New battery tech

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jadnashuanh

Well-known member
Joined
May 22, 2014
Messages
5,192
Location
Nashua, NH USA
There's an article on CNET about a new battery tech from Toyota that can recharge 3x faster than today's typical cells, and is supposed to retain at least 90% after 5000 cycles, or over 14-years at a daily recharge cycle. They plan to market it on one or more of their vehicles in 2019. Others have tried, and have had issues with reliability and reproducibility. We'll see how Toyota fairs with theirs. This could be a game changer.

On a different subject, the area rep at my dealer said that the electric X3 will have about 400-miles of range when it shows up in about a year. No idea, yet, if it will have a REx option.
 
Porsche has a new EV coming out in a couple of years that will be able to recharge quite fast and, this week, there was a consortium announced in Europe to start to deploy CCS units that will eventually be able to recharge at up to 350Kw/hr. combine that with batteries that can handle faster recharges, and you start to approach the convenience of refilling an ICE. Those CCS units still need some work, and the CCS standard needs some final agreements and tweaks. To transfer that much energy, they need liquid cooled pins in the supply plug and cable. FWIW, Porsche has a prototype up and operating near their headquarters so this isn't all vaporware.
 
Faraday has a prototype battery that exceeds the Toyota one by a significant factor if they can figure out how to produce it economically and in volume. Claim a significant charge is possible in as little as one minute! Now, a station capable of providing it would need to be HUGE, but being able to maintain near the max without having to taper off (much) would still be quite useful with today's and those 350Kw units in the pipeline.
 
jadnashuanh said:
Faraday has a prototype battery that exceeds the Toyota one by a significant factor if they can figure out how to produce it economically and in volume. Claim a significant charge is possible in as little as one minute! Now, a station capable of providing it would need to be HUGE, but being able to maintain near the max without having to taper off (much) would still be quite useful with today's and those 350Kw units in the pipeline.
Do you have a link ? I'm not doubting you, I just want to read more about it.
 
Sorry, it was not Faraday, but Fisker...
https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1113824_fisker-still-aims-at-solid-state-electric-car-batteries-as-patents-attest
 
Faraday:
According to the release, the new collaborative battery is “the world’s highest energy density for a production automotive battery,”
https://www.inverse.com/article/21719-faraday-future-lg-chem-partnership-electric-car-batteries
 
Also from Faraday:
300+ Miles per Charge
Our lithium-ion battery cells achieve the world’s highest energy density – nearly double that of a production automotive battery. This not only represents a significant step forward in battery technology, it’s a tremendous increase in range, well in excess of 300 miles on a single charge.

https://www.ff.com/us/ff-91/
 
jadnashuanh said:
Sorry, it was not Faraday, but Fisker...
https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1113824_fisker-still-aims-at-solid-state-electric-car-batteries-as-patents-attest
The article mentions Fisker has a patent on the new battery technology. I searched the USPTO for patents and applications assigned to Fisker and didn't see a battery patent. Have you seen the patent, and if so, do you have the number ? I'm interested in "how it works" which should be somewhat disclosed in the patent.

Edit:
I found this on graphene batteries. Graphene is mentioned in the Fisker link so maybe that's what they're using. I would still be interested in reading the patent if someone can find it.
https://www.azonano.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=4326
 
Fisker just announced a breakthrough in SS batteries. Claim to have a vehicle for sale next year with them...almost a full charge in minutes. We'll see how that works out. BMW says it's well on its way to SS battery tech, but it's a few years away. Now, finding a place that can source that much energy that fast will be problematic as well.
 
We don't need minutes literally, the upcoming 400 kW chargers may fill up such solid state batteries within 15-20 min, and this would do just fine :roll:
 
Another interesting battery discovery from the labs that allows significantly faster recharge rates....
https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1118469_penn-state-researchers-develop-faster-charging-lithium-battery-cell

It will be really interesting when these discoveries make it into large scale production some day...hopefully sooner rather than later.
 
Green Car Reports today had an article about Fisker's anticipated solid state battery. It has an interesting waffle shaped electrode to increase the surface area. They claim it will be in their car in 2020. We'll see if they can pull it off. Most everyone else that is talking about solid state is saying mid-2020's for their first commercial install.
 
Yeah, I'm rather doubtful about anything Fisker says after the debacle that was the Karma...

The big factor with these "500 miles on a charge, 1 minute to recharge" is the truly insane amount of energy delivery that would be needed. Even if we assume an ultra-efficient system, where they could get 500 miles on, say, 75 kWh of juice, that would require 4.5 MEGAwatts of energy to be pumped in to it to recharge in 1 minute.

According to Madison Gas & Electric, the average office building is 15,000 square feet, and uses 17.3 Kilowatt-hours per square foot per year. For an average constant energy usage of 29.62 Kilowatts. That's right, to recharge 75 kWh in 1 minute, you'd need to supply enough energy to power 155 average office buildings.

Without *MAJOR* improvements to the electricity infrastructure, you'd cause major brownouts any time you tried to recharge one of those. (Or else the charging stations would need large battery banks, with long breaks between charging cars.) Even Tesla's upcoming "Megacharger" for their upcoming Semi is only 1.6 Megawatts. (And will likely have banks of batteries behind them, and be only in extremely-high-energy-availability areas.)

I just can't imagine a setup where a recharging station for a sedan has as much energy flowing to it as will be used by three recharging semis at an electrified truck stop.
 
Porsche dealers will have 350Kw units before their new EV shows up. The neat thing about SS batteries is that they can accept power faster, and, in theory, anyways, should handle charge/discharge cycles with less degradation. That doesn't mean it will be available everywhere.

Super fast recharging will require on-site energy storage of some sort, whether it's batteries, supercapacitors, or some other technique, otherwise, the surge would disrupt the network as was discussed above. That will also require special batteries that can handle that large discharge rate and still have a viable life.
 
That's right, to recharge 75 kWh in 1 minute, you'd need to supply enough energy to power 155 average office buildings.
'

Exactly right - and then Fisker will need to invent a new conducting medium to charge through, because that much juice flowing through any existing metallic cable, unless the gauge was so large it would be many inches across in thickness and weigh in at several hundred pounds per foot, would flash-vaporize in milliseconds.
Maybe some type of induction charging would work (in theory only) - but can you imagine your fill. "Thank you for charging up your Fisker at our new Fisker Super-Charge Station, where you just downloaded enough juice to power a small city. That will be $300, sir. Will you be putting that on your MasterCard?"
 
I think the systems using the super high capacity chargers are planning liquid cooled supply cables.

One interesting article I read said that a well-designed inductive charging system can actually exceed the efficiency of a wired one, at up to 97% efficiency, but that only works on acv, not dcv.
 
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