"We supplied samples to customers from the end of last year to the beginning of this year and are receiving positive feedback," Samsung SDI VP Koh Joo-young said at SNE Battery Day 2024 in Seoul, according to Korean outlet The Elec and translated by Google."
This would be more convincing if reviewers could order samples.
Yoshino seemed to be shipping a solid state battery, but several people have bought and disassembled the thing, and it has liquid/gel components. That was disappointing.
CATL has some good comments.[1] Wu Kai of CATL was quoted as saying that the maturity level of the technology and the manufacturing process can currently be categorised at 4 on a scale of 1 to 9. CATL wants to be at 7 to 8 by 2027, which is equivalent to the production of solid-state batteries in small quantities. CATL also mentions that they have 1,000 people in R&D working on this. This is a big project in China. The China All-Solid-State Battery Collaborative Innovation Platform is getting government funding and has all the big battery makers in China on board.[2]
Toyota's roadmap shows solid state batteries around 2028.[3]
There are solid state battery announcements all over, but the big players all admit that the manufacturing is really tough.
A US startup exists.[4] They mostly make press releases, not products.
I just don't get why don't they put it in consumer electronics first. You need big volume for supplying EVs, and having a $1000/kWh pricetag would be prohibitive for even premium EVs as it would cost $100k for a 100kWh battery alone, but would be totally OK for an $1000 laptop, as it would cost $100 for a 100Wh battery.
Batteries don't have bigger capacities because people want to carry them inside of planes, which have a limit of 100Wh, the MacBook Pro has a 99.6Wh battery.
This regulation is only because specific lithium battery chemistries like NMC or Li-Polymer.
Once proven safer chemistries like LFP or sodium-ion are used more commonly in laptops (including SSBs like this Samsung one) then regulation should shift to accommodate.
That said, who really needs over 100Wh of battery when most long haul flights have plugs available?
It took decades to allow electronic devices to be used in flight, despite no evidence that they would cause a problem. I wouldn't count on battery chemistry changes leading to changes in FAA rules very quickly.
Initially people assumed without evidence that the wireless signals from portable devices would interfere with avionics. It was the days where you could prophetically "hear" that you are about to get a call or sms through your computer speakers.
If you don't have evidence that emissions will be within acceptable limits and will not interfere with the planes avionics then you don't introduce things into life safety critical areas like planes.
It's the same reason a captain can declare pretty much whatever they want on their plane and you as a passenger are _obligated_ to follow those orders. It's a felony if you don't. The captain doesn't have to present evidence just any concern that some action might interfere with the safety of his flight and that's the end of the discussion.
The ironic thing is that during the same period, 110V powered electric shavers - which most likely spurt out noise all over the RF spectrum - were perfectly acceptable to use on aircraft.
So, uh, apparently I was unaware of this rule: I used one about 35 years ago. I was flying to Europe, and didn’t have a compatible power adapter when I landed in Helsinki, so I used the plane’s lavatory on the hop to Sweden.
That might be the original reason, but I think that the current reason for asking for flightmode on a plane is that cell towers near airports get overburdened, as every flight would result in every phone rapidly switching between a dozen cell phone towers.
That's a good observation. It seems it is possible to plan cell towers for this [1, 2]. But perhaps, tech has not been deployed everywhere for regulations to be changed.
> it was the days where you could prophetically "hear" that you are about to get a call or sms through your computer speakers
When I was getting my private pilot's license in '07, my instructor put his cell phone in the Cessna's glovebox (which is just below the radio) and told me to call him. There was definitely interference throughout me ringing him, but as soon as he took the phone out to cancel the call, the interference went away.
I believe so. In particular, the size of the fire that a battery will burn.
I think OPs point is more that the FAA is extremely conservative with risk. Electronics weren’t allowed for a long time due the fear of interference with airplane equipment.
People who take trains instead of planes (like me), people who are off-grid, etc. There is a market albeit a smaller one than the main stream market. It might be a good market to launch these things for testing purposes.
Since they care more about reducing laptop thickness by 1mm that adding battery, I just don't see laptop manufacturers be interested in this. Even if they did, they would just make the laptops even thinner instead of increasing capacity. Apple just won't be satisfied until you can use your ipad as a kitchen knife.
Precisely because they want to reduce thickness they will need higher battery density and use a thinner battery with the same battery life. Not to mention the battery will last much longer than current battery.
Absolutely. I can already imagine the presentation graph slide comparing laptop battery capacity, thinness, environmental impact, etc. They can throw some right to repair stuff too just for the fun of it. “See, we’ve always cared for the consumer and always supported repairability”.
And here I was hoping they would fix the loose HDMI port problem.
By the way, is your MacBook Pro HDMI port really loose and easily disconnected with any small movement or bump? It has been very frustrating.Some people are saying all the MacBook HDMI ports are like this.
Yes I also run into this! I thought it was just a shoddy HDMI cable but this is the first I'm hearing that it's a wider issue. Fortunately macOS handles the disconnect/connect quickly but it drives me crazy some days trying to run my secondary monitor off it.
I haven't noticed any issues on my M2 MacBook Pro yet, but I've only used that port maybe a total of a dozen times since I've gotten it. Probably an eventuality :(
The HDMI-VGA adapter connected to my 27" Trinitron lets me see the "print" button. The USB-parallel adapter sends it to the dot-matrix. It's how I print all my "GET OFF MY FACEBOOK" signs.
I'm refusing to upgrade my 6 years old phone because all the good phones I would want don't have headphone jacks :(
Just think about it, the latest Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 is half an inch thick and they'll still complain they don't have the room for a headphone jack. Absolutely infuriating.
Which is why I'm selling my MBP for a MBA. I already have a Linux desktop for powerful computing; my on-the-go computing solution should prioritize lightness and portability.
They just said they prioritize portability and your retort is over the number of non-portable external monitors that can be hooked up, and an outdated number at that?
I really wish the first two Apple Silicon Airs didn't have this weird limit. Not because I need to connect two displays to mine — almost no one actually does. But even though since the M1 it's been an amazing, futuristic, freakishly thin, light, and glorious powerhouse of a laptop, someone always has to bring up this stupid crap whenever it's being discussed.
Got my M1 in 2020 when it first launched and was drawn by the 15 inch air due to the screen real estate, but have literally no other reason to replace it. Couldn't say the same for any other 4 years old laptop.
In the case of the iPad, the thinness (and corresponding weight reduction) makes it more usable as a tablet, especially with the 13" model. It also fixed - or at least, mitigated - a few problems with the keyboard attachment.
Granted, that attachment shouldn't exist, but that's a different problem whose root cause is "Apple expected the iPad to replace the Mac like the Mac replaced the Apple ][".
I dont understand it either and wish if those how knew, while may not have the time to explain it but just give me some pointers or direction.
I would have thought, as shown by Chinese EV maker it may be better to have bulky larger cheap battery in an EV intended for long range driving, than an expensive long range EV because of solid sate.
On the other hand Solid State Battery on Smartphone could have been a major marketing point for many consumer.
Because the cost is probably closer to $10,000/kWh. Makes sense for a $1,000,000 supercar. Fundamentally all the new battery chemistries have serious underreported problems that make them dead-on-arrival. Either short cycle life (nanowire) or impractical manufacturing (solid state) or middling performance versus LiPo (sodium). Hopefully some of these may find niche applications where their advantages outweigh their problems but don’t expect more than a 50% improvement in density over the next 20 years.
I guess they will... once they actually have them. The batteries probably only exist in the lab at this point, but what do execs get paid for if not pretty roadmaps?
You can cleanly divide by 1000 and you get exactly the capacity of a 16“ MacBook Pro. So you‘d need a 350 Watt charger (ca like a vacuum cleaner) to charge that MBPro in 9 minutes, if it supported that kind of throughput.
Such a charger might need air cooling, and would probably not be as portable. But certainly doable.
I can’t ever seem to find it, but does someone have that checklist of the “oh you’ve invented a great new battery, here are the issues?” This one will probably either be toxic, explosive, expensive, fragile…
- can be scaled up to a large battery (so many solid state batteries are these small demo cells, and an action car-worthy one that is 100x bigger never materializes
- cooling requirements/support equipment reduce overall pack density (LFP and I think sodium ion do not require cooling systems, which substantially closes the battery density at pack level with nickel/cobalt chemistries
This information is worthless for electric vehicle owners who charge mostly or exclusively at home.
A Tesla Model Y battery pack is 75 kWh and the highest rated connection within the typical American home with 200 amp 120/240 volt split-phase service is 50 amps over both phases: 12,000 watts.
75 kWh / 12 kW = 6.25 hours assuming the battery can be hit with maximum wattage continuously throughout its charge cycle (this is unhealthy).
To charge the Tesla Model Y 75 kWh battery pack in nine minutes the 240 volt cable would need to carry 2083 amps. This is hilariously far beyond the capacity of a 50-amp rated wire.
6 AWG copper wire which is rated for 50 amps has an 0.000395 ohms per meter (at 20°C). Assuming a ten meter length of wire, the resistance is 0.00395 ohms. Power dissipation in the wire P = I^2 * R. 2083^2 * 0.00395 ohms = 17,166 watts.
Temperature rise in the wire delta T = P / (A * k) where P = 17,666 watts, A = pi * 0.00411m * 10m. Assuming PVC insulation whose thermal conductivity is k = 0.19 W/m·K. Delta T is approx 700,615 degrees K. The surface temperature of the Sun is approximately 5773 K, so our wire would get about 121 times hotter than the surface of the sun if it did not instantly explode.
It’s for fast DC charging at 350kw+. Home charging is solved, but there is still travel range anxiety to squeeze out of the human, as well as use cases with high utilization and turnaround need (taxi, livery, law enforcement). 9 minutes to charge and a 20 year service life is awfully close to “you have no excuse this is suboptimal compared to liquid fuel refueling.”
High level, EVs have almost killed combustion vehicles, we’re almost there [1] [2]. Batteries will only improve over time as EV production scales up.
Home charging is "solved" as in my car will always need to be charged all day or all night at best and if you want a truck that tows anything - such as for landscaping - forget it.
Home charging will not be that fast in the conceivable future. Just too much power for homes. Just thinking about it, my ford lightning with the extended battery has enough capacity to power the average house for something like 8 days. That'd be crazy be be about to demand that much power at home to charge it in nine minutes.
But, it doesn't mean it's worthless to those that charge at home. I only own EVs. Even if I do 99.99999% of my charging at home, I still need to be able to charge during road trips. The faster the better. My partner and I have been eyeing the ev6 with it's 18 minute charge time. That's way easier to swallow than the 48 minutes the truck takes.
9 minutes and every seven hours of driving would be a god send, instead of our current 48 minutes every 4 hours
Yeah, but that comes with it's own host of issues. I'm not sure that tradeoff makes sense for something heavier than a motorcycle.
Batteries to push a car a reasonable distance aren't light and need to be protected during a crash. Hard to balance that with "and easily removable and swapped"
I'm sorry, you're right about 12kW charging. The battery pack is made up of 4,416 individual cells. The cells are arranged in series to achieve the required voltage. If there are 96 cells in series, the pack would have a nominal voltage of around 400 volts (since each cell has a nominal voltage of about 4.2V when fully charged). The pack has multiple strings of these 96-series cells connected in parallel to increase capacity. 12kW/400V = 30A. 30A/(46 parallel strings) = 0.652A per cell or 652 milliamps. This is quite a slow and healthy charging speed.
So? When you charge at home you are not going to need the fast charging capability of this new battery. The limiting factor is the onboard charger which for Tesla vehicles could be as low as 7kW. So it's moot.
All you are doing is to sow confusion about home charging and public DC charging.
I just did a 1400mile round trip in our 9yo Model S. 80→20kW just doing my nut in. At least it was free.
This sort of battery makes that sort of trip easy.
There are already 3m liquid-cooled charging cables that allow 600kW+ DC charging. Many use more than one conductor per polarity to increase the capacity.
To achieve 250 kW of power, the Supercharger must supply much higher voltage and current than what is available from standard 120/240V circuits. For instance, Tesla Superchargers typically operate at voltages around 400-500V DC and deliver currents of up to 500 amps or more.
Unlike residential power, which typically uses single-phase electricity, Superchargers often use three-phase power. Three-phase power allows for more efficient transmission of large amounts of electricity and is commonly used in industrial settings.
The voltage supplied to a Tesla Supercharger is typically in the range of 480 volts AC (alternating current) for three-phase power. Inside the Supercharger, this 480V AC is converted to a higher DC (direct current) voltage, typically in the range of 400-500 volts DC, which is suitable for charging the vehicle's battery.
The cables used in Tesla Superchargers are specially designed to handle very high currents. For instance, to deliver 250 kW at a voltage of around 400V DC, the current would need to be around 625 amps. To manage the heat generated by such high currents, Tesla employs liquid-cooled charging cables. These cables have an internal liquid coolant system that actively removes heat from the cable as electricity flows through it.
I’m not sure why you are focusing on AC vs DC charging when your original assertion was related to the maximum wattage the battery can handle, which as I said is much bigger than 12kW.
Also, even the 12kW would be the wrong maximum for home charging. The Model Y has an 11kW onboard charger for converting AC to DC, so if you have a 3-phase supply at home then this is the maximum your car can convert (NOT that the battery can handle as you suggest). If you have single phase then it’s 7kW.
> Unlike residential power, which typically uses single-phase electricity,
Most people (myself included) who charge at home with any regularity will buy a wall-box, those are often 3-phase (mine is). Might be different in US of course, but almost every building here (Germany) receives 3 phases.
A 400 V DC setup is common for this sort of application, so:
667 kW / 400 V = 1667 A
How physically large do the cables and related apparatus need to be in order to deliver this sort of current? What sort of training and personal protective equipment will people need in order to plug and unplug these cables? (Hint: Arc flashes are no joke!) What sort of service would you need to order from the electric company to be able to power just one of these installations?
Furthermore charging cables are locked while charging. (The latch is on the cable for CCS, and the latch is inside the car for NACS.) Unless the lock mechanism is mechanically broken, it's impossible to unplug a cable that's charging.
The latch is on the car for CCS. It is only on the cable for chademo. Regardless, the main issue with high current is the cable resistance. You need very thick cables or they will melt. Higher voltage helps, but cable weight is a real issue at higher power.
The challenge here is that above a certain voltage, insulation gets prohibitively difficult (and bulky), which makes solid state electronics to control and manage it also prohibitively difficult. And leakage current becomes dangerous.
For example, we could run chargers at 1 million+ volts, and use standard 12 awg stranded cables to do it with very low losses (and low heat) at megawatt charging rates.
But the insulation would be crazy thick (inches?) and if there was any damage or minor leakage, it would be very dramatic very quickly. Like ‘mini nuke’ type arc flashes. And because the distance you can strike an arc in air with 1 million+ volts is measured in multiple feet.
Even if the lock is broken, the pilot connector of the CCS connector is longer, so it would disconnect before the DC connectors would disconnect. Similar to how the D+ and D- lines of USB-A are shorter than the VCC/GND lines.
Arc flashed are no problem I think, because these cables don't unleash the whole power before everything is connected and protocol negotiation finished.
But agree with the rest. Regardless of voltage and current, you still need half-megawatt delivery somehow.
I think the Hyundai Ioniq 5 uses an 800 volt battery. So you can get half a megawatt at 625 amps. Although most new fast chargers are about 350kw (Usually charging around 230kw on average) right now so you are only pulling about 435 amps.
> The voltage range was increased to 1000 V and it supports up to 615 A (charging cable) / 1000 A (charging pole) for power delivery.[14][15] However, they are currently software limited to 250 kW.[12][16]
v4 charger already features thermally conductive liquid to dissipate heat. Maybe one could get rid of cables and car could park near charger and some serious metal rods could automatically connect somewhere under the car.
Anyways, that 1000Vx615A already supports 615kW so very close as far as we consider cables/connectors.
Though 3.7MW is mostly theoretical there’s already 700kw chargers in the wild. The cables end up thick, but they can be supported by an overhead gantry which helps.
Note that charging curves usually have a drop in charge rate as the battery gets closer to 100%, so it’s probably an even higher peak than this for this to be the average.
> Samsung's latest solid-state battery technology will power up premium EVs first, giving them up to 621 miles of range.
Whenever I see text like this, my opinion of the editors, and thus the entire publication, immediately plummets. Did they think that 1000 KM was an accurate figure to be converted literally to three significant digits? Do they even understand the field that they are covering? Was it a machine conversion? What else should I not trust in their publication?
What's the alternative? Taking the liberty to round it up or down? Both could lead them to trouble. The best would be to mention the stated number with conversion in parenthesis.
Nah, that brings the 200-400mi range to my mind, far outside of the 750-1250km range that I intuit is implied by single-significant-digit “1000km” in this context.
Standard procedure in physics is to round to the closest number with the same number of significant digits. In this case, rounding down to 600, so people have a sense of how approximate the number is.
I'd be less concerned about sig figs and more about real-world battery chemistry, load limits, charging times, risk of fire, etc.
Even if they rounded it to 600 mi, that's still huge. It's less about the precision, since batteries are inherently imprecise, and more about whether this can live up to the marketing...
I would rather have a battery pack that's half the size and half the price because 300 miles is enough for most of my work. Really I would be fine with 100 miles in about 45-50 weeks/year.
I haven't looked in a while, but I think there are already several with ~200 mi of range (Leaf, Kona, etc.) and a few with ~300 (Equinox, Ioniq, etc.). Are those not enough?
They don't really seem that much more expensive than comparable gas cars, either.
Do EV range estimates ever have three significant figures? My understanding is that true range depends heavily on things like external temperature, what speed one is driving, whether it’s stop-and-go, the ground one is driving on, …
I think it was the other way around. Officials at the CDC determined that 6ft would be a good guideline for social distancing and it translated to 2m for countries that more widely used the metric system.
>Do they even understand the field that they are covering?
They are doing a programmatic conversion of 1000km to miles, because most Americans don't have a clue about the metric system. What's the problem?
>What else should I not trust in their publication?
I'd love to hear about what you think is "untrustworthy" about converting from kilometres to miles so the audience can visualize the distance. 1000 km = 621 miles, this is a fact.
> I'd love to hear about what you think is "untrustworthy" about converting from kilometres to miles so the audience can visualize the distance. 1000 km = 621 miles, this is a fact.
1000km is not an exact figure. It’s rounded, probably up. Somewhere between 900km and 1100km. Likely closer to 999km than 1099 because they’d want to publish the biggest number they can reasonably claim. So you can assume the real range is between 900km and 999km.
The correct translation to miles would be “600mi”. Because 621 invents precision that wasn’t there in the original figure.
Converting 1000 km to 600 miles is always wrong. Assuming that 1000km is not an exact figure solely because its least significant digits are zero is also wrong, and making up a ±10% margin is very wrong.
The correct thing to do would be to write the conversion as "1000 km (~621 miles)", so that the original value is not lost.
There is a huge difference between the claim of ‘this battery technology will allow a range of up to about 600 miles’ and ‘this battery technology will allow a range of up to 621 miles’
The former invites you to imagine that the actual
Mileage will vary depending on other factors in the car design. The latter suggests some inherent theoretical limit caused by this technology that makes 621 miles into an absolute best case range.
Which of these two do you think the original author of the claim was trying to communicate?
Respectfully the argument you’re responding to is clearly just saying: the level of outrage feigned here over translating the mileage specs and not rounding is out of proportion.
Continuing the thread with rude pedantry is not adding anything useful to the conversation.
Charging speed is too overrated as a metric, in my opinion. For the overwhelming majority of people, you're almost never driving more per day than the capacity of your battery. And even on an 11 kW home charger, you're easily back up to 100% during the night, especially since you're never starting from 0% or even close to it.
Even my Nissan Leaf which has notoriously slow AC charging (being single phase), the max 6,7 kW charging is very rarely a concern for me.
Charging speed is a big issue when you’re renting or road tripping. When people use shared infrastructure, charging time corresponds to how many customers you can serve per parking spot/charging station. With gas, hoards of cars can be serviced quickly. Thus it’s really important that the car can be meaningfully charged during an extended rest stop or lunch break. Consumers disproportionately buy for these “happy” occasions, even if it would make much more economical sense to just rent once or twice a year.
Me + partner rented a small e-fiat in Mallorca and it was really fun to drive, but there was a lot of anxiety around finding charging stations and wandering around for hours while charging. Note we didn’t have overnight charging at the hotel though.
> how many customers you can serve per parking spot/charging station. With gas, hoards of cars can be serviced quickly
For gas stations the throughput matters, because cars are blocking the queue. BEV charging is more comparable to parking. This is simply solved by having more charging stations (dispensers) at parking spots.
BTW: even in shittiest EVs, DC charging doesn't take hours. You probably have been misdirected to an AC charger designed to be used overnight. Unfortunately, many satnavs still treat charging stations as all equal like gas stations, and send you to the nearest one, instead of the fastest one.
> You probably have been misdirected to an AC charger designed to be used overnight.
It’s possible, I don’t recall. But those were the only available spots, in a European country with large ambitions to transition. Half were out of service, and many were occupied, which we often found out after driving to them for 15 min. With scarce spots, charging has to be fast to clear out space.
Getting to the point of convenience is a very solvable problem, but it’s still not there in many places and situations. I think fast charging will remain as an important part of that solution.
The big difference is that EVs are designed to be charged unattended (you plug in, and go do something else). Nobody needs to be monitoring the "pumps".
Charging locations are often combined with other businesses, which means it's usually not taking new space, only converts the parking space that would have been used to park a car anyway.
Large DC fast charging installations usually have a central hub that does the expensive things (AC-DC, batteries), and then the power is distributed to simpler dispensers that do communication with the car and cooling on the car's end. The whole setup is expensive, but the number of dispensers isn't the main limiting factor. The costly limiting factor usually is the maximum power the system can deliver at once. That directly dictates the maximum throughput (number of cars they can serve over time), regardless whether that power is delivered via few fast chargers or many slower chargers. The number of dispensers cancels out in the equation.
A ton of people live in flats, apartments, condos and other shared housing that do not provide home charging capabilities. Just because it’s not a big deal for you and your situation doesn’t mean it’s the same for everyone else.
Wouldn't grocery stores want bigger chargers, so someone with an apartment can combine a grocery run that takes maybe 30 minutes inside the store with fully charging their car for the next few days?
But a LOT of US apartments have mass parking or even a parking garage. These should be PERFECT for cheap efficient rollout of a charging infrastructure.
I've been pretty disappointed that cities or the federal government have not been proactive in providing incentives to apartment buildings to put in charging, even just normal 110v or 220v plugs.
Urban centers have not completely won the car pollution war, incentivising EV ownership in cities should be a paramount concern in infrastructure planning.
Street parking should be able to provide 110v charging as well. I mean, there are street lamps, right?
> Charging speed is too overrated as a metric, in my opinion
Then you will _never_ electrify the entire fleet of vehicles and you will always have ICE vehicles to fill the space that you feel is "overrated."
> charging is very rarely a concern for me.
Ostensibly because you live somewhere where large ICE vehicles bring the goods within range of your EV for you. This is great it's adequate for you. This is not sustainable.
I always get mistaken on these issues, as I think EVs are important, but the way we've deployed and built them is precisely backwards. We hoisted EVs on you because you would pay for them but it's made a complete mess of the transition.
1000km in the slow-charging Leaf takes 14 hours. 1000km in quick-charging cars takes 9h-9.5h, compared to 8.5h in a gas car[1].
For the trivial case of a city-only car with a home charger all battery metrics are irrelevant, so even the terribly outdated Leaf is adequate.
But when leaving the perimeter of the home charger, the car will need to be recharged. Charging speed is primary factor that makes long road trips in BEVs take longer than in gas cars.
Battery sized large enough for a longest road trip adds a lot of weight and cost, which is a waste in daily city driving. Quick to recharging makes long trips possible, without need for a huge battery.
> 1000km in the slow-charging Leaf takes 14 hours.
> 1000km in quick-charging cars takes 9h-9.5h, compared to 8.5h in a gas car[1].
There are so many variables here. 1,000 cumulative km for my normal usage requires no waiting since I charge at home, so the it’s the ICE car that eats up time since I have to visit a fuel station.
On a 1,000km road trip I would be stopping anyway, so as long as it charges within the 30 min window it would not be additional time here either.
While that's true in the ideal case, there are still many areas in America where you need significant range to make it from one charger to the next. I have a Leaf which can fast-charge via Chademo, but the low range means that if I go anywhere rural I often have to spend several hours at a level 2 charger because it doesn't have the range to drive directly to the next fast charger.
People are OK with added weight and cost. You can't sell a truck without the added 500lbs and $12k of 4x4 shit under the front end. It lives there dragging down tow capacity, fuel, and driveability the entire life of the the vehicle, rarely used if ever.
It is a big deal in the US considering that almost 20% of Americans say they’ll plan to make a road trip of between 250 and 500 miles, and almost 10% of Americans plan to take a trip between 500 and 1000 miles by car.
Overall, 75% of Americans surveyed said they intend to take some kind of road trip.
Everyone replying to me as if I said charging speed is totally irrelevant and are bringing up contrived edge cases. If all you're doing is commuting to work, which is what most of us are doing, unless you have an absurdly long commute you will never need fast charging. Can I do a trans-european road trip in my Leaf. No. But I'm not buying a car for what I might do some day, and neither should you unless you like wasting money. If I was going on a trip like that I'd rent a car or swap cars with a friend. My point is, people place far too much importance on it, when it for most people, most of the time is not that big of a deal.
It’s not an edge case. 75% of Americans plan to take a road trip during the year per the link I sent.
Remember that in the US the 300-500 mile problem is huge. There’s no viable train alternative for medium to short distances for almost every city pair. If you have family in Tennessee and you live in Illinois you need to drive 6 hours unless you want to blow money on plane tickets and still end up eating up 4-6 hours at the airport and on the plane anyway.
The same can honestly be said for shorter trips like 100-200 miles. There’s no usable public transit between cities like Dallas and Houston.
“Most of the time” doesn’t really work when you need your car to do the thing you’re doing 5% of the time. I don’t buy a two door car because most of the time I don’t have four passengers inside, I buy a four door car because it’s extremely useful to have that capability without needing to reserve a rental car or borrow cars from friends.
This is especially important considering that gasoline vehicles are already for sale and compete with electric vehicles. Why am I renting a car or swapping cars when the whole point of owning a car was to have a car?
In Norway in mountains charging stations are often literally in the middle of nowhere with their placement dictated by availability of high-voltage power lines. They are fully automated with just few charging boxes and nothing else. Although the view is often nice with mountains and valleys, when it is snowing or raining spending an extra hour on top of 7 hours of driving is not nice especially as for toilet and food one needs to stop at other places. So I would appreciate if I do not need to spend that extra hour sitting in a car and watching rain.
Now, Norway may be an extreme case, but driving for 1000 km daily in Europe while rare is still a normal event. For example, from Paris to Mediterranean coast it is like 800 km. And if one drives 130km/h that 1000 km of battery will be reduced to 500km so one will need to charge once and it will be nice if that can be done within 15 minutes not to add too much time to the trip.
This is a nonproblem inflated by petrolheads routinely doing 1000 kilometers in one go, which are overrepresented among journalists. Most people don't do that and are doing longer stops at least twice, vacations make that even more likely.
And cherry picking distinct worst aspect of long distance driving in Norway and France and mashing them together them as one argument is disingenuous. There's plenty of stuff to stop and enjoy between Paris and Med.
Electrical with range of 1000km and fast charging gives an option that is not presently covered. There are people in Norway who still do not consider electrical cars because they want to have an option to drive 500 km over mountains in one go without extra delays. The same in France. Or even consider Spain. The argument is that one cannot go from Madrid to Alicante (like 400-450 km) without extra stops to charge still prevents people to get electrical cars. In a lot of cases option to drive a long distance will never be used, but people want to have that option as a form of insurance.
But "just to have an option" isn't how it's usually presented.
Besides, no one appears to realize gas supply will vanish first in case of crisis, it did once happen already in Europe. Electricity usually gets cut later, if at all.
No, it is a a real problem for most people who buy their cars for the 2 holiday trips they do a year. Yes it does not make sense economically but this is how customers buy they cars.
And hence, this battery range and ability to quickly charge will be very important to people.
You may disagree with their position (I do) but that won’t affect their buying decision - range and charging speed will.
My “expensive” electric (battery) mower works for three mowings on my lawn and cost less than 6 months paying a lawn service. Perhaps someone with an acre needs a gas riding mower but anyone with the average sized yard probably can do electric today easily.
I bought an electric one because it was still quick ROI vs paying for lawn service, and also noise dB and avoiding breathing the gas exhaust.
But here in KY the other week it rained for a whole week, the grass was really tall and thick, and the mower couldn't handle it at all. My neighbor's old, cheap gas mower worked just fine.
>Battery breakthroughs have been happening bi-weekly for decades
and our batteries now compared to then (ten years ago, twenty years ago, thirty years ago) are amazing.
It's one of the few technologies where we actually have seen leaps and bounds of improvements and overall quick dissemination of technologies to the public.
They hit way sooner than you think. The current best in class battery cells are a hybrid of these breakthroughs. Companies just don't advertise what's going into the special sauce for obvious reasons.
If you look at a chart if battery capacity density, it's been pretty much exponentially growing.
The liquid electrolyte is where most of the fire hazard happens in a lithium-ion battery, as it's typically based on ethylene carbonate, which is flammable.
The article says that it eliminates the problem. But I find that hard to believe. On the other hand, silicon dioxide is already oxidized so it can't burn more.
> We show that short-circuited all-solid-state batteries can reach temperatures significantly higher than conventional Li-ion, which could lead to fire through flammable packaging and/or nearby materials. Our work highlights the need for quantitative safety analyses of solid-state batteries.
Would be interesting to hear how Samsung claim to have solved dendrite formation in their solid state batteries.
There's still a potential for a short circuit and a rapid release of energy. Whether that release itself is fire, or the energy causes plasmas and fires doesn't really seem to matter much.
We're still doing this? Capacity by weight and volume, and efficiency per distance are much more meaningful. Charging is mostly a function of input voltage.
I think for the average human, this is exactly the kind of numbers they want to hear.
I don't care about the volume of my battery one bit, I care about how the car looks (and performs).
This pair of numbers is relevant, because it suggests that you can do an extended road trip with the car, start early in the morning, take a brief break that you'll need anyways at a sufficiently fast fast charger, or a longer lunch break at a place that offers "normal" fast charging, and be good to drive for the rest of the day. Or if you drive conservatively, possibly make an "all day" long trip (7-8 hours of driving) without needing to charge on the way at all.
Also, 9 minutes puts it into the "stop for refueling" rather than "extended break" territory, eliminating one of the major issues people worry about when considering whether to get an EV or not.
EV batteries all weight in the 400-500kg range, and the volume is similar for all cars (size of the underfloor). Given that these are pretty much fixed variables, the range figure is a good measure to report on. For density it means getting close to 500Wh/kg, but that is not something most consumers can understand.
Efficiency is a function of the car design and drivetrain, how would that apply to the battery itself?
Not every kind of battery chemistry tolerates high-speed charging (in fact, I’d say that most don’t) Knowing that this particular battery chemistry is not limited in that sense is very relevant to end users, who are of course the ones who have to wait for their car to be charged.
$5 says that these two figures were combined accidentally.
For example, a full charge in 9m from 0? That's 10x faster at least, than 100% charge with current tech. Adding 3x the range would be an additional leap.
Likely, someone was asked "how fast does it charge to 80%, like current batteries which take 15 tp 20 minutes?"... "9m!", and later "how much more range wouldnot have" and someone said a simple "double per weight".
Still, these solid states may not need battery heaters in the cold. That's huge on its own.
They are just putting it into the perspective of the layperson by telling them what will actually be possible with the technology in a passenger vehicle. It’s not a big deal.
Yeah, there's also the: charging everytime in the 9m mode, how long does it last? Or, how much energy do you have to put in? Because the charging efficiency and lifespan change when the input voltage changes.
My EV has been the cheapest vehicle to own that I've ever had. 90,000 KM and I've never changed the oil, or an oil filter, or had a catalytic converter stolen, or had wet plug wires lead to a tow, or had a coil go bad, or failed emissions testing, or leaked transmission fluid. And during the time that I've owned it, I've never had to drive into a shady gas station at night. And even per-kilometer, I'm paying about 1/8 what I was paying with gasoline.
That said, I did replace the tires at 70,000. And I've filled the washer fluid dozens of times. So it's not completely maintenance-free ))
In Germany where more than 70% of the new vehicles are bought/leased by companies over 24/36 months, you are totally right. They do not care as longevity of the battery is priced in the lease.
I don’t follow that logic. If you’re in charge of car lease contracts at a company, wouldn’t the lease price be one of the major factors in deciding whether an offer is good/in whether your boss is happy about you?
On the contrary, I would think individual leasers would be more likely to make the impulse choice of “greater range, and ‘only’ costs $X a month more” than companies, who often lease dozens or more cars.
The price would be a major factor. The state in which the battery will be in at the end of those 3 years would be a complete non-factor (because at that point it's not your problem anymore). So someone who leases like this won't need to think/worry about battery longevity, whereas someone buying will be hesitant to buy a vehicle unless they are reasonably sure that the battery will last a long time.
Of course, battery degradation would likely have some influence on the lease price, but I doubt it will be a major factor.
> Of course, battery degradation would likely have some influence on the lease price, but I doubt it will be a major factor.
I disagree. Battery longevity hugely affects how much money the lease company can get when they sell the car after X years, so in a world of perfect information, it should have a large influence on lease price.
In the real world, the lease company will have to gamble a bit. Many will choose to spread the risk by buying a spread of different cars, but they’ll still calculate expected sale price and adjust the lease price accordingly.
I wish someone made an EV with LFP batteries and as little software as possible, certainly no displays or a companion mobile app. Let me put an AliExpress parking camera in if I want one. Something that I can afford to own and maintain myself, without being dependent on repair shops with specialized tools or knowledge, or worse, the manufacturer, for service. Throw in a service manual with full schematics and I'll be elated.
You can literally hang a cloth over the screen covering it and still do pretty much everything, most of the time, if the screen bothers you. The car has a few physical hardware buttons that do what you need.
This is the sodium ion battery, already scaling up mass production by CATL.
The one they claim should enable a 200-300 mile city car that is fundamentally cheaper than an ICE vehicle. The materials costs are something like half of an LFP battery, and LFP batteries should be cheaper than ICEs too at scale, especially with the new generation of 200-225 wh/kg LFP batteries.
The reason why they aren't available is that government, especially the US, are still being unbelievably short sighted about proactive investment in EV switchover. There should be hundreds of billions of dollars being invested to switch over to PHEVs and EVs in all consumer and a great deal of commercial transportation every year.
Heck, we should have had PHEVs for all new vehicles mandated 10 years after the Prius was released in 1997, it's just that there was an oilman in the oval office. But Obama wasn't very proactive either.
There should be hundreds of billions of dollars being invested into building out rail, and phasing down cars in every major city. Footpaths and bike lanes cost 1/100th as much as roads for cars, investing in EVs is shortsighted.
EVs are better than ICE cars (mostly - I'm not sold on battery trucks and EV utility vehicles), but kerosene lamps are better than whale-oil lamps and yet both should be replaced by light bulbs as broadly and quickly as possible.
Sodium batteries are cool as heck, I'd love to see them in UPSes.
Rail simply takes too long and too much money to lay down.
But e-bikes that I agree with you. Our car centric infrastructure basically makes an e-bike. Still pretty dangerous. With minimal infrastructure investment, certainly a thousandth of what would be necessary for a rail line, I said he could make a kick- ass ebike infrastructure completely separated from dangerous cars.
Old rail lines are actually really good for this. They're already separated from car infrastructure. But even if you dug tunnels or elevated, a bike path still would be a lot cheaper
Yes, eventually. They're expensive to manufacture for now, because the tech is relatively new (as compared to ICE cars). Price will come down over time.
New? Lithium-ion batteries are almost 50 years old, the electric motor close to 200 years.
> German engineer Andreas Flocken built the first real electric car in 1888. Electric trains were also used to transport coal out of mines, as their motors did not use up precious oxygen. Before the pre-eminence of internal combustion engines, electric automobiles also held many speed and distance records.
I’m not suggesting we just recently invented the motor or Li-Ion battery. Modern EVs are costlier to manufacture than modern ICE cars. This is sort of indisputable; the reason for this is because of economies of scale. We know how to manufacture and build ICE cars at scale / cheap. We are still learning how to do that for EVs.
I don't think we are learning that for electric cars, since those are based on very old technology that is not very complicated. Indeed, electric motors are far simpler than combustion motors, and lithium-ion batteries have been produced in large quantities for a while. As far as I know, most other car components don't depend on the type of motor.
That is an extremely high-level statement that isn't worth making.
Sure, Li-Ion batteries are generally pretty simple, and electric motors as an idea are simple. Making them work, at scale, and compete (or beat) ICE motors, while also managing to bring price down? Yeah, that takes decades of research.
We've know about rubber for a really long time. It still took us many decades to make a good tire.
They were never at the forefront of battery technology. Their project meant to leapfrog everyone else, the 4680 cell, had not delivered. To date they still hadn't achieved the main technical challenge of dry electrode production. Even if they did achieve it today, it would already be too late.
This would be more convincing if reviewers could order samples.
Yoshino seemed to be shipping a solid state battery, but several people have bought and disassembled the thing, and it has liquid/gel components. That was disappointing.
CATL has some good comments.[1] Wu Kai of CATL was quoted as saying that the maturity level of the technology and the manufacturing process can currently be categorised at 4 on a scale of 1 to 9. CATL wants to be at 7 to 8 by 2027, which is equivalent to the production of solid-state batteries in small quantities. CATL also mentions that they have 1,000 people in R&D working on this. This is a big project in China. The China All-Solid-State Battery Collaborative Innovation Platform is getting government funding and has all the big battery makers in China on board.[2]
Toyota's roadmap shows solid state batteries around 2028.[3]
There are solid state battery announcements all over, but the big players all admit that the manufacturing is really tough.
A US startup exists.[4] They mostly make press releases, not products.
[1] https://www.electrive.com/2024/04/29/catl-expects-to-produce...
[2] https://www.electrive.com/2024/05/30/china-solid-state-batte...
[3] https://electrek.co/2024/01/11/toyota-solid-state-ev-battery...
[4] https://www.electrive.com/2024/08/06/ion-storage-systems-ann...