> PowerCo will use the prismatic unified cell architecture in its batteries which allows for use of different cell chemistries. The cells will be manufactured from 2025 with the factory planned capacity to be 40 GWh which is enough to supply 500,000 electric vehicles. By 2030 PowerCo plans to have all six European factories up and running with a combined capacity of 240 GWh. The unified prismatic cell harnesses synergy effects and can offer manufacturing savings of up to 50% when compared to current batteries.
Why can't journalists use units correctly? I'm assuming the above is per year (but who knows?).
Side remark: it's actually kind of cool that you can literally specify the battery output of these factories in Watts.
Battery production is measured in Wh per year because you care about capacity to store energy. 40GWh = 40,000,000 kWh / (80kWh per car) = 500,000 cars.
Watt is power, Watt hour is energy. 1 Watt hour is 3600 joules, which looks suspiciously like 1 joule = 1 Watt second.
Most batteries now advertise energy capacity in kWh or thousand Watt hour(s). 1 kWh would be 3,600,000 joules or 3.6 megajoules, which does honestly sound more badass.
In the past batteries would advertise capacity in Amp hours, but you have to know the voltage of the battery to convert Amp hours to energy.
It is usually accepted per year when not specified. For example when you talk about GDP, it is yearly. Salary? Yearly usually yearly unless specified. Factory production? Yearly.
And no, you cannot use watts, unless you invent a new unit, watts of capacity?
It’s not really watts as there is no real power output. It’s an accident that the units are homogeneous but the output is in Wh/y, where Wh is a convenient way of describing the capacity of a battery (under standardized conditions) and not real energy outputted.
I’m pretty sure the answer is - they took physics in high school, they’ve been (on average) at least ten years out of high school, and it never came up, even once.
It seems like the main values of Tesla's cylindrical cells are that cylinders pack fairly tight, but also they make for pretty cool looking assembly lines because you can roll them around. Neither of these are particularly useful qualities in a production vehicle.
I'm curious if a prismatic cell solution - especially if they take 'prismatic' literally instead of meaning "rectangular", can be better optimized for heat dissipation. It's easier to tune surface area to internal area when you can make more sophisticated shapes, like truncated cuboids to provide rectangular cooling channels, or concave surfaces to make cylindrical ones.
batteries are round because the process to make them was a flow process, and its natural to roll things up from ribbons and sheets. Folding introduces more complexities: how do you make the fold the right length? what does it do to the barrier between things?
folding and layers don't mix as well as rolling and layers. swiss rolls, sushi rolls, battery cells are basically the same thing with chemistry differences.
capacitors come in cans for much the same reason. you take sheets of "stuff" and cover them with semi liquid other "stuff" and you roll them up and then cut the long rolls into short segments, put them in cans, attach electrodes and you have a capacitor. Sorry battery. Sorry Swiss roll. Sorry, sashimi. No: we got that order wrong.
Cylindrical cells also leave space for cooling (and heating!) channels when you assemble them together. Some companies tried to pack them more efficiently and then realized you NEED the cooling channels to avoid thermal runaways, fires, premature degradation, limp mode and extremely slow charging....
40 GWh or half a million vehicles per year (80 kWh each). A lot but also not a lot if you consider hundreds of millions of vehicles need to be replaced.
If we used plug in hybrids with 10 kWh batteries, this would be enough for four million vehicles.
Disclosure: I work for GM, this is solely my own opinion and experience.
There is a strong assumption that battery costs will come down, and raw material extraction will ramp up.
It is important to remember that we are currently extracting megatons of fossil fuels and just burning them to ash and carbon dioxide yearly.
There is also a strong assumption that batteries will be very recyclable in the future (recycling batteries will make economic sense)
Consider that a plug in hybrid needs two full propulsion systems. Both of those systems need to be engineered, tested, integrated, built, warrantee-ed, and serviced.
If battery prices do come down, the cost of the extra battery pack will soon be lower than the added cost of the ICE propulsion system.
It is my understanding that these factors led GM's leadership team to stop producing the Volt (plug in hybrid) system and transition to all EV.
If, however, battery prices stay high or go up for an extended period of time, this bet will look worse.
Or build smaller cars. Not everybody needs an 80kwh SUV. That's just the current market, which seems to favor stupidly big, heavy, and inefficient cars. That's not going to stay that way and VW is already planning to build smaller and cheaper cars. There are some cool vehicles hitting the market now that emphasize efficiency and range over just being big. E.g. Lightyear has very good aerodynamics and weight and a few other manufacturers are focusing on that as well.
A light city car like a Nissan Leaf does pretty well with just 40kwh. The original one shipped with just 20kwh and that was a relatively heavy vehicle. Imagine the same vehicle with twice the energy density. It would have a lot more range. A few kwh go a long way on light vehicles. Electrical motor cycles have somewhere in the range of only 4-8kwh. A lot of electrical bicycles have less than 1 kwh. 10kwh is plenty for a light vehicle.
Anyway, hybrids have all the downsides of owning an ICE car (lots of moving parts, pollution, expensive fuel, maintenance cost, etc.) with only some of the upsides of owning an EV (torque, fuel economy, etc.). Basically, in terms of cost and complexity, they don't make a lot of sense. The cheaper batteries get, the less sense they make. Right now EVs are just really expensive which means not everybody can afford one. However, cheaper, smaller EVs are perfectly feasible and a lot cheaper to make. Once the high end market saturates, smaller, lighter and cheaper EVs are the next obvious growth market. From next to nothing to many millions in volume is going to happen relatively quickly. In such a market, hybrids don't really stand a chance.
Those hundreds of millions of vehicles will be replaced over the course of 2-3 decades. Annual production volume of cars will be mostly EVs by mid next decade; in about 15 years. From then on, another 15 years or so later, most ICE vehicles will have been decommissioned. The value proposition at 2022 cost levels is already pretty great for EVs (with incentives and if you can afford them). Another 3 decades of technical improvements, economies of scale, etc. is going to only improve the economics.
For VW to build 10 million electric vehicles to keep numbers up [1], at 60kWh per vehicle which approximately the midsized ID.3 [2], they need to build roughly 12x this capacity, so ~$240B investment which is about what the whole company is worth today [3].
We need to cut down on cars a lot, the emissions equation doesn't make sense otherwise. Because (a) replacing cars is hugely CO2 intensive and (b) there doesn't seem to be any reasonable timescale path to leaving the currently known oil/gas deposits in the ground and not pumping & burning them up. Until there is, EVs are just additional emissions.
> you consider hundreds of millions of vehicles need to be replaced.
They probably won't be all replaced. A minority of people (I'd put it at around 15-20% max) will afford to own an EV (price + place to charge it), while the great majority of us will be left with old combustion-engine cars, Cuba style (or until the law will prohibit them entirely, most probably).
I had a great amount of fun today hammering my tiny petrol engine.
It's 1.5L with no turbo that's 10 years old (toyota yaris hatchback). I can floor it, it revs noticably, but it's so underpowered that I have zero chance of losing control because while it sounds like it's working hard, there's barely anything behind it.
I get that EVs are the future. They make more sense. But a small childish part of me will miss the "experience" of hammering under-powered petrol engines.
I recently got an electric motorcycle, and it’s a similarly visceral experience. I can hear the tires digging into the dirt and have a much better feel for traction and speed because of it. The effortless (and extreme) torque, with just a small whir, is a riot as well.
People often complain about electric (particularly motorcycles) not being “loud enough”. However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t noise, or that there’s not anything to be in tune with.
I’m not so excited about the future where an 18 year old feels like flooring their used EV with shitty brakes, and 0-100km/h acceleration that is twice as fast as an 80s Lamborghini.
This isn’t a problem yet because these cars are still a few years out from being affordable by those drivers and they are still in good shape.
Remember what happened to those kids in the 90s that drove souped up M3s or Nissan Skylines?
Some EV builder will eventually provide sound/haptic emulation so that you can have the tactile experience of anything from a Keicar to a Bentley V12 by modifying some simple settings. One of the most promising things about EVs is that they really can be software defined. Also one of the most scary. Hope they use Rust.
Some of the Yaris models are kind of hideous but I think they’re going to go down in history along with cars like the Volkswagen bug for sheer practicality. Not the kind of vehicle to get a reviewers attention but the price performance ratio was pretty damn good for us civilians. I really enjoyed using one as a loaner when I left my car at the Toyota dealership.
> But a small childish part of me will miss the "experience" of hammering under-powered petrol engines.
Well they are small, light, and pack about 105hp into a modern efficient engine developed by one of the great auto engineering staffs in history. Why not have a little fun with it?
Don't worry, you'll probably be able to simulate that with some kind of "retro mode".
Many ICE cars already artificially pump in the sound of an older, nosier engine when you put them into sports mode.
My 4 cylinder diesel GTD sounds like a V8 when I floor it (unless I have the windows open of course. In which case I can actually hear the engine and like all diesels it just sounds like a tractor).
You'd just need to add some kind of engine response curve to the EV throttle[1] to simulate hitting the correct rev band/gear change.
1. Even that word is a retro throwback in an EV, as is "driver" when you really think about its etymology.
I've been a gearhead practically my whole life, so I totally understand. Personally I think ICE cars will soon be thought about much the way we think of steam locomotives. They're pretty cool, some people will always love them, tinker with them (or models), there will be shows, etc. But compared to modern transportation they are loud, slow, stinky polluting machines that no one in their right mind would ever use for daily transportation. ICE had a good run (ignoring the whole climate change thing), but times change! See also: carburetors, manual choke, drum brakes, leaf springs, etc. ;-)
Batteries are neat, sure, but too bad they're just not necessary. It would be cool if wireless power was a thing, would be a thing, where we never worried about it, just took power for granted, and electric things just worked as if by magic but invisibly supported by really cool technology, and no one ever mentioned an EV's range again. Boo, Nikola, for getting my hopes up. I mean, it's 2022! Come on with the future already. Nope, global pandemic and war instead. Welcome to the future. Super. I want to go back to the 60's.
EV boom will propel the battery manufacturer to be the next manufacturing Behemoth. It's so much a core of any EV that the industry capital has to be consolidated to be able to produce sufficiently good product and iterate rapidly to match the market demand.
I still cannot understand how the world tollerates VW still to this day.
There has been ZERO change in the company's corporate culture since Dieselgate and while there is a lot of green washing happening and the enterprise is visibly moving towards electricity powered products this is just a company going where the money is. They are still the same ruthless business as they where a dozen years ago!
> PowerCo will use the prismatic unified cell architecture in its batteries which allows for use of different cell chemistries. The cells will be manufactured from 2025 with the factory planned capacity to be 40 GWh which is enough to supply 500,000 electric vehicles. By 2030 PowerCo plans to have all six European factories up and running with a combined capacity of 240 GWh. The unified prismatic cell harnesses synergy effects and can offer manufacturing savings of up to 50% when compared to current batteries.
I didn't see anything in this announcement about where raw materials will be sourced from. It looks like the idea is to support multiple chemistries, but it's far from clear where the materials for all those batteries will come from.
[+] [-] jupp0r|3 years ago|reply
Why can't journalists use units correctly? I'm assuming the above is per year (but who knows?).
Side remark: it's actually kind of cool that you can literally specify the battery output of these factories in Watts.
[+] [-] Retric|3 years ago|reply
240 GWh = 3 million 80kWh cars.
[+] [-] csours|3 years ago|reply
Most batteries now advertise energy capacity in kWh or thousand Watt hour(s). 1 kWh would be 3,600,000 joules or 3.6 megajoules, which does honestly sound more badass.
In the past batteries would advertise capacity in Amp hours, but you have to know the voltage of the battery to convert Amp hours to energy.
[+] [-] parentheses|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rat9988|3 years ago|reply
And no, you cannot use watts, unless you invent a new unit, watts of capacity?
The units used are correct.
[+] [-] SnowHill9902|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] epistasis|3 years ago|reply
10x increase in world production capacity every five years.
Currently at about 200-300GWh/year. Expect 2-3TWh/year by 2026, and 20-30TWh/year by 2031.
Volkswagen had better pick up the pace quite a bit.
[+] [-] nicklovescode|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ojbyrne|3 years ago|reply
I’m pretty sure the answer is - they took physics in high school, they’ve been (on average) at least ten years out of high school, and it never came up, even once.
[+] [-] atwood22|3 years ago|reply
> Side remark: it's actually kind of cool that you can literally specify the battery output of these factories in Watts.
The unit is Watt hour storage capacity.
[+] [-] BurningFrog|3 years ago|reply
If they could, they would have better paying jobs.
I don't mean to say journalists are stupid. They're generally not at all. But their required talents are verbal and social.
[+] [-] hinkley|3 years ago|reply
I'm curious if a prismatic cell solution - especially if they take 'prismatic' literally instead of meaning "rectangular", can be better optimized for heat dissipation. It's easier to tune surface area to internal area when you can make more sophisticated shapes, like truncated cuboids to provide rectangular cooling channels, or concave surfaces to make cylindrical ones.
[+] [-] ggm|3 years ago|reply
folding and layers don't mix as well as rolling and layers. swiss rolls, sushi rolls, battery cells are basically the same thing with chemistry differences.
capacitors come in cans for much the same reason. you take sheets of "stuff" and cover them with semi liquid other "stuff" and you roll them up and then cut the long rolls into short segments, put them in cans, attach electrodes and you have a capacitor. Sorry battery. Sorry Swiss roll. Sorry, sashimi. No: we got that order wrong.
[+] [-] gruturo|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dzhiurgis|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Gravityloss|3 years ago|reply
If we used plug in hybrids with 10 kWh batteries, this would be enough for four million vehicles.
[+] [-] csours|3 years ago|reply
There is a strong assumption that battery costs will come down, and raw material extraction will ramp up.
It is important to remember that we are currently extracting megatons of fossil fuels and just burning them to ash and carbon dioxide yearly.
There is also a strong assumption that batteries will be very recyclable in the future (recycling batteries will make economic sense)
Consider that a plug in hybrid needs two full propulsion systems. Both of those systems need to be engineered, tested, integrated, built, warrantee-ed, and serviced.
If battery prices do come down, the cost of the extra battery pack will soon be lower than the added cost of the ICE propulsion system.
It is my understanding that these factors led GM's leadership team to stop producing the Volt (plug in hybrid) system and transition to all EV.
If, however, battery prices stay high or go up for an extended period of time, this bet will look worse.
Fortunately for consumers, there is choice.
[+] [-] jillesvangurp|3 years ago|reply
A light city car like a Nissan Leaf does pretty well with just 40kwh. The original one shipped with just 20kwh and that was a relatively heavy vehicle. Imagine the same vehicle with twice the energy density. It would have a lot more range. A few kwh go a long way on light vehicles. Electrical motor cycles have somewhere in the range of only 4-8kwh. A lot of electrical bicycles have less than 1 kwh. 10kwh is plenty for a light vehicle.
Anyway, hybrids have all the downsides of owning an ICE car (lots of moving parts, pollution, expensive fuel, maintenance cost, etc.) with only some of the upsides of owning an EV (torque, fuel economy, etc.). Basically, in terms of cost and complexity, they don't make a lot of sense. The cheaper batteries get, the less sense they make. Right now EVs are just really expensive which means not everybody can afford one. However, cheaper, smaller EVs are perfectly feasible and a lot cheaper to make. Once the high end market saturates, smaller, lighter and cheaper EVs are the next obvious growth market. From next to nothing to many millions in volume is going to happen relatively quickly. In such a market, hybrids don't really stand a chance.
Those hundreds of millions of vehicles will be replaced over the course of 2-3 decades. Annual production volume of cars will be mostly EVs by mid next decade; in about 15 years. From then on, another 15 years or so later, most ICE vehicles will have been decommissioned. The value proposition at 2022 cost levels is already pretty great for EVs (with incentives and if you can afford them). Another 3 decades of technical improvements, economies of scale, etc. is going to only improve the economics.
[+] [-] bretpiatt|3 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.best-selling-cars.com/brands/2020-full-year-glob...
[2] https://www.drivingelectric.com/volkswagen/id3/range
[3] https://ycharts.com/companies/VWAGY/enterprise_value
[+] [-] eveningcoffee|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] fulafel|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paganel|3 years ago|reply
They probably won't be all replaced. A minority of people (I'd put it at around 15-20% max) will afford to own an EV (price + place to charge it), while the great majority of us will be left with old combustion-engine cars, Cuba style (or until the law will prohibit them entirely, most probably).
[+] [-] goodpoint|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gadflyinyoureye|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LAC-Tech|3 years ago|reply
It's 1.5L with no turbo that's 10 years old (toyota yaris hatchback). I can floor it, it revs noticably, but it's so underpowered that I have zero chance of losing control because while it sounds like it's working hard, there's barely anything behind it.
I get that EVs are the future. They make more sense. But a small childish part of me will miss the "experience" of hammering under-powered petrol engines.
[+] [-] maest|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gnarcoregrizz|3 years ago|reply
People often complain about electric (particularly motorcycles) not being “loud enough”. However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t noise, or that there’s not anything to be in tune with.
[+] [-] alkonaut|3 years ago|reply
This isn’t a problem yet because these cars are still a few years out from being affordable by those drivers and they are still in good shape.
Remember what happened to those kids in the 90s that drove souped up M3s or Nissan Skylines?
[+] [-] KerrAvon|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomcam|3 years ago|reply
> But a small childish part of me will miss the "experience" of hammering under-powered petrol engines.
Well they are small, light, and pack about 105hp into a modern efficient engine developed by one of the great auto engineering staffs in history. Why not have a little fun with it?
[+] [-] Lio|3 years ago|reply
Many ICE cars already artificially pump in the sound of an older, nosier engine when you put them into sports mode.
My 4 cylinder diesel GTD sounds like a V8 when I floor it (unless I have the windows open of course. In which case I can actually hear the engine and like all diesels it just sounds like a tractor).
You'd just need to add some kind of engine response curve to the EV throttle[1] to simulate hitting the correct rev band/gear change.
1. Even that word is a retro throwback in an EV, as is "driver" when you really think about its etymology.
[+] [-] techdmn|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pwarner|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Pokepokalypse|3 years ago|reply
Really wish we could have gotten a decent GT version in the US. But Toyota is what Toyota is.
[+] [-] Havoc|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Maursault|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] olivermarks|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway123989|3 years ago|reply
EV boom will propel the battery manufacturer to be the next manufacturing Behemoth. It's so much a core of any EV that the industry capital has to be consolidated to be able to produce sufficiently good product and iterate rapidly to match the market demand.
My bet is on CTAL though. Not Volkswagen
[+] [-] dragonsh|3 years ago|reply
So in essence whether US/EU thinks of Green Energy or Fossil fuel sustainable way for the companies to thrive is to include Russia or China.
Given the current geo-political turmoil, may be its a good thing less chances of conflict and willingness to resolve through dialogue.
[1] https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/china-d...
[+] [-] dwardu|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ruskyhacker|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mupuff1234|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dainiusse|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lizardactivist|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crikeyjoe|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] Pokepokalypse|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dukeofdoom|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] theK|3 years ago|reply
There has been ZERO change in the company's corporate culture since Dieselgate and while there is a lot of green washing happening and the enterprise is visibly moving towards electricity powered products this is just a company going where the money is. They are still the same ruthless business as they where a dozen years ago!
[+] [-] Barrera|3 years ago|reply
I didn't see anything in this announcement about where raw materials will be sourced from. It looks like the idea is to support multiple chemistries, but it's far from clear where the materials for all those batteries will come from.