I was talking with my car dealer as I wanted to buy an electric car. He was using the car for his own usage to get a good idea. The main thing that came out is that most available charging stations are 22kW max and very often they are shared using "smart charge", which basically means a lower duty cycle (/N). In practice it means it requires about 7 hours to charge the 50kW/h battery.
After this discussion, I asked my utility company, and it would cost around $20k to install a 22kW charging station in my home. And what the person told me over the phone was basically "the grid is not ready, we would need to upgrade hundred of meters of cable".
This is in Europe (Switzerland), but it shows how impractical super fast charging is with the current state of the grid and infrastructure (we can't start a turbine when you plug your car). I don't know if trying to make it work is possible. The current grid was built over decades. To me it seems way easier to use other form of energy transfer (hydrogen refill or battery swap).
Edit:
I'm at the limit of the current I can draw from the utility line (40A for my house) as I have a geothermal pump that can use up to 25A when running. Even if I put a smaller charging station, the utility will have to change my introduction box, and in all cases it is quite expensive. I asked for 22kW because we live in a remote location, and while not strictly necessary, it might become so in the future, for example if we have visitors with 3 cars, they might need recharge.
I used to work for Reykjavik Energy as a junior analyst about 12 years ago. One of my tasks was using their geo database to pull out cable and transformer data for every neighbourhood and use it to generate load models (using Siemens PSS mostly).
We knew the high voltage system (100kv+) was fine as there are quite a few big power hungry users on the network. We focused our research on the "neighbourhood transformers" - These are the transformers that take you from 11kv to 400v (3 phase, of which one leg is connected to a consumer fuseboard). They're generally sized so that each transformer can service a small neighborhood, but power can be routed through less efficient ways in case they break. We combined all the electrical data with traffic data to estimate when people finish work and would likely be plugging their cars in at home.
The conclusion we came to was that if only 15 percent of homes wanted fast charge ability (which at the time was a lot less than what testa offers today) the majority of the city's transformers would be over their current limit.
Iceland has a pretty decent and modern power infrastructure so this was a bit of a shock to everyone. I think my research was even presented to parliament :)
Ok, so there's a key point here, and that's that fast charging is not meant for the home!
You can fully charge an EV overnight on a 7KW charger. You don't need a fast charger at home.
The other thing is that home chargers are AC and the car converts the current. This means that there's a cap to how much power you can give it. For example, my car can only accept 11KW and that's pretty typical. So 22KW chargers are a waste at home today.
Maybe you'd need a fast charger at home if you never sleep. But the majority of people spend at least 7 hours at home. You'll always wake up to a fully charged car. Why do you need anything else?
I happen to have 22kW at home (3x32A) but my TM3LR is only capable of 11kW (3x16A) but this means that no matter what my car can always be charged during the time I sleep. Most of the time in practice however I only charge during the hours electricity is really cheap as it's not too often I come in with a completely empty battery and need to drive full battery capacity next day (two days of ~500km each in a row).
I find fast charging is only needed for road trips and quite possibly for fleet operations (taxis, delivery vans etc). For a private car 11kW is plenty and less could be doable as well.
As for grid .. our grid here in Estonia has the opposite problems, most people want to start selling to the grid with solar panels. And grid people being really inflexible (in a charitable interpretation) or greedy (by wanting to people pay for all the work needed to modernize the aging grid) also want to charge ridiculous fees for any increases in capacity.
With lots of EV's I kinda understand that the grid may have more problems but with local generation the load on the grid goes down (as electricity needs to be transported much shorter distances, think: your neighbors). So my trust that 3x32A installation cost of $20k is justified is very low (unless this is a rural farm or something that really is far from nearest transformer).
Just last week someone was quoted 4 million euros to upgrade an existing connection to support a 15kW PV installation (rural, but most of the cost came apparently from needing to upgrade a 330kV transformer station).
Very few people are likely to have that sort of charger installed in their house. High speed charging makes sense though where it'll be heavily utilized, like at charging stations along major highways.
(I'm hoping eventually the highways will become the charging stations, probably with some kind of device that makes a physical connection to rails embedded in the road that supply power to moving vehicles, kind of like a big slot car. For that application, fast-charging batteries are great because it means you only have to electrify short sections of road at regular intervals, not the whole thing.)
$20k to install a 22kW charger!!!! i was quoted £1300 (uk) to have one fitted and i thought that was expensive!
to reply to another comment about why a 22kW is needed. if you're on a flexi tariff where energy price is super cheap from like 12-4am then having it fully charge in that time is needed to maximise the best price
That's only one of many, many issues electric cars "revolution" is going to face. Where do we get all the lithium, copper, cobalt to build electric cars? The reality check for EV will be very brutal, according to those stats [1] we would need:
"meeting UK electric car targets for 2050 would require production of just under two times the current total annual world cobalt production, nearly the entire world production of neodymium, three quarters the world’s lithium production and at least half of the world’s copper production."
And this is only UK. In order to switch to EV we need revolution in battery production, we need revolution in electricity production and grid construction and I don't see any of this happening for now. I am tracking all news about "new, better battery" and typically it at the end of the news it turns out, that this new great battery weight is 2 tonnes or it can work in temperature range up to -200 degrees, etc.
It's important to remember that EVs can be left charging unattended. This makes time requirements very different than filling up with gas.
If you park your car at home, leave it charging overnight. It doesn't matter if it will take 4, 8 or 12 hours — you have the whole night. Also it's unlikely that you will run it down to 0% every day, so you just need to top it up.
If you have a parking with chargers at work, you can plug it there. That's 8 hours when the car is sitting idle and could be charging. Or at a supermarket — plug it in when you're shopping. Even with a relatively slow charger you'll likely return home with more battery than you've left with. This is called destination charging, and these chargers are designed to top up your car while you're parked there for longer periods anyway.
Really fast charging is needed on road trips, but there you will want at least 100kW. For daily home use charging speed literally doesn't matter.
You don't need 22kW charger if your car has 50kWh battery. Those cars usually have 11 kW on-board AC charger anyway. In fact, for daily driving, 3 kW overnight charging at your home should be plenty - you would be able to charge up 30 kWh in 10 hours.
22 kW chargers are for cars with ludicrously large battery, like Tesla Model X which has 100 kWh battery.
I have owned an EV for 8 years. It cost $300 to buy and install my EVSE ("charge station") because I already had a 240v plug in my garage. If a 240v line had to be run from my breaker box to my garage it would have been about $2k. But it also wouldn't have been necessary, as 110v charge speed would have been fine. Also that $300 got reimbursed via tax credit.
Stop pushing FUD. This is total nonsense. EV ownership is awesome and has been for years. The only issue is that people living in apartments or condos without a garage usually can't charge at home. These places need to start adding charging infrastructure to parking spaces.
I have a Renault Zoe and I charge mostly outside on 22kW charger. The Zoe 2021 has a 42kW/h battery and it take ~2h to fully charge. I don't understand how you get to the 7h figure ?
There are plenty of super fast charging stations (DC) in switzerland (Gofast for example).
You don't need 22kW at home. 7kW is plenty enough for a night charge.
I have 3x25A fuses at 230V (which is normal here, you either have 3x20 or 3x25 typically) so I could probably run a 22kW charger. But I couldn't run it and run much other stuff at the same time!
I guess the solution is to have something store the capacity, i.e. a second battery. If one really needs to charge at home very quickly (e.g. you are a taxi driver or have some other specific reason) and you can't overload the grid, then the solution must be to slowly charge a battery at home when the car is used, just like most EV owners slowly charge the car over night. Then the home battery can be quickly emptied into the car for a fast charge. In the end, it's just like having 2EVs where one is charging while the other isn't. And of course, buying a 100kWh wall battery is going to also set you back a large part of the cost of a second car too, just like your $20k for a better electricity connection. BUT - the dual battery solution doesn't have the tragedy of the commons issue where not everyone can do it.
I doubt more than a single digit % would ever consider needing fast charge at home though.
You can also have a large battery buffer supporting standard chargers. Or battery integrated chargers are also interesting because they're fast to deploy and cheap to install (though the individual units are more expensive due to the battery):
If you have the space, you could install close to 20kW of solar PV for $20,000. On a sunny day this would help power a 22kW charging station, and even on a cloudy day you'd probably get around 2kW for trickle charging.
This is why a solution like using Hydrogen makes a lot more sense than using pure EVs - even if the efficiencies are lower than in battery driven vehicles.
The speed you quote for a shared 22KW with multiple cars charging is the same as a standard home 7KW charger (e.g. 60Kwh car charging to full from 0 while you sleep for 8 hours, or 2 of those cars charging from 20-80%). But no one drives that many miles per day consistently.
Most normal people can survive with a standard plug, even the 7KW is a luxury to let you think less about it and to help the grid by charging faster when the grid is off peak, enabling faster rollout of cheap renewables.
OK! Here comes a car with, say, 80 kWh battery. It's not entirely empty, so to reach 98%, it can take 60 kWh. It does so in 5 minutes.
This means that it gulps 60 kWh in 5 minutes; since 1 hour = 12 * 5 minutes, the power transmitted is 60 * 12 = 720 kW.
This is a scale of a neighborhood; a typical detached house is allocated 20 kW. And this is just one car.
Now let's imagine optimistically that the efficiency of the process is 99%, and a mere 1% is dissipated as heat. 7.2 kW take a serious cooling system to dissipate.
So no, I don't think it's fit for cars. For phones and drones, maybe, using a special actively cooled charging station.
This company seems like the real deal, and it seems like they have managed to actually start manufacturing cells. What they haven't done, is create batteries which are likely to be used in electric vehicles which carry people yet. The web site [0] has data sheets for 4 sizes of cells, from "eyewear" to "smartphone/laptop". While they claim energy densities that are much higher than conventional cells, none of these are as big as 18650, 2170, or 4680.
There's reference to higher capacity cells in this presentation [1], but they are sited as design targets, which I take to mean: they only exist on paper. They also try to sell 100% packing density since they are prismatic instead of the conventional cylindrical cells. In one of their videos they say that they get less than 2% swelling after 500 charge cycles. So how does one get 100% packing density if the cells even only swell to 2%?
After many years of experience, I do not trust any battery vendor's mechanical specs. Inevitably "<2%" will be a lot higher than that. Battery companies can't even get the static cell size correct with proper tolerances, let alone truthfully report the swelling.
The 3 cofounders spent ~20 years at IBM San Jose before going on to other things. There are also a lot of very senior people from the auto industry and other top tier tech companies like Cypress. Enovix has 94 patents (+63 pending), 14 years of R&D and $254M in funding to get to this point. Their videos have much more detail. [2]
According to their CEO, the first shipping product is in wearables (watches). From what they are saying about volumes and ramp plan, I wonder if they might be working with Apple. They're also working with AR companies, developing products specifically for them.
Going on nine_k's answer, at 600V you'd also need a charging cable to handle 1200A. That's so thick (~50mm) a 3m cable's going to weigh 52KG. I'm sure somebody will jump in and suggest an alternative. Let's just put 10kV through the car. Then it's only 72A. Nothing bad happens at 10kV.
Burst-chargers are silly. They might work, they might not, but either way they present such immediate problems for mass deployment that they should be considered a distraction.
What we need today is "little" 10-15KWh replaceable battery pods. We're still talking up to 80KG, but something to get you 50 miles. These could be cycled out, cool-charged and essentially offer unlimited range to anyone without adding significant delay.
You could also lower the onboard cost of new cars by reducing the standard battery size. I want a Tesla, but I need about 20 miles range for 99% of the time. Buying a 15KW battery and hiring the extra would be a better solution for me.
That's good news, pending actual pricing when commercially available.
But the real meat of the EV revolution will probably be high density LFP (300-400 range cars) and next-gen sodium ion (200-300 mile cars) which require no nickel or cobalt, or for sodium ion, not even lithium.
This is based on production densities that are supposed to be available in production late this year (LFP) or next year (sodium ion)
Improvements in any sector or aspect is a good thing though. There will be cells needed in dozens of applications, from container ship to bicycle.
Edit: I reached the posting limit, so here is more on the higher density LFP/sodium ion:
So my napkin math says that the densities listed should enable a 400 mile Tesla model S type car (especially since LFP doesn't need as much cooling and has higher density cell-to-pack), and sodium ion should do about 70% of that, or a 275 mile model S large car. Napkin math is derived from looking at current pack densities in Tesla cars and comparing that with 90% of the cell densities in the above articles (which these should be able to achieve in pack density with cell-to-pack and that these chemistries don't need as much active cooling systems). The current model S from googling seems to be at 186 wh/kg at pack level. 90% CTP 230wh/kg LFP should be 205+ wh/kg!!!
That may also enable large scale 50-70 mile range PHEVs, and even cheaper EV bikes/scooters/lawnmowers/etc. LFP also has better capacity retention,cycle endurance, and temperature endurance typically.
But the Sodium Ion might be the real revolution from a city car perspective for places like China/India where you'd need a billion or more clean city cars. A cheap 100-150 mile sodium ion car is just what these markets need.
I don't know the EV battery space well. What is the capacity of the battery they are referring to and how does it compare to, say, the capacity of a Tesla Model S? Just trying to put this 5 minutes to 80% charge in context. As a headline, it sounds incredible. If I could charge my car to 80% in 5 minutes, I would buy an EV tomorrow, seriously.
The capacity of an individual cell doesn't really matter, because you can linearly scale up the energy capacity and power. If you can charge a single cell to 80% in 5 minutes, then you can do the same for many cells simultaneously, as long as your power source doesn't become the bottleneck. From the perspective of battery technology, what matters is energy density, power density, and of course manufacturing cost.
But for what it's worth, the linked presentation[1] includes some test results from 2.7Ah cells, which is about the same as the capacity of a common 16850 cylindrical cell.
To an 80% charge, all modern cars with super fast charging (Tesla Model 3/Y, Ioniq 5, etc) can do it in around 15-20 minutes assuming you're connected to the fastest charger available.
The double time to full (vs. just to 80%) is pretty comparable to other batteries though, where that remaining 20% takes almost as long as the first 80%.
So, it's a lot faster. That said, I'd be interested in lifespan. They claim 'high cycle life' but don't actually put any figures around that.
The article states that the capacity figure is just a 'goal', not something they've actually achieved... if I'm reading it right, so it's a bit meaningless at the moment.
To use this without overloading the grid one could pair this with a station with properties: high capacity, high discharge, slow charge, low density. Is there such tech? Capacitors would work I guess, but are probably too expensive at the needed scale.
And it won't matter because no matter how fancy the tech you need an industrial base to actually manufacture the damn things.
Myopic energy policies and economically destructive actions taken over the past 2 years will ensure that we're going to have severe de-industrialisation for the foreseeable future which will make much of this high level tech unattainable.
They wanted us to have 21st century energy but forgot that we actually need to bootstrap it upon 20th century energy.
I personnally don't care for charging time, efficiency is the single most important thing for me. Plus if you get an Aptera, it's always charging a little. Charging become less of a problem if you are producing electricity.
> Lahiri will speak at the 12th International Advanced Automotive Battery Conference (AABC) Europe in Mainz, Germany. His presentation at 11:20 a.m. CEST (5:00 a.m. EST) titled “Silicon-Anode Lithium-Ion Batteries for EV Applications,” will provide an update on the company’s EV program.
OT: Funny how they mention an exact time for the presentation at the conference without adding a date. The conference https://www.advancedautobat.com/europe is 13 - 15 June. Small PR failure.
That's the other thing that people forget when talking about this. To put 100kWh of capacity into a battery within one minute, you'd need to have a charger capable of delivering 6 megawatts. That's the output of a small hydroelectric power plant.
I also would love to see the cables and cooling solution used for such a charger.
doesn't have to have that much instantaneous system wide capacity: could be giant super caps, secondary batteries etc(charged overnight or during peak solar times depending on where you are) - or it might share the peak capacity across the whole system (some smarts limiting things if everyone in a larger area charges at the same time - though that also means upping the delivery to individual sites)
> The cells also surpassed 1,000 cycles while retaining 93% of their capacity.
Doesn't anybody think that best ever possible equivalent of 1000 cycles achivable only in lab condition (for example charging and discharging 5000 times from 40% to 60% only in ideal temperature) is a huge waste of non-recyclable cells? 93% will be totally impossible for any human use.
The question is: how much of rare earth elements are needed to build such a battery? While enhancing charging time for some, what about the countries extracting those elements and the impact on their environment?
[+] [-] kuon|3 years ago|reply
After this discussion, I asked my utility company, and it would cost around $20k to install a 22kW charging station in my home. And what the person told me over the phone was basically "the grid is not ready, we would need to upgrade hundred of meters of cable".
This is in Europe (Switzerland), but it shows how impractical super fast charging is with the current state of the grid and infrastructure (we can't start a turbine when you plug your car). I don't know if trying to make it work is possible. The current grid was built over decades. To me it seems way easier to use other form of energy transfer (hydrogen refill or battery swap).
Edit:
I'm at the limit of the current I can draw from the utility line (40A for my house) as I have a geothermal pump that can use up to 25A when running. Even if I put a smaller charging station, the utility will have to change my introduction box, and in all cases it is quite expensive. I asked for 22kW because we live in a remote location, and while not strictly necessary, it might become so in the future, for example if we have visitors with 3 cars, they might need recharge.
[+] [-] valdiorn|3 years ago|reply
We knew the high voltage system (100kv+) was fine as there are quite a few big power hungry users on the network. We focused our research on the "neighbourhood transformers" - These are the transformers that take you from 11kv to 400v (3 phase, of which one leg is connected to a consumer fuseboard). They're generally sized so that each transformer can service a small neighborhood, but power can be routed through less efficient ways in case they break. We combined all the electrical data with traffic data to estimate when people finish work and would likely be plugging their cars in at home.
The conclusion we came to was that if only 15 percent of homes wanted fast charge ability (which at the time was a lot less than what testa offers today) the majority of the city's transformers would be over their current limit.
Iceland has a pretty decent and modern power infrastructure so this was a bit of a shock to everyone. I think my research was even presented to parliament :)
[+] [-] Philip-J-Fry|3 years ago|reply
You can fully charge an EV overnight on a 7KW charger. You don't need a fast charger at home.
The other thing is that home chargers are AC and the car converts the current. This means that there's a cap to how much power you can give it. For example, my car can only accept 11KW and that's pretty typical. So 22KW chargers are a waste at home today.
Maybe you'd need a fast charger at home if you never sleep. But the majority of people spend at least 7 hours at home. You'll always wake up to a fully charged car. Why do you need anything else?
[+] [-] fragmede|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jnsaff2|3 years ago|reply
I find fast charging is only needed for road trips and quite possibly for fleet operations (taxis, delivery vans etc). For a private car 11kW is plenty and less could be doable as well.
As for grid .. our grid here in Estonia has the opposite problems, most people want to start selling to the grid with solar panels. And grid people being really inflexible (in a charitable interpretation) or greedy (by wanting to people pay for all the work needed to modernize the aging grid) also want to charge ridiculous fees for any increases in capacity.
With lots of EV's I kinda understand that the grid may have more problems but with local generation the load on the grid goes down (as electricity needs to be transported much shorter distances, think: your neighbors). So my trust that 3x32A installation cost of $20k is justified is very low (unless this is a rural farm or something that really is far from nearest transformer).
Just last week someone was quoted 4 million euros to upgrade an existing connection to support a 15kW PV installation (rural, but most of the cost came apparently from needing to upgrade a 330kV transformer station).
[+] [-] elihu|3 years ago|reply
(I'm hoping eventually the highways will become the charging stations, probably with some kind of device that makes a physical connection to rails embedded in the road that supply power to moving vehicles, kind of like a big slot car. For that application, fast-charging batteries are great because it means you only have to electrify short sections of road at regular intervals, not the whole thing.)
[+] [-] squishy47|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] piokoch|3 years ago|reply
"meeting UK electric car targets for 2050 would require production of just under two times the current total annual world cobalt production, nearly the entire world production of neodymium, three quarters the world’s lithium production and at least half of the world’s copper production."
And this is only UK. In order to switch to EV we need revolution in battery production, we need revolution in electricity production and grid construction and I don't see any of this happening for now. I am tracking all news about "new, better battery" and typically it at the end of the news it turns out, that this new great battery weight is 2 tonnes or it can work in temperature range up to -200 degrees, etc.
[1] https://www.greencarcongress.com/2019/06/20190624-uk.html
[+] [-] pornel|3 years ago|reply
If you park your car at home, leave it charging overnight. It doesn't matter if it will take 4, 8 or 12 hours — you have the whole night. Also it's unlikely that you will run it down to 0% every day, so you just need to top it up.
If you have a parking with chargers at work, you can plug it there. That's 8 hours when the car is sitting idle and could be charging. Or at a supermarket — plug it in when you're shopping. Even with a relatively slow charger you'll likely return home with more battery than you've left with. This is called destination charging, and these chargers are designed to top up your car while you're parked there for longer periods anyway.
Really fast charging is needed on road trips, but there you will want at least 100kW. For daily home use charging speed literally doesn't matter.
[+] [-] watt|3 years ago|reply
22 kW chargers are for cars with ludicrously large battery, like Tesla Model X which has 100 kWh battery.
[+] [-] greenthrow|3 years ago|reply
I have owned an EV for 8 years. It cost $300 to buy and install my EVSE ("charge station") because I already had a 240v plug in my garage. If a 240v line had to be run from my breaker box to my garage it would have been about $2k. But it also wouldn't have been necessary, as 110v charge speed would have been fine. Also that $300 got reimbursed via tax credit.
Stop pushing FUD. This is total nonsense. EV ownership is awesome and has been for years. The only issue is that people living in apartments or condos without a garage usually can't charge at home. These places need to start adding charging infrastructure to parking spaces.
[+] [-] maeln|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Faaak|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alkonaut|3 years ago|reply
I guess the solution is to have something store the capacity, i.e. a second battery. If one really needs to charge at home very quickly (e.g. you are a taxi driver or have some other specific reason) and you can't overload the grid, then the solution must be to slowly charge a battery at home when the car is used, just like most EV owners slowly charge the car over night. Then the home battery can be quickly emptied into the car for a fast charge. In the end, it's just like having 2EVs where one is charging while the other isn't. And of course, buying a 100kWh wall battery is going to also set you back a large part of the cost of a second car too, just like your $20k for a better electricity connection. BUT - the dual battery solution doesn't have the tragedy of the commons issue where not everyone can do it. I doubt more than a single digit % would ever consider needing fast charge at home though.
[+] [-] marklubi|3 years ago|reply
For instance, a new Ford Lightning can power a house for days.
Lets turn this around a bit... To charge your vehicle, it requires multiple days of typical household energy usage.
This doesn't make sense.
[+] [-] clouddrover|3 years ago|reply
https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/news-and-insights/pre...
https://freewiretech.com/products/dc-boost-charger-200/
[+] [-] pmuk|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CuriousSkeptic|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Schroedingersat|3 years ago|reply
Save the fast charger for the road trip or for the people with the 1hr commute to use on the way home when they top up once a fortnight.
Or better yet start building infrastructure for a less insane and stupid transport method and transition away from cars altogether.
[+] [-] DrScientist|3 years ago|reply
For example, everybody seems to manage without a petrol pump at home.
If you have dedicated charging stations - then the problem becomes simpler than providing high power to every home.
Still a challenge - but not quite so insurmountable.
[+] [-] yunohn|3 years ago|reply
I would compare this to the last-mile issues facing internet connections, eg gigabit fiber.
It’s a chicken-egg problem with not enough electric car demand leading to energy companies deciding that it’s not worth providing the right supply.
[+] [-] pkphilip|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] megablast|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ZeroGravitas|3 years ago|reply
The speed you quote for a shared 22KW with multiple cars charging is the same as a standard home 7KW charger (e.g. 60Kwh car charging to full from 0 while you sleep for 8 hours, or 2 of those cars charging from 20-80%). But no one drives that many miles per day consistently.
Most normal people can survive with a standard plug, even the 7KW is a luxury to let you think less about it and to help the grid by charging faster when the grid is off peak, enabling faster rollout of cheap renewables.
[+] [-] nine_k|3 years ago|reply
This means that it gulps 60 kWh in 5 minutes; since 1 hour = 12 * 5 minutes, the power transmitted is 60 * 12 = 720 kW.
This is a scale of a neighborhood; a typical detached house is allocated 20 kW. And this is just one car.
Now let's imagine optimistically that the efficiency of the process is 99%, and a mere 1% is dissipated as heat. 7.2 kW take a serious cooling system to dissipate.
So no, I don't think it's fit for cars. For phones and drones, maybe, using a special actively cooled charging station.
[+] [-] s1mon|3 years ago|reply
There's reference to higher capacity cells in this presentation [1], but they are sited as design targets, which I take to mean: they only exist on paper. They also try to sell 100% packing density since they are prismatic instead of the conventional cylindrical cells. In one of their videos they say that they get less than 2% swelling after 500 charge cycles. So how does one get 100% packing density if the cells even only swell to 2%?
After many years of experience, I do not trust any battery vendor's mechanical specs. Inevitably "<2%" will be a lot higher than that. Battery companies can't even get the static cell size correct with proper tolerances, let alone truthfully report the swelling.
The 3 cofounders spent ~20 years at IBM San Jose before going on to other things. There are also a lot of very senior people from the auto industry and other top tier tech companies like Cypress. Enovix has 94 patents (+63 pending), 14 years of R&D and $254M in funding to get to this point. Their videos have much more detail. [2]
According to their CEO, the first shipping product is in wearables (watches). From what they are saying about volumes and ramp plan, I wonder if they might be working with Apple. They're also working with AR companies, developing products specifically for them.
[0] https://www.enovix.com
[1] https://www.enovix.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Ashok-Lahi...
[2] https://vimeo.com/enovix
[+] [-] oliwarner|3 years ago|reply
Burst-chargers are silly. They might work, they might not, but either way they present such immediate problems for mass deployment that they should be considered a distraction.
What we need today is "little" 10-15KWh replaceable battery pods. We're still talking up to 80KG, but something to get you 50 miles. These could be cycled out, cool-charged and essentially offer unlimited range to anyone without adding significant delay.
You could also lower the onboard cost of new cars by reducing the standard battery size. I want a Tesla, but I need about 20 miles range for 99% of the time. Buying a 15KW battery and hiring the extra would be a better solution for me.
[+] [-] malchow|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AtlasBarfed|3 years ago|reply
But the real meat of the EV revolution will probably be high density LFP (300-400 range cars) and next-gen sodium ion (200-300 mile cars) which require no nickel or cobalt, or for sodium ion, not even lithium.
This is based on production densities that are supposed to be available in production late this year (LFP) or next year (sodium ion)
Improvements in any sector or aspect is a good thing though. There will be cells needed in dozens of applications, from container ship to bicycle.
Edit: I reached the posting limit, so here is more on the higher density LFP/sodium ion:
230 wh/kg LFP:
https://pushevs.com/2022/03/29/guoxuan-closer-to-mass-produc...
160 wh/kg Sodium ion:
https://www.electronicdesign.com/markets/automotive/article/...
So my napkin math says that the densities listed should enable a 400 mile Tesla model S type car (especially since LFP doesn't need as much cooling and has higher density cell-to-pack), and sodium ion should do about 70% of that, or a 275 mile model S large car. Napkin math is derived from looking at current pack densities in Tesla cars and comparing that with 90% of the cell densities in the above articles (which these should be able to achieve in pack density with cell-to-pack and that these chemistries don't need as much active cooling systems). The current model S from googling seems to be at 186 wh/kg at pack level. 90% CTP 230wh/kg LFP should be 205+ wh/kg!!!
That may also enable large scale 50-70 mile range PHEVs, and even cheaper EV bikes/scooters/lawnmowers/etc. LFP also has better capacity retention,cycle endurance, and temperature endurance typically.
But the Sodium Ion might be the real revolution from a city car perspective for places like China/India where you'd need a billion or more clean city cars. A cheap 100-150 mile sodium ion car is just what these markets need.
[+] [-] xwowsersx|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] teraflop|3 years ago|reply
But for what it's worth, the linked presentation[1] includes some test results from 2.7Ah cells, which is about the same as the capacity of a common 16850 cylindrical cell.
[1]: https://www.enovix.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Ashok-Lahi...
[+] [-] Kirby64|3 years ago|reply
The double time to full (vs. just to 80%) is pretty comparable to other batteries though, where that remaining 20% takes almost as long as the first 80%.
So, it's a lot faster. That said, I'd be interested in lifespan. They claim 'high cycle life' but don't actually put any figures around that.
The article states that the capacity figure is just a 'goal', not something they've actually achieved... if I'm reading it right, so it's a bit meaningless at the moment.
[+] [-] mungoman2|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Guthur|3 years ago|reply
Myopic energy policies and economically destructive actions taken over the past 2 years will ensure that we're going to have severe de-industrialisation for the foreseeable future which will make much of this high level tech unattainable.
They wanted us to have 21st century energy but forgot that we actually need to bootstrap it upon 20th century energy.
We need energy now.
[+] [-] cassepipe|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Gys|3 years ago|reply
OT: Funny how they mention an exact time for the presentation at the conference without adding a date. The conference https://www.advancedautobat.com/europe is 13 - 15 June. Small PR failure.
[+] [-] rootusrootus|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cbmuser|3 years ago|reply
This means, if this was supposed to be commercialized, the country would need to install thousands of charging stations with half a megawatt power.
I don’t think this is ever going to happen. Especially, with western countries being slow in building new nuclear power plants.
[+] [-] gambiting|3 years ago|reply
I also would love to see the cables and cooling solution used for such a charger.
[+] [-] Taniwha|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eimrine|3 years ago|reply
Doesn't anybody think that best ever possible equivalent of 1000 cycles achivable only in lab condition (for example charging and discharging 5000 times from 40% to 60% only in ideal temperature) is a huge waste of non-recyclable cells? 93% will be totally impossible for any human use.
[+] [-] arriu|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jillesvangurp|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WheatM|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] medion|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] senectus1|3 years ago|reply
1000 is a short count i wonder if the capacity drops off suddenly after about 1000...
[+] [-] seydor|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] atbpaca|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vardump|3 years ago|reply
NiMH batteries require Cerium, Lanthanum and Neodymium, but those batteries are not used in BEVs at all anymore.
So I think the answer is: zero.
[+] [-] diebeforei485|3 years ago|reply