Why a 5000 Mile EV spells trouble

[Puppyjump]

See my post "5000 Mile EV Far Fetched...but not technically" on the potential of a 5000 mile EV with the battery researched at Stanford University but now funded by Saudi Arabia.

http://www.endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=9224

It's a reasonable assumption that an EV with a lithium battery with 10x the energy of today's Lithium battery would cause gas engine vehicles to be obsolete.
Two reasons:
1) A large Stanford battery (physical size of the Tesla battery) would have a range as already discussed that would render a gas car obsolete, but the cost would still be high.
2) What if YOU DON'T WANT the extended range? What if your needs are met with a range of about 100 miles? THEN THE BATTERY WILL PHYSICALLY BE VERY SMALL...and inexpensive!!
Obviously, the Oil Interests would not want to see this emerge.

What else would happen?

-Gas stations: Out of business
-Gas Tax funded government income: Gone
-Jiffy Lubes: Out of business
-Most auto mechanics: Out of business
-Most service bays at all major car dealerships: Out of business
-Muffler shops: Out of business
-Transmission shops: Out of business
-Smog Check Centers (California): Out of business
-Brake service centers: Out of business (Regen EV braking=little brake system wear)
-Radiator shops: Out of business
-Countless auto parts subcontractor manufactureres that supply the above businesses: Out of business; No spark plugs. No water pumps. No belts. No hoses. No clutches. No brake rotors and pads. No antifreeze. No engine oil. No Timing belt. No.......

Sure, EVs will sometimes need repairs such as a an electric motor controller, Tire changes, Air conditioning compressors (unless TEC's are used), some suspension parts...but these types of events would be much more rare than the usual stuff that presently needs attention related to the gas engine and its upkeep. I don't think future EV repairs would keep many repair shops in business.

Battery replacements? Well, who knows: So far the NiMH batteries (now Chevron-owned and no longer sold) on the 2000-2003 Toyota Rav4 EV's are lasting the life of the vehicle.

Widespread adoption of EVs (and displacement of gas cars) will put a lot of people out of work. We are addicted to oil and all the support infrastructure related to the use of oil.

 

[AussieJester]

Widespread adoption of EVs (and displacement of gas cars) will put a lot of people out
of work. We are addicted to oil and all the support infrastructure related to the use oil.

Because of this infrastructure IMO we will see increased production of bio fuels over
the advancement in batteries at least in our lifetimes thank god...Production of electric ONLY
cars will be a minority no matter how much bitching and winging the environmentalists do...
Personally i LOVE ICE cars/bikes I would miss the sound and the smell too much
to consider a full blown electric car or motorcycle

KiM

Apprentice Gangsta 8)

 

[Mr. Mik]

Whilst it is probably true that EVs do potentially need much less maintenance than ICE vehicles, the initial 100 years or so would certainly be characterized by teething problems galore!

There will be many jobs in EV production and maintenance, modification, accident repairs, development etc etc.

Unless the market gets taken over by one mega-company, the current situation will continue, which is:

Multiple new releases of a growing variety of EV's from multiple newcomers to the market, all of them full of bugs and in dire need of beta-testing, improvement and repair!

And there will probably be severe shortages of suitably qualified technicians / EV mechanics / electronics repair persons etc.

 

[Puppyjump]

"Multiple new releases of a growing variety of EV's from multiple newcomers to the market, all of them full of bugs and in dire need of beta-testing, improvement and repair!"

Not if the major auto makers built them. The 2000-2003 Toyota Rav4 EV has been a delight to those lucky enough to have bought one of the 300 sold to the public. No problems at all. Problem is Chevron bought the fantastic battery in the Rav4 and took it off the market. Large Format NiMH battery that is so far lasting the life of the car. An EV is so simple: A battery pack and motor. Far less a design challenge than the complex system required for ICE.

 

[dogman dan]

Heh Heh, Love the way y'all seem to assume the new battery will be affordable enough for the common mans car. But if developed, it will kick ass in tiny stuff, like your laptop or cellphone. We know for dang sure the RC crowd will demand to use em! The way the military infantryman is becoming a walking computer, they will need a bunch of batteries like that. As usual, even our most creative minds can't forsee how we'll really be using this or any other really breakthrough technology. I think current 2c lifepo4 is already light enough and small enough to make a practical car size EV, but like PV solar electricity, the cost is the main block. I don't think cars are going to go for the best and most expensive battery, but the most cost effective one. Racing of course, will go for the best regardless of cost. One real good use for a cell that can charge that fast will be utility vehicles, taxi's, cop cars, ambulances, busses. Anything that has to drive all day. I think one practical solution for the quick charge issue is to have cars you can rent that charge quick, and your day to day driving is done in something that only needs a nightime charge. So you only need the expensive quick charge vehicles for the occasional cross country trip.

But ICE works so well, I think there will allways be a place for it. If global warming becomes so dire we give up fossil fuel, non food biofuel will fill the gap when enough money can be made by doing it.

 

[Puppyjump]

"Whilst it is probably true that EVs do potentially need much less maintenance than ICE vehicles...."

In this statement there exists proof that the words "probably" and "potentially" can be deleted. The 2000-2003 Toyota Rav 4 EV has proven very reliable. Owners report the only maintenance has been to rotate tires. Few have needed repairs. Few Rav4 EV owners will sell their Rav4 EV. One sold on EBAY (just before our economic crash began) for about $90,000.00.

Thank God for the Rav 4 EV. Without this vehicle driving the freeways as an embarrassment to EV pundits, all the negative EV arguments would have theoretical substance and thus all debates regarding EV's could never be proven positively or negatively. It would be like arguing politics or religion.

It's worth noting that Toyota did not want to build this car for reasons I've mentioned elsewhere: They were forced by California. The very moment that California retracted its EV demands of auto makers, Toyota discontinued the Rav 4 EV. It's also true, however, that at this time Chevron bought control of the battery used by Toyota and took it off the market, so the Rav 4 EV would still have ceased production.
http://www.ev1.org/chevron.htm

 

[Puppyjump]

"Heh Heh, Love the way y'all seem to assume the new battery will be affordable enough for the common mans car"

Well according to the Stanford press release, the battery would not be any more costly to build than standard lithium ones. Given the Tesla battery cost about $30,000.00, yes, this is too costly for the common man's car. But this battery would have a range of 2,500 miles in a Tesla, and probably 5,000 miles in an ordinary non performance commuter car. If one only wanted a 500 mile range, then only 1/10 the battery would be needed, and so about 1/10 the cost. $3000. This is not a lot of money, especially if the battery lasts the life of the car. Most people could be happy with a 250 mile range: $1,500 for a commuter car.

Still, the press release could be wrong, but we will probably never know given that Saudi Arabia now controls the funding for this battery. Total silence after that December 2007 press release. I can hardly imagine how much wealthier Stanford University is now from mere pocket change from Saudi Arabia thanks to the trillions of dollars we've transferred to them from our gas pumps.

 

[Puppyjump]

"But if developed, it will kick ass in tiny stuff, like your laptop or cellphone. We know for dang sure the RC crowd will demand to use em!"

I don't think this will happen. The batteries will not find their way into consumer electronics. Saudi Arabia will bury this technology as deep as it can.Tesla built their present $30,000.00 battery pack using about 6,600 flashlight cell AA sized batteries. Batteries that are individually used in our cell phones, iPods, etc..

If the new Stanford battery were to make it to market aimed at cell phones, and at about the same price for physical size (but 1/10 the cost for energy capacity), Tesla would also use these and then only 660 of these cells would be needed for the Tesla and its battery cost would drop from $30,000.00 down to a arguably reasonable cost of $3,000.00 for a range of 250 miles.

Hobbyists, who only need about 40 miles in conversion cars could build a battery pack for almost free.

 

[Puppyjump]

" I would miss the sound and the smell too much
to consider a full blown electric car or motorcycle "

I actually drive an EV for most of my in-city trips and commuting and use my ICE car for long trips (rare). I have a 40 MPH ZAP truck that I just bought last December. It's great. I can't explain the sensation, but in driving an EV I have realized that the ICE vehicle is a fraud perpetrated on us since early childhood. Brainwashed as surely as a religious cult zealot. We are bred to like the throaty roar of a hot rod. Screaming exhaust pipes. Noisy Harleys. Toxic Smoke. All the cute cartoon ICE vehicles when we are kids to the chick magnet Ford Mustangs with glass packs in High School Movies. It's all a fraud to support the Fat Cats who sell us Oil. They have yachts; you pump gas every week.

Choice (A): Vehicle with hundreds of complex moving wear-prone parts requiring messy oils and coolants. Releases toxins. Supports hostile countries and Texas Fat Cats with their Hired Politicians. Requires a lot of maintenance and service. Time wasted for service and waiting in line at the gas station.

Choice (B): Silent vehicle, smooth with basically one moving part, a rotating armature with the potential to be much faster than any ICE vehicle (http://www.plasmaboyracing.com/). Almost no service or maintenance. May release some toxins from a remote coal fired power plant to recharge, but still 3X less than an ICE vehicle produces burning gas, even factoring in typical power transmission line losses. Could be driven at zero cost with FREE ENERGY and with zero toxins if one set up an array of solar panels (constantly coming down in cost) at home.

Which choice would be the one if a person never saw a car before? Never been brainwashed to want a gas engine? Which is the thoughtful and intelligent choice?

 

[dogman dan]

Heh Heh, love the way you think the cost of producing something has any relationship whatsoever to the price it sells for.

Priced anything that is the latest technology avaliable lateley, like a lifepo4 battery 18 months ago? I do agree with most of what you say, but I belive it will be priced like an I phone for a good while. Just like color tv's were, like cd players were, like computers were, like ipods were, like lcd tv's were, like the latest medications were...... Eventually there will be cheap batteries that do miracles, but they will be priced as luxury goods for a few years first. Like an electric car.

What does seem intrersting about a battery like that is that a pretty small suitcase full could really extend the range of a more affordable electric car. So maybe for a longer trip, you would just rent a battery for the extra range. It would be pretty stupid to buy enough battery to drive a thousand miles and put it in a car that even a hard core commuter only drove 200 miles a day. So most of us will really just want about 100 miles of range that we own, and just pay by the trip for more when we need it. The battery exchange idea has been kicked around a bit, but it usually means swapping out a really big heavy unit. But with this technology it could be a lot more practical to swap out batteries than was previously imagined. The quick charge also would lend itself really well to the concepts of cars that urban dwellers share, where you swipe your card and take a vehicle from a stand, and leave it on another stand at your destination.
It's a really exciting development, but I bet it finds its way into some kind of consumer electronics or toy first. When I mentioned the RC guys, I was thinking helicopters and planes, where weight is everything.

 

[Roy]

Wow!
We should all fear the national horror of actually solving our energy problems.

This could be worse than what happened to sail boat crews, whalers, horse and buggy people, polio spas, tuberculosis clinics, and tube TV repairman. I am so scared I'm going straight to bed and not getting up again until we're safe!


------
5,000 miles? WTF, nobody has 500 miles yet.

 

[Puppyjump]

"5,000 miles? WTF, nobody has 500 miles yet."

Very true. Not even 500 miles yet. And it's going to stay that way for the foreseeable future.

Please read my other post "5000 Mile EV Far Fetched ...but not Technically"

This post describes a press release from Stanford University featuring a Lithium battery with 10x the energy storage of today's Lithium batteries. Stanford has the best minds in the world among their faculty, so a technical press release from them has merit. Merit that in this case seems to have drawn the attention of the King of Oil, Saudi Arabia, because they now fund the new battery which I assert is to control its future and thus bury it, like Chevron did in 2003 with the Rav4 EV battery. It should be obvious that a revolutionary battery would = a revolutionary EV which = ICE vehicles being obsolete. No more Golden palaces bought with oil they pay $2 a barrel to pump from their sands and sell for a huge profit, presently a goal of $70.

 

[Puppyjump]

"Heh Heh, love the way you think the cost of producing something has any relationship whatsoever to the price it sells for. "

OK I agree with the business error of my logic. I should have said the "potential" to be 10x cheaper. Obviously they would charge what the market will bear. The $30,000 battery in the Tesla does not meet the capacity of the market. It's too expensive and genuinely out of reach for most of us. The potential scaled down version with the new battery "could" cost only $3,000. Too cheap? So the price is set at $6,000 or even $10,000. It would be high enough to be painful to the market, but still possible to purchase by the highest number of people vs. sales price. Maximum revenue. But the point is that it "would" be available to you and me.

Hobbyists would sneak in the back door, though. The new battery would find its way into cordless drills, for example, and they can only be priced so high. Hobbyists would buy a bunch of spare battery packs, open them up, and use the cells in a home made EV battery pack, much like people are doing now for electric bicycles by ripping open DeWalt battery packs.

 

[Link]

OK I agree with the business error of my logic. I should have said the "potential" to be 10x cheaper. Obviously they would charge what the market will bear. The $30,000 battery in the Tesla does not meet the capacity of the market. It's too expensive and genuinely out of reach for most of us. The potential scaled down version with the new battery "could" cost only $3,000.

How does it suddenly become 10x cheaper for the same number of Wh? :?

Producing anything on a nano scale ups the price waaaay more than the reduced cost of materials. Carbon nanotubes, last time I checked, are the most expensive things on the planet. Into the millions of dollars per ounce, IIRC.

 

[AussieJester]

" I would miss the sound and the smell too much
to consider a full blown electric car or motorcycle "
We are bred to like the throaty roar of a hot rod. Screaming exhaust pipes. Noisy Harleys. Toxic Smoke. All the cute cartoon ICE vehicles when we are kids to the chick magnet Ford Mustangs with glass packs in High School Movies. It's all a fraud to support the Fat Cats who sell us Oil. They have yachts; you pump gas every week.

BWAHAHAH what a load of bullshit that is..."bred to like the throaty roar" hahahaha... your delusional, take your dress off pal, if you don't like the sound of a Harley or a V8 at full noise the oh so sweat smell of Methanol at the speedway or drags your either female or queer(not that theres anything wrong with that...alot of my friends are female) ...

Its hard for you to accept I know but as there are electric car lovers (obviously i'm not one of them) there are some people that GENUINELY like ICE vehicles and that ain't going to change no matter how much you whinge and whine like a woman about the noise and smell....

I see the Telsa has been bought up a few times and aside from the ridiculous price be hard to argue against it being "the best performing electric car" on the market would it?...Who here caught Season 12 Episode 7 of Top Gear they tested the Tesla? For those that haven't checkout how well your beloved Tesla performs...or more correctly how long it doesn't perform for Tesla claim 200 mile with fast driving BWAHAHAH yeah right...watch the WHOLE segment made only 55 miles on the test track. A second Telsa was bought in hahah which broke down and ended the road test completely seeing the first one was flat and would take 11 hours to re-charge HOW CONVENIENT of the u-beaut Tesla...:-S GREAT for the money you fork out for it ain't it, and this is the best avaialble :-| Doesn't instill alot of confidence in electric cars quite frankly.

I think Jeremy Clarkson sums it up beautifully at the conclusion of the segment.. "what we have here is an astonishing technical achievement, the first electric car you might actually want to buy, it's just a shame in the REAL WORLD it doesn't seem to work"


KiM

 

[Mr. Mik]

How does the Vectrix 30Ah / 3.7kWh NiMH pack fit into the scenario? Why is it not being stopped by the patent owning multis?

 

[liveforphysics]

The smell of Ozone created by plasma is foul and burns your nose.

The smell of sweet sweet Methonal and rubber at the dragstrip, ahh, the most delightfully intoxicating aroma on earth. Somedays I would pay the $40 track admission price just for one deep breath of it.


For me, I love building racing engines, and tuning engines. I do all my own work on cars, and I enjoy it. However, I will drive anything that wins races. If somebody makes an 11second car electric car that I can beat the piss out of for 100miles or so of ultra-agressive driving, I would buy it. If it can't do that, it's not a real replacement for the cars in my stable. The Tesla is a far cry from it. However, if a 10x increase in energy density and "C" rating happened, a real ICE replacement sportcar could happen, and I would buy it.

 

[Puppyjump]

"Producing anything on a nano scale ups the price waaaay more than the reduced cost of materials. Carbon nanotubes, last time I checked, are the most expensive things on the planet. Into the millions of dollars per ounce, IIRC."

The press release leaves out a lot of tech details, probably because patents seemed to be in the works. In any event, they don't use carbon nanotubes, but silicon ones. They grow them on a stainless substrate and they suggest it's easy to do, but who knows for sure.

http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2008/january9/nanowire-010908.html

Phrases like : The greatly expanded storage capacity could make Li-ion batteries attractive to electric car manufacturers. Cui suggested that they could also be used in homes or offices to store electricity generated by rooftop solar panels....
...."Given the mature infrastructure behind silicon, this new technology can be pushed to real life quickly," Cui said....

and.... "Manufacturing the nanowire batteries would require "one or two different steps, but the process can certainly be scaled up," he added. "It's a well understood process."

suggest to me that there was not a huge cost increase, or else it would not be revolutionary. "scaled up" and "well understood" grabbed my attention.

There is a big difference between fabricating carbon nano tubes and then manipulating them compared to growing silicon nanowires on a plate, that's why it could potentially be cheap to do this compared to handling nanotubes.

Who knows what the cost is. I just assumed that the same physical sized Lithium battery using the nanowires would not be radically different from the same physical size battery made the conventional way.

We can infer though that for the same battery capacity in AH, then the Stanford battery would physically be 10X smaller, and some amount cheaper.


Bottom line is that there just has not been any more Stanford press releases since 2007. If something went wrong, or if something went right, we'd still hear about it, one way or the other. I'm suspicious given that Saudi Arabia is involved in this. They have oil interests to protect, and if this battery were horribly costly, then Saudi Arabia would not need to bother involving themselves because the battery would be self-limiting due to cost and never make sense for an EV.

 

[Patriot]

Something about the sound of a chugging V-8 in an old rusty pickup that reminds of being back home on the farm. I would miss that too.

EV's are the future, but ICE's are hear for at least another 50 years. So, get used to them, they aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

 

[AussieJester]

The smell of sweet sweet Methonal and rubber at the drag strip, ahh, the most delightfully intoxicating aroma on earth. Somedays I would pay the $40 track admission price just for one deep breath of it.

They should bottle it and sell it as cologne i would bathe in it hehehe...at the moment its WD40 for cologne ...Im off to the Perth Motorplex again on April 4th too get my fix of top alcohol AND some US Jet cars that are coming over WOOTz shall post lotsa pics of the dayz outing, hope to take the trike too to hoon around on, wonder if they would let me run down the strip hehehehe..

 

[Puppyjump]

"How does the Vectrix 30Ah / 3.7kWh NiMH pack fit into the scenario? Why is it not being stopped by the patent owning multis?"

The patent only covers a NiMH cell that individually has an AH rating greater than 10 AH. The Toyota EV battery pack had cells that were rated at 95 AH each.

http://www.evprogress.org/rav_battery_ev95.jpg

Using 95 AH large cells (Large Format, each cell about the size of a dictionary) makes a pack more feasible to build because you only need one series string of cells until the total voltage adds up to the desired pack voltage. This simplifies the charging and cell balancing.

There is no patent law to stop anyone from building a high AH EV pack using 10 AH individual cells (each 10 AH cell about the size of a "D" cell flashlight battery). The problem here is that you need to string the 10 AH cells both in series and also in parallel. This is difficult because no two strings add up to the same voltage due to subtle chemical variations in each individual cell.

For the Vectrix, I'm assuming they strung three series connected strings of 10 AH cells, then combined those 3 strings in parallel for a 30 AH rating. 3 strings is not tooooo bad to connect in parallel as they can sort all the strings and mate up groups of 3 strings that are closely matched to each other enough to be usable.

You need more than 30 AH for a car as opposed to a scooter. 3 strings is not enough. You need about 10 strings for at least 100 AH. Here, the balancing and matching is difficult, and for all practical purposes, impossible.

 

[Puppyjump]

"Tesla claim 200 mile with fast driving BWAHAHAH yeah right...watch the WHOLE segment made only 55 miles on the test track."

I saw that episode, too. As it turns out, they faked the 55 mile dead battery and the subsequent scene where they had to push the car back into the garage.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=3a7_1230707142

After Tesla engineers cried fowl, the Top Gear people admitted that the dead battery scene was staged for dramatic effect "to show what would happen IF a battery died". One give-away was that the Tesla design does not suddenly run out of juice and stop completely as though a switch were turned off. It would slow down and leave plenty of power to limp back into the garage on its own power.

It's true the present EVs do not match up to performance range of ICE. But they could easily surpass ICE if that Stanford battery came into reality. Lithium is already pretty good, but Lithium 10x stronger would be revolutionary.

As for ICE technology, I mostly don't like the kinds of places we send our money to to buy oil,

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,506984,00.html

and the evidence that Oil Interests are doing all they can to PREVENT us, the consumer, from being able to make a choice between ICE and Electric. Let both types be built to the best technology available (that is, not suppressed in any way) and let the public decide which to buy.

 

[Mr. Mik]

The patent only covers a NiMH cell that individually has an AH rating greater than 10 AH. The Toyota EV battery pack had cells that were rated at 95 AH each. ...........................
....
.....................
For the Vectrix, I'm assuming they strung three series connected strings of 10 AH cells, then combined those 3 strings in parallel for a 30 AH rating. 3 strings is not tooooo bad to connect in parallel as they can sort all the strings and mate up groups of 3 strings that are closely matched to each other enough to be usable.

The Vectrix has a single string of 102 NiMH cells, each with a rated capacity of 30Ah.

So how did they get around the patent restrictions?

 

[Puppyjump]

"So how did they get around the patent restrictions?"

I don't know. Everything I've read, on countless web postings on seemingly reputable EV sites, stipulates a 10 AH limit. Above 10 AH constitutes the "Large Format" construction that is covered by the patent.

It will be interesting to see what posts follow this one by others who may have more information.

Maybe each 30 AH Vectrix cell is really three 10 AH cells in parallel? It's one possibility I can think of, assuming the 10 AH limit is truly correct. True, the diagram shows individual 30 AH cells, but it might be more of a conceptual block diagram as opposed to a schematic. Can you find a close-up photo of one of the cells? There appears to be 3 connections on top of each one that might correspond to 3 "D" cells inside each square cell package, but it would seem wasteful to package 3 "D" cells in an enclosure instead of just strapping them together and soldering a buss bar across them. Maybe they tweaked the chemistry just enough to avoid the patent? I'm very curious now.

Do you know much does that pack costs?

 

[Toorbough ULL-Zeveigh]

As for ICE technology, I mostly don't like the kinds of places we send our money to to buy oil,

what is it that u don't like about alberta?
(single largest supplier of U.S. oil after all).
it's the mad cow thing, isn't it?


how they got around the patent restriction is by preceding it.
from what i've read about the history of the company, the oldest NiMH licensees of ECD/Ovonics from prior to the Chevron takeover had the broadest most liberal agreements with very few restrictions placed upon them.
at least compared to those that signed on later since they were cash strapped in the early days & motivated to make a deal.