A couple of weeks back, Oak Ridge Laboratories - a research group under the DOE - announced that they have come up with a new lithium-sulfur battery that has 2-3x the energy density of lithium-ion batteries and that they’re going to be going into mass production:
Given that battery technology has been stagnant for the last few decades; the one fault with current technology is that it’s juuuuust barely below economical at the price / size / recharge time that it is, so that it could compete with petrol; and all of the promising technologies keep coming up against a hard wall of mass producibility, it seems like this should be big news. And yet it doesn’t seem to be.
Because no one wants to be jumping about at “the next big thing”
based just on research papers.
When something progresses into volume production and availability then it can be judged.
Until then a new wonder battery that only exists in a university lab is about as much use as Mr Fusion!
Li-Ion batteries have doubled in energy density and seen a 150-fold increase of price efficiency in the past 20 years. Similar trends are seen in any other battery technology.
In what possible sense has battery technology been stagnant for the past 20 years?
:dubious:
Price. $1 will get you tens of millions of joules of petrol and at best tens of thousands of joules of battery. That’s not just barely below competitive, it’s several orders of magnitude.
To recharge the battery costs about 1/3 of the cost of fuel, but the extra price of the battery means that you never break even. For example, you will spend an extra $15 000 for an electric vehicle compared to a petrol with even vaguely comparable features and performance. You save about 10% of that in fuel each year, which means that you would need to keep the vehicle for 10 years before you would even break even. Most people only keep car for 3 years, so you need to at least triple the price efficiency to break even.
Size. One decimeter of fuel contains tens of millions of joules of energy. One decilitre of battery hundreds of thousand. Once again, not just barely below, orders of magnitude difference. There’s a reason a Focus electric has a range of 75 miles and a bare-bones Focus has a range of 500 miles.
Recharge time. I can put millions of joules of petrol into my car in seconds. To recharge a battery for the same amount will take over half an hour.
While it’s been optimized, the basic chemical reactions were discovered 40 years ago. The expectation that a new platform would be discovered has not proved true.
And yet, hybrids and electrics are almost competing in the market. I see dozens of Priuses a day and Teslas regularly. Despite your assertion to the contrary, the reality on the street would beg to differ. Clearly, you’re excluding some factors that are leading people to buying these vehicles.
Whatever “the reality on the street” might be, it doesn’t get to re-write the laws of thermodynamics because we find them inconvenient.
No, I am excluding nothing. I am including every single one of the factors that you claimed were almost comparable to petrol: price / size / recharge time. None of those things are even close to being comparable, despite what you claimed.
If there there are other factors, I do not know what they might be, because you did not mention them. But of the factors you dod mention, none are juuuuust barely below economical compared to petrol. the best of them needs to see a tripling of efficiency, the rest are orders of magnitude below.
In my experience with people who buy electric cars, there are two primary factors that cause people to buy them. First, they don’t care about the economics–the care about the environment and are willing to take the hit. Second, they are bad at math–they don’t do the value comparison–they just see that less comes out of their pockets every time the fill up. They forget about the higher up front cost because that’s in the past. most frequently its a combination of second lightly sprinkled with the first.
How does the resale value of an electric car compare with that of a petrol car? I honestly don’t know.
But people don’t scrap their cars after 3 years, they generally sell them to someone else. If the resale value of an electric car is higher, they get part of their money back then. If the resale value is lower, then the used car buyer gets the value.
I haven’t bought/sold an all-electric car, but last year when I was shopping for (and bought) a hybrid, the hybrid price premium when new had fallen to negligible (if any) after 5 years or so; I was able to get a hybrid for within $500 of non-hybrid model.
IF that experience holds true for all-electric, then a used electric vehicle would seemingly be a smart buy for a savvy used car shopper.
Here and here are two recent MIT press releases about “revolutionary” advances in battery technology developed by MIT professors. Whether or not these pan out remains to be seen.
The reason you see hybrids and electric vehicles on the road is due to a plethora of external factors: environmentalist zeal; government subsidies to buyers; government quotas on manufacturers; early adopter syndrome; HOV regulations; CAFE laws; etc. Don’t forget the nickname for the Prius - the Pious, in reference to some owners’ nose-up demeanor.
Electric vehicles are impractical for most people, and cost a fortune if one factors in consumer and manufacturer subsidies and regulations. Step back and consider that a Chevy Volt is a gussied-up Cruz that costs 50% ($10,000) more. They are built on the same platform, with the same dimensions. Chevy makes the Volt for a variety of regulatory, corporate image and other reasons, but they still lose money on every one they sell.
Hybrids are a little different, but the price premium doesn’t fully cover the additional cost of equipping each vehicle with two separate power plants, and there is a tremendous weight disadvantage to the hybrid, resulting in worse handling. Some (very few, I’d wager) customers end up better off economically with a hybrid - those who do a lot of driving, and most of it in stop-and-go city driving - but most buyers would spend less money overall with a conventional gasoline vehicle.
As to the OP’s question, this news WILL certainly be big news when it amounts to more than a laboratory projection.
The “people keep their car for 3 years” statistic is way out of date. It’s between 6 and 8 years now. according to these cites. And since that’s for new vehicles, it’s possible that hybrids and electrics are at the higher end of the range since those owners want to reach that break even point, and in the case of electrics, have invested in the home infrastructure and lifestyle to make owning one work.
Huh. Last Monday, I saw two scruffy kids riding those things in the secure area of an airline terminal. They didn’t look like employees (they had small carryon bags and no ID cards). I guess it must be a thing.
Resale for electric vehicles is generally lower for two reasons. First, there are no tax incentives for the buyer of a used EV, so the price needs to compete against a new vehicle that has $8-12K already knocked off the price. Second, EV and battery technology is changing more rapidly than for combustion engine cars. A 3-year old EV is more out of date than a 3-year old combustion.
Calling it environmentalist zeal is a bit pejorative. The reduction in emissions is a huge incentive, and the true cost of combustion engines would be radically higher if waste disposal in the atmosphere wasn’t essentially free.
Two other factors not mentioned are the sharp reduction in maintenance for full EVs (no oil change! no transmission repairs!) which saves both money and hassle, and the fact (well, opinion) that EVs are flat out fun to drive. Their acceleration is better than most sports cars 3x the price.
How is a reduction in emissions a “huge incentive” to an end user/consumer? Whatever is emitted by my car is of no consequence to my pocketbook, nor does it impact handling, acceleration or fuel economy. Any benefit is either a) required by law, or b) appeals to environmentalist sensibilities (perhaps you prefer that word over zeal).
As for your last two comments, you are correct that there is a reduction in maintenance for EVs, at least until the battery packs require replacement. And while acceleration can be quite brisk off the line and at low speeds, there is almost always a significant reduction in handling due to the greater weight and less-sticky tires.
And all this is nothing new. The Dreamliner was delayed for what, 2 years, while Boeing figured out problems with the battery packs? I thought I had heard the opposite, that some airlines (or the TSA?) did not want batteries in checked luggage? After all, it’s easier to see the problem in the cabin than if it smolders in the hold surrounded by flammable luggage.
My Camry Hybrid basically has a much smaller gas engine for a car its size, since for acceleration the electrics provided added oompf. It recaptures the braking energy to charge the battery… basically it micromanages energy. As a result, I get the equivalent of highway fuel economy in the city with stop an go driving.
Also, the “environmental effectiveness” of a plug-in hybrid or electric depends on the source and efficiency of the electricity source. In Canada, a decent amount of this power comes from hydroelectric sources; whereas in some states, (many states?) the primary source is burning coal or natural gas.
Also, calculation of the value of a hybrid should take into account the rising cost of gas ; I got mine in a good deal as a trade-in. The previous owner had bought it in 2008 when the price of gas was headed into the stratosphere (remember $5/gal? $1.50 a litre in Canada?) and then it was traded in when the price fell.
As for the OP - stories like this are a dime a dozen. In some cases, they are puff pieces for luring investors. In other cases, it’s science writers looking for attention-grabbing headlines. This is one of many such claims I’ve seen - but the progress with batteries over the last decade or two has been remarkable, but generally incremental. There have not been order-of-magnitude steps. Wait until they have production samples.
I had a Prius a while back. As stated upthread, there is more to owning a hybrid or pure electric car than just economics. As ‘South Park’ noted, while tailpipe smog emissions are down, smug emissions go up.
I found myself getting ulcers thinking about battery longevity and replacement cost, and wondering if I should hope the battery failed under warranty.
This was taken out of my hands when after 3-4 years ownership (funny you should mention 3 years) it got totaled. I wonder if maybe the extra complexity and cost under the hood may have contributed to totaling (but maybe not so much, as frame was bent).
Overall, though, it was a great car, nice and roomy, and we never felt it had bad handling.
Now a few years later we had need of an extra car and bought a used plug-in Prius. As some have noted upthread, it did not seem significantly more expensive than comparable peers (although you may find my judgement skewed if you’re now thinking “he was dumb enough to buy a Prius twice”). So far we are enjoying just fine. We plug in nightly for about 10-12 miles of “electric car” use. by my calculations (made when gas was at about $3 a gallon), we save about 50 cents a plug-in (much less now that gas is so low).
Anyway, for what it’s worth, that’s my personal experience with hybrids and electrics.
Right, I’m not talking about financial incentives, at least not direct ones. I think “environmental sensibilities” is a fairer term, but it still implies that it’s some nebulous “environment” that is helped when in fact preferring low emissions can be rooted in selfishness. Look at Beijing with its recent red-level air quality warning: they are trying to encourage EVs because there is a direct impact to health (and therefore pocketbooks) from combustion emissions.
Anyway, I do get your point – an EV is not competitive if you consider only direct financial costs – and this is already well off from the OP (and GQ, for that matter).
Battery packs are getting much better and will continue to do so. It used to be that they required changing every couple of years. They are now generally warrantied for 8 years/100K miles. That is expected to increase, and it’s already more than most transmission warranties.
As you say, acceleration is very quick off the line, but it is also generally better at higher speeds than a similarly priced vehicle. I can accelerate from 50 mph to pass a car much more easily in my EV than my basic sedan. And while the handling of my basic EV won’t compare to a sports car, that’s not the comparison most drivers are making. They compare their EV to their base-model sedan, or if they are the sports car type, they get a Tesla.
; I got mine in a good deal as a trade-in. The previous owner had bought it in 2008 when the price of gas was headed into the stratosphere (remember $5/gal? $1.50 a litre in Canada?) and then it was traded in when the price fell.