this Toshiba tech compare to an A123 battery?
Caution: Contents under pressure
Please don't read or comment on new battery posts if you don't like them.
This is a "news for nerds" site.
There is a lot of research going on with new batteries. Some of it may pan out. A better battery will help with better EVs and with power storage.
(Seems a lot more relevant that Google's "outrageous $20 price" for a USB adapter.)
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
"A metal that costs about $200 per kilogram?"
Well that's far better than a fucking platinum anode for lithium deposition. Guess how much platinum costs for a mere 28 grams?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I guess that they better get this one out on the market before the come out with their next battery based on cesium, holmium and platinum ;)
No,. the next battery is going to use unobtainium.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Give me the ability to go 600 miles across Washington, Idaho, and into Montana on a single charge, then recharge over night.
Well, I hope Toshiba fails because this would render Tesla's gigafactory as old tech and diminish their value. I'm a big Musk fan, and wouldn't want to see him get surpassed.
Most? The most popular EVs in America are Teslas, and their wall chargers use (2)x50A 240V circuits and draw 19.2kW for ~60 miles per hour of charge. Sure, you can plug into a dryer outlet (great for that vacation rental trip) or even standard wall outlet in a pinch, but no sane person would spend $60k+ on a Tesla and not sport the $420 for a proper power circuit.
I'm not sure what the whole rush is to get rid of gas engine cars is about.....sure, most people drive commutes that can be more efficiently handled in plugin hybrid. Why do we need to go full EV? I'm perfectly happy with having both an electric and gas engine in my car, and the electric battery is big enough already to meet 99% of the daily drives I make. On the off chance, I go on a long trip or need power to go fast, I'm happy to have the gas engine kick in. As is, I only need to fill up the gas engine 2-3 times/year and I have a range of around 700 miles.
I certainly don't want a huge expensive electrical battery that needs to be replaced every 10 years. And, I like the reliability of having two engines and two fuel supplies.
Battery research has been ongoing at a phenomenal rate of advancement for 16+ years at this point. You appear to have no concept of how rapidly batteries are advancing. When the lead-acid battery was invented more than 100 years ago it became the one and only battery technology up until the 90's. The advancements during that time period were slow and nearly insignificant in comparison to the current breakthroughs with a major advancement about every 20-50 years.
Lithium Ion batteries in turn have advanced so quickly that capacity is growing 20% a year. The same size and weight battery in 2008 now holds more than triple the charge and costs 90% less. Every year there are new advancements that roll into the supply chain a few years later sustaining this continuing innovation. In 2008 Lithium Ion batteries were near on $1000kwh, now prices are $125 and expected to reach $50 by 2020. This is revolutionizing the world, already numerous countries, including China the largest automotive market in the world, have announced that by 2030 they won't allow petrol based vehicles to be sold.
If you told someone in 1990 that the Gas and Diesel automobile would be dead in 40 years and it would be killed by a battery electric car they would have laughed their ass off.
1. Pollution: CO2 and other nasty stuff that automobiles emit. A factor in global warming, general air quality, Spilled fuel gets into our drinking water supply. While there is pollution trade off with EV for the most part they can be better contained and managed vs the wide spread damage gasoline uses.
2. Political Stability: Gasoline isn't a resource we can get anywhere. Some countries have more of it and others do not. We go to war over rights to purchase it, countries setup unstable alliances not based on common values but on the need for this resource.
3. Limited supply: Oil is useful for more than just fuel that we burn, and it is a limited supply by cutting gasoline usage we can assure that other hydrocarbon usages are still available.
4. Energy Independence: We can use mutable sources to generate Electricity, Solar, Wind, Hydroelectric, Nuclear... Some of these sources we could generate on our own property, vs having to be reliant on a large companies to provide this fuel we need at prices they determine as fare.
Are Cars the sole part of our energy problems... No, however it is one of those areas where we a an individual can make a choice to switch. Other areas will need to try to change big businesses, and government. But we can go I will get myself a Chevy Bolt, or a Tesla for my next car.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Co2 is not a pollutant. It's plant food.
I agree gasoline and worse, ethanol, leaking into the water table is horrible.
The rest of your issues about gasoline/oil apply to the rare metals required for high density batteries.
So, is it worth ditching combustion engines to save the water table? Probably not as overall it doesn't happen very much at all. The rest of your post does not successfully argue for EV over oil.
Your math is wrong. Those 19.2kW chargers take 80A and require a 100A breaker. You haven't allowed for installation costs, which could be quite substantial as an additional 100A load could require a complete new breaker board (and may exceed the capability of the house supply circuit).
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
This isn't sports. Your team doesn't have to win. You should be hoping these types of things succeed, as it would make things just a little bit better for everyone.
Are you fucking serious?
THINK!
What are you talking about?
I'll BUILD someone to replace you. Some kind of gamma-powered monster, with a heart as black as coal!
Too much of a good thing becomes a polutant.
Dumb ass.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The common destiny of all battery-related breakthroughs revealed in this forum over the years has always been the same: complete oblivion after a few months. Is this one going to be any different?
One point of the article is that the energy density of their new battery is _superior_ to other li-ion chemistries ..... whether their claim is true or not remains to be seen of course, but simply claiming that their current batteries are _vastly inferior_ by no means proves the article wrong.
Also you say their current batteries are extremely expensive, in the ballpark of 6x most EVs' batteries .... yet they are being used in some current production EVs, which would seem to make that claim unlikely if the cost was that dramatically different.
Also note that the batteries also have power output going for them - the flip-side of the fast-charging (recharge speed) that you acknowledging.
There will be a lot of benefits for society generally when EVs finally replace ICEs. Air pollution for one. Places like LA and Mexico City should see dramatic improvements, even London where I was born should see noticeably better air. The increase in the number of Diesel vehicles was an utter disaster and frankly half the management of Volkswagen should be jail. Also noise pollution will fall. I now live in Tokyo and the steady hum of engines in the background will just disappear. There'll still be road noise, but the effect will be very dramatic overall. The only downside is that you cant hear vehicles as they approach, but proximity sensors should help address that. Finally, the vehicles will become very reliable. The only part that has issues now is the battery and those will be fixed over time. No oil changes, little maintenance, no valves, camshaft, crankshaft, oil pumps, gears, clutch, complex transmission etc. High torque, powerful acceleration etc.. You should try driving a Tesla. The performance is quite startling. It's going to be a revolution.
Platinum anodes for Lithium battery chemistries have been a thing for quite a while, and the price of platinum is pretty high up there (though gold has overtaken it) at a spot price of almost ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS PER *OUNCE* instead of per Kilogram.
So using niobium and titanium is a far better, cheaper, and apparently equally-performing alternative.
Are you even paying attention to the conversation?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
It is most distinctly not. According to their graphs it's not even that. They've "tripled" how far it can go on a 6 minute charge, but only because 6 minutes brings it to a much higher percentage of its max charge state than before; the max charge state, according to their graphs, only looks to be about 40-50% more than current titanates. Which means that they're catching up to the energy density of li-ions in the early 1990s.
And yes, was used in the MiEV and Fit. Which have had tiny battery packs. The range on the MiEV was 62 miles, while the Fit was 82 miles. A high price per kilowatt hour isn't terrible when you don't have many kWh. They were both low-sales compliance EVs, meaning that it didn't really matter that much to the manufacturer how much they cost to make. Also, note the past tense. They've both been discontinued. The Fit wasn't even sold, it was just leased.
Lastly, I'll repeat: a chemistry that takes an already expensive chemistry and adds in a $200/kg metal is not going to have an impact on the EV market. At all. Price is the number one discriminator to EV manufacturers when it comes to batteries, trumping all else. That doesn't mean that they're useless; there are lots of niche applications where charging speeds are the top metric. But mainstream EVs? No. Take a Tesla Model 3 LR. The entire car retails for $44k. Just going to current titanates, *without* niobium, would make the battery pack *alone* cost $75k. And increase its weight 2 1/2x (less, but still significant, with their new niobium-based chemistry). It's a total non-starter for EVs, except again in niche applications (e.g. super expensive track cars designed for short races, track motorcycles, etc).
I'll BUILD someone to replace you. Some kind of gamma-powered monster, with a heart as black as coal!
Your math is wrong. Those 19.2kW chargers take 80A and require a 100A breaker. You haven't allowed for installation costs, which could be quite substantial as an additional 100A load could require a complete new breaker board (and may exceed the capability of the house supply circuit).
I'm not the OP AC, but an EE and electrician. OP AC said 2 (two) 50A 240V circuits. That covers the ~20kW.
Many (most?) newer houses have 200A main panels and feeders.
Many people desire to upgrade to 200A.
_Many_ (most) new bigger high-end houses have 2 (two) 200A panels. That's fun right there.
As an electrician I can assure you that if someone can afford a Tesla, he/she can afford a 200A main panel / SEC / meter upgrade.
My old Gremlin used to have a range of 400+ miles. I could drive non-stop from LA to Phoenix on a tank of gas. As could a lot of contemporary vehicles. Manufacturers have systematically reduced the size of fuel tanks over the years, possibly in part to keep vehicle weight down for CAFE requirements, but it has also given the younger generation misconceptions about the range that us old gaffers with cash expect to see.
No commercial li-ions use platinum electrodes that I am aware of. My reference to cesium, holmium and platinum batteries was a joke.
I'll BUILD someone to replace you. Some kind of gamma-powered monster, with a heart as black as coal!
It sure is sports. The thing is the better tech doesn't always equal to win (bigger/majority market share). See: TCP/IP vs ISO OSI, or mp3 vs aac/opus, or VHS vs Betamax, etc.
Loads of commercial Li-ions use platinum anodes. That's one of the big recycling recovery points next to hard drive platter surfaces (which have a thin layer of platinum vapor-deposited on the surface.) We use it for.... stopping the whiskering that happens and kills batteries, since platinum is quite noble and doesn't whisker like nickel-zinc or other various chemistries.
If you thought that little 1S li-ion battery in your quadcopter is capable of 20C power draw without that highly-conductive anode, you're mistaken.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
All true, but no matter how rare it is niobium is not classified as a rare earth.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
Where are you getting this? Li-ions use carbon (graphite, amorphous) and sometimes silicon anodes.
I'll BUILD someone to replace you. Some kind of gamma-powered monster, with a heart as black as coal!
Are you talking about the current collector maybe? They use copper for that. Better conductivity than platinum, no need for platinum's abnormally good corrosion resistance (sealed cells), and far cheaper.
I'll BUILD someone to replace you. Some kind of gamma-powered monster, with a heart as black as coal!
This is almost head-smackingly bad.
LTO (like Toshiba's SCiB) has only recharge speed and durability going for it. Everything else about it is terrible, including energy density (vastly inferior to other li-ion chemistries - their best ones are something like 100Wh/kg), and the most important aspect, price. LTO is extremely expensive ($1000/kWh at present; most EVs use batteries in the ballpark of ~$150/kWh).
So now Toshiba has announced that their next generation is going to include.... niobium? A metal that costs about $200 per kilogram?
I guess that they better get this one out on the market before the come out with their next battery based on cesium, holmium and platinum ;)
R&D experiments lead to technology breakthroughs. Its surprisingly disappointing that this research is not being done in the wealthest country in the world.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
While CO2 does cause plants to grow faster, it also causes them to grow with LOWER nutrient densities. Just being a bigger plant doesn't mean it's going to make better feed for the rest of the food chain. In fact, too much CO2 and the food chain actually begins to fail since all of the animals eating the LOWER QUALITY plant material are also lower in the quality of nutrition they supply to those animals higher up on the food chain.
Please correct me if I am wrong, but, in the USA, a 220v circuit requires a double-pole breaker, each of which is connected between one half of the 220V and neutral.
In other words, two breakers, each one between one half of the split phase 220v and neutral. Since each of the split-phases is the same as a 110V circuit, you effectively have 2 x 110V x 100A.
Correct?
As for your comments about existing breaker box installations, that probably depends largely on the age of the house.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
And, I like the reliability of having two engines and two fuel supplies.
But you're also getting the complexity and maintenance issues of having two engines and two fuel supplies. Imagine never having to replace another muffler, or have another oil change, or buy new spark plugs, or have a squealing timing belt.
Adding a couple more:
5. Less maintenance: Electric drivetrains have about 10% of the moving parts of a gasoline drive train. A hybrid destroys this advantage by having both drive trains plus additional tech to get them to work nicely together making them worse for maintenance than simple internal combustion engine vehicles.
6. More space: Electric drivetrains take up much less room, leaving that extra space for storage if the manufacturer is smart about it. Hybrids use up that extra space with the internal combustion drivetrain.