> NMC does have an increased fire and thermal runaway risk
> The USA has put regulations and restrictions in place to make sure certain sources of Cobalt and other minerals are not used in future supplies and designs. Estimates show that there will be a Cobalt shortage by 2028, which has been quickened by the increased use of Cobalt in electric vehicles and battery energy storage designs
> NMC has increased energy density with a cycle life span that is geared towards a reduced number of cycles per year.
> The full charge and discharge cycle of the LFP battery will only decay to 80% of the original after the number of full charge and discharge cycles is greater than 3500 times. … The charge-discharge cycle life of NMC battery is about 1000 times.
Now it's a cobalt shortage. Most of these "shortages" ignore what can happen when prices rise and/or are regulatory shortages rather than actual shortages.
When folks talk about cycle life being limited, the cobalt and other items may be re-usable after in a new battery production. A 6c is an insane charge rate. There may be cases where the cost / benefit works for something like this if they can deliver.
The common hiccup in many battery stories is just the lab theory -> production reality curve. It's one thing to have a solid state battery that charges in seconds on a lab bench doing 1 picowatthour and another to have 1 megawatthour of storage.
NMC batteries are already common in EVs. I’d bet that it’s the most common chemistry by far. Most Teslas have NMC batteries for example, with the shorter range ones more recently moving to LFP.
The trade-offs you list are real, but we already have data showing NMC batteries lasting many miles (1,000 cycles at 250 miles per cycle is a long way) and fire risks of EVs have already been shown to be many times less than ICE vehicles.
If we had EVs that charge 20 to 80% in less than 10 minutes, it could be a real game changer. No more range anxiety. You could use charging stations more like gas stations (when you need to). Might also make it so people don't feel like they need EVs with as much range.
I wonder if that wouldn't allow gas stations to add EV charging stations. The square surface of a gas station is rather limited, which is not an issue when you can fill up in a minute or so. But if it takes you 30 minutes to recharge, the gas station can't serve enough customers to sustain their business. However, if you can get to a full charge in 10 minutes or 80% in 5 (I'm guess the last 20% is slower, etc.), then EV charging can become a viable business for gas stations.
I Supercharge at the grocery store, Target, etc vs a gas station. Certainly, gas stations are options when there is no other business around, like Buc-ee's, but I'd prefer to dwell somewhere decent vs your typical minimum viable gas station. Tesla colocates Supercharger stations at Meijer grocery stores in the Midwest for example, although they also have one at the Chattanooga airport in TN (was hard to find a better location early days there).
If you put fast chargers at places people already go today, you don't need gas stations outside of travel routes.
It also makes me wonder how different the packing efficiency would be- gas station fuel dispensers have short hoses and lots of safety features related to avoiding a spill, and it all takes up space. A fast EV charging station might still look more like a parking lot.
There already exists quite a bit today. I've seen multiple locations where there's 4-8 dispenser heads (chargers) located in the corner of an already normal highway-sized (i.e., ~8 pump) gas station with a medium sized convenience store. Takes up very little space compared ot the gas station pumps.
For places like Bucees (which is basically a small grocery store in size), 20 minute charges are pretty reasonable. By the time you walk to the store, use the bathroom, browse the goods, and stand in line for checkout, you're easily near 20 minutes. If anything, it seems beneficial for a place like Bucees since you're incentivized to spend a bit more time browsing and buying stuff.
Gas stations can't and won't be blanket converted to charging stations. The use models are just not compatible.
EV chargers belong in gigantic parking lots. So shopping centers and office complexes. The great thing about putting chargers in these locations is that they are both often close to highways, are places that people regularly visit, and they have complimentary usage hours (offices are empty when shopping centers are full, and vice versa).
That means 400+ kilowatts- doable, but pretty disruptive for grid operators. Typically that will mean expensive (>.5 MWh) onsite batteries. Gas stations are inherently capital-intensive but making a $200k+ bet may still be a struggle.
I totally agree, but it does only apply to drivers who have chargers at home. If you're parking on the street or in an apartment garage without enough chargers, things are different. That's less range anxiety and more range PITA though.
I honestly doubt it. People with "range anxiety" will keep moving the goal post. They'll complain A) that's still not fast enough, B) there aren't enough public chargers, C) "the grid can't handle it."
What we have right now is good enough for a lot of people. I don't live in the most EV friendly area, but I know a few people who own EVs with no at home charging. And one of my Tesla owning neighbors parks his car in the driveway regularly, only charging occasionally.
If gasoline shortages hit tomorrow, a whole lot of people claiming they couldn't own an EV because of the limitations would figure out how to make it work.
I mean, the problem with charging isn't really the charge times right now. It's the fact that every non-Tesla charger is a piece of shit... and the fact that you need an account on every single different charging company, and some app on your phone that won't work properly.
That's fixed easily - just get a Tesla Supercharger subscription, most should be open to other EVs.
Yes, that costs money (i think around 10€/month here) but you're saving after the first full charge compared to others (Ionity for example) - and that's 'round here in .de, not exactly the country with the lowest charging costs... (ftr, i think the current low-end on Superchargers here in .de either with a Tesla or a subscription is around 0.41€/kWh whereas with aforementioned Ionity charges at least 0,64€/kWh when roaming).
Range anxiety has more to do with density of charging stations.
I feel zero range anxiety in my Tesla when I'm in Austin, Houston, or Dallas. When I drive to somewhere like Galveston that has 0 superchargers, I feel anxiety because there's not one around if I need it.
However I do completely agree that a 10m full charge time could be a game changer for increasing adoption. I don't mind the 15-20m average charge time, but for people like my mom (boomer) who have zero patience, a gas-station speed charging situation would be huge.
Not related to the 6c rating, but later in the article they quote a range estimate of 400+km.
Whenever you see a CLTC range rating, just know its considered the most inflated of range ratings. Its basically 30% inflated from the already 20% inflated EPA range estimate.
The CLTC testing regime is ridiculous. They put the car on a dyno and then have it spin the speedo up to 50kph, 80kph, and 110kph for like 15km indicated on the odo to compute the range.
It's incredibly easy to show excellent range when there is no wind resistance to worry about and you don't have to accelerate the car's actual mass around. It's basically a test of rolling resistance. Not quite a perfectly spherical horse oscillating in a pure harmonic motion, but much closer to that then an actual road test. A good rule of thumb is to cut the CLTC figure in half to estimate actual range, cutting it even more if the car is especially brick like.
I'm not into the latest EV power transfer technology, but that's more than the rating of a neighborhood distribution transformer per car. That's an insane amount of power to have someone casually handling. Would there be additional rules like in a gas station when charging up? Those cables and connectors must be massive as well.
Plenty of stations handle this already. Power distribution in industrial areas is already quite high. Also, the cables and connectors are a lot smaller than you think… most 250kW+ stations use liquid cooled cables so they’re relatively flexible.
With a 95% efficient grid, and a 85% efficient battery, and a 80% efficient car you'd get an overall efficiency of ~65%. Still better than an ICE, I guess, and you can use local solar energy.
Vehicle to load type solutions will make the grid impact of EVs negligible. In fact over time it will help stabilize the grid and add storage for peak solar/wind generation. Imagine having most vehicles plugged in at an office building during the day for example, in a power outage the office building would be able to run off of the vehicles. Nissan in fact has such a setup[1]
I believe that we CAN make EVs work with the grid in a way that's good for both, but I increasingly worry about political fights about EVs and grid stability.
On a recent trip through Croatia the best convenient charger had only 87kw. I would have been pretty sad with a 6C battery when most chargers could mostly do 1C at most.
On a recent trip home from the airport, there were 4 charging stations in range, three of which are 60kW, so I drove to the 150kW station.
Except 3/4 of the chargers there were out of order, and the remaining one was going at 30kW and there was a line.
After that drive, there was only one other station in range so I want there. There were 3 working 60kW chargers and an ICE’d in L2 charger and I was #2 in line.
When I finally got plugged in, it turns out that although the system purported to accept payment by credit card, you had to interact with the touch screen to do so, except the screen wasn’t actually a touch screen. So I downloaded the app, set the car charging, and went to lunch. And decided not to take the EV to the airport again until there are more DC chargers between there and home.
You should report this to Tesla. I've got a tesla and have never had anything close to this. There is no card / screen or app needed. You plug the vehicle in.
I was on a mountain trip and there was a non-tesla charger. It was charging a leaf that had some kind of derate issue so the leaf was going to be there 4 HOURS!! The line of cars then waiting for that leaf to finish charging - those folks were SCREWED. Meanwhile, the tesla chargers were not that full mostly because the charges were pretty quick (250kw charger but I only pulled about 150kw because I hadn't preconditioned fully I think - it was deep winter with snow).
The non-tesla chargers are comical. They either don't work, or charge slowly or have weird payment / billing issues. All of this compounds the issues.
Stations lying about their availability is really the worst. There is no counterpart for gas cars really. In my whole life I have not seen a gas station out of order entirely.
This is just the first round of solid-state batteries. Toyota has a technology of their own. So does TDK. It's going to take a few years for this to settle out, but it's looking pretty good, with all the big players getting close to production.
Does that mean charge rate is completely independent of battery size? I use to think smaller batteries must be able to charge faster. Meaning any battery type could be 6c if it was small enough.
It seems like the chemistry has some interesting trade-offs.
https://www.mitsubishicritical.com/resources/blog/the-runawa...
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/which-better-nickel-manganese...
> NMC does have an increased fire and thermal runaway risk
> The USA has put regulations and restrictions in place to make sure certain sources of Cobalt and other minerals are not used in future supplies and designs. Estimates show that there will be a Cobalt shortage by 2028, which has been quickened by the increased use of Cobalt in electric vehicles and battery energy storage designs
> NMC has increased energy density with a cycle life span that is geared towards a reduced number of cycles per year.
> The full charge and discharge cycle of the LFP battery will only decay to 80% of the original after the number of full charge and discharge cycles is greater than 3500 times. … The charge-discharge cycle life of NMC battery is about 1000 times.
Yes, the lithium shortage was heavily predicted.
Now it's a cobalt shortage. Most of these "shortages" ignore what can happen when prices rise and/or are regulatory shortages rather than actual shortages.
When folks talk about cycle life being limited, the cobalt and other items may be re-usable after in a new battery production. A 6c is an insane charge rate. There may be cases where the cost / benefit works for something like this if they can deliver.
The common hiccup in many battery stories is just the lab theory -> production reality curve. It's one thing to have a solid state battery that charges in seconds on a lab bench doing 1 picowatthour and another to have 1 megawatthour of storage.
NMC batteries are already common in EVs. I’d bet that it’s the most common chemistry by far. Most Teslas have NMC batteries for example, with the shorter range ones more recently moving to LFP.
The trade-offs you list are real, but we already have data showing NMC batteries lasting many miles (1,000 cycles at 250 miles per cycle is a long way) and fire risks of EVs have already been shown to be many times less than ICE vehicles.
A battery rated to charge at 1C will charge in an hour. One rated to charge at 6C will charge in 10 minutes.
If we had EVs that charge 20 to 80% in less than 10 minutes, it could be a real game changer. No more range anxiety. You could use charging stations more like gas stations (when you need to). Might also make it so people don't feel like they need EVs with as much range.
I wonder if that wouldn't allow gas stations to add EV charging stations. The square surface of a gas station is rather limited, which is not an issue when you can fill up in a minute or so. But if it takes you 30 minutes to recharge, the gas station can't serve enough customers to sustain their business. However, if you can get to a full charge in 10 minutes or 80% in 5 (I'm guess the last 20% is slower, etc.), then EV charging can become a viable business for gas stations.
I Supercharge at the grocery store, Target, etc vs a gas station. Certainly, gas stations are options when there is no other business around, like Buc-ee's, but I'd prefer to dwell somewhere decent vs your typical minimum viable gas station. Tesla colocates Supercharger stations at Meijer grocery stores in the Midwest for example, although they also have one at the Chattanooga airport in TN (was hard to find a better location early days there).
If you put fast chargers at places people already go today, you don't need gas stations outside of travel routes.
It also makes me wonder how different the packing efficiency would be- gas station fuel dispensers have short hoses and lots of safety features related to avoiding a spill, and it all takes up space. A fast EV charging station might still look more like a parking lot.
There already exists quite a bit today. I've seen multiple locations where there's 4-8 dispenser heads (chargers) located in the corner of an already normal highway-sized (i.e., ~8 pump) gas station with a medium sized convenience store. Takes up very little space compared ot the gas station pumps.
For places like Bucees (which is basically a small grocery store in size), 20 minute charges are pretty reasonable. By the time you walk to the store, use the bathroom, browse the goods, and stand in line for checkout, you're easily near 20 minutes. If anything, it seems beneficial for a place like Bucees since you're incentivized to spend a bit more time browsing and buying stuff.
Gas stations can't and won't be blanket converted to charging stations. The use models are just not compatible.
EV chargers belong in gigantic parking lots. So shopping centers and office complexes. The great thing about putting chargers in these locations is that they are both often close to highways, are places that people regularly visit, and they have complimentary usage hours (offices are empty when shopping centers are full, and vice versa).
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That means 400+ kilowatts- doable, but pretty disruptive for grid operators. Typically that will mean expensive (>.5 MWh) onsite batteries. Gas stations are inherently capital-intensive but making a $200k+ bet may still be a struggle.
1 reply →
Range anxiety is overblown anyway for most drivers. I have a 220 mile range Nissan Leaf and have only experienced range anxiety once.
I totally agree, but it does only apply to drivers who have chargers at home. If you're parking on the street or in an apartment garage without enough chargers, things are different. That's less range anxiety and more range PITA though.
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I honestly doubt it. People with "range anxiety" will keep moving the goal post. They'll complain A) that's still not fast enough, B) there aren't enough public chargers, C) "the grid can't handle it."
What we have right now is good enough for a lot of people. I don't live in the most EV friendly area, but I know a few people who own EVs with no at home charging. And one of my Tesla owning neighbors parks his car in the driveway regularly, only charging occasionally.
If gasoline shortages hit tomorrow, a whole lot of people claiming they couldn't own an EV because of the limitations would figure out how to make it work.
I mean, the problem with charging isn't really the charge times right now. It's the fact that every non-Tesla charger is a piece of shit... and the fact that you need an account on every single different charging company, and some app on your phone that won't work properly.
> every non-Tesla charger is a piece of shit
That's fixed easily - just get a Tesla Supercharger subscription, most should be open to other EVs.
Yes, that costs money (i think around 10€/month here) but you're saving after the first full charge compared to others (Ionity for example) - and that's 'round here in .de, not exactly the country with the lowest charging costs... (ftr, i think the current low-end on Superchargers here in .de either with a Tesla or a subscription is around 0.41€/kWh whereas with aforementioned Ionity charges at least 0,64€/kWh when roaming).
Range anxiety has more to do with density of charging stations.
I feel zero range anxiety in my Tesla when I'm in Austin, Houston, or Dallas. When I drive to somewhere like Galveston that has 0 superchargers, I feel anxiety because there's not one around if I need it.
However I do completely agree that a 10m full charge time could be a game changer for increasing adoption. I don't mind the 15-20m average charge time, but for people like my mom (boomer) who have zero patience, a gas-station speed charging situation would be huge.
Why the need to point out “boomer”?
I’m not a boomer and I don’t want to sit at a gas station for 20 minutes either.
[dead]
Not related to the 6c rating, but later in the article they quote a range estimate of 400+km.
Whenever you see a CLTC range rating, just know its considered the most inflated of range ratings. Its basically 30% inflated from the already 20% inflated EPA range estimate.
The CLTC testing regime is ridiculous. They put the car on a dyno and then have it spin the speedo up to 50kph, 80kph, and 110kph for like 15km indicated on the odo to compute the range.
It's incredibly easy to show excellent range when there is no wind resistance to worry about and you don't have to accelerate the car's actual mass around. It's basically a test of rolling resistance. Not quite a perfectly spherical horse oscillating in a pure harmonic motion, but much closer to that then an actual road test. A good rule of thumb is to cut the CLTC figure in half to estimate actual range, cutting it even more if the car is especially brick like.
60% (20%->80%) of 85kw battery = 51kW in 10min = 305kW charging power.
An electric charging station with 8 charging booths (=~ gas pump) on a highway: 2.5MW.
A bit of work to prepare the grid...
I'm not into the latest EV power transfer technology, but that's more than the rating of a neighborhood distribution transformer per car. That's an insane amount of power to have someone casually handling. Would there be additional rules like in a gas station when charging up? Those cables and connectors must be massive as well.
A lot (most?) new EVs support 200+kW charging and there are quite a lot of 400kW chargers around already.
Plenty of stations handle this already. Power distribution in industrial areas is already quite high. Also, the cables and connectors are a lot smaller than you think… most 250kW+ stations use liquid cooled cables so they’re relatively flexible.
Charging stations in remote locations use batteries to smooth the load so that they don't need a 2.5MW connection.
With a 95% efficient grid, and a 85% efficient battery, and a 80% efficient car you'd get an overall efficiency of ~65%. Still better than an ICE, I guess, and you can use local solar energy.
It's probably not even too expensive.
1 reply →
Vehicle to load type solutions will make the grid impact of EVs negligible. In fact over time it will help stabilize the grid and add storage for peak solar/wind generation. Imagine having most vehicles plugged in at an office building during the day for example, in a power outage the office building would be able to run off of the vehicles. Nissan in fact has such a setup[1]
1. https://www.nissan-global.com/EN/STORIES/RELEASES/nissan-wor...
12 x 350kW charging stations being installed at the moment, so presumably that work to prepare the grid has already been done.
I believe that we CAN make EVs work with the grid in a way that's good for both, but I increasingly worry about political fights about EVs and grid stability.
On a recent trip through Croatia the best convenient charger had only 87kw. I would have been pretty sad with a 6C battery when most chargers could mostly do 1C at most.
On a recent trip home from the airport, there were 4 charging stations in range, three of which are 60kW, so I drove to the 150kW station.
Except 3/4 of the chargers there were out of order, and the remaining one was going at 30kW and there was a line.
After that drive, there was only one other station in range so I want there. There were 3 working 60kW chargers and an ICE’d in L2 charger and I was #2 in line.
When I finally got plugged in, it turns out that although the system purported to accept payment by credit card, you had to interact with the touch screen to do so, except the screen wasn’t actually a touch screen. So I downloaded the app, set the car charging, and went to lunch. And decided not to take the EV to the airport again until there are more DC chargers between there and home.
All of this was in Oregon.
You should report this to Tesla. I've got a tesla and have never had anything close to this. There is no card / screen or app needed. You plug the vehicle in.
I was on a mountain trip and there was a non-tesla charger. It was charging a leaf that had some kind of derate issue so the leaf was going to be there 4 HOURS!! The line of cars then waiting for that leaf to finish charging - those folks were SCREWED. Meanwhile, the tesla chargers were not that full mostly because the charges were pretty quick (250kw charger but I only pulled about 150kw because I hadn't preconditioned fully I think - it was deep winter with snow).
The non-tesla chargers are comical. They either don't work, or charge slowly or have weird payment / billing issues. All of this compounds the issues.
Stations lying about their availability is really the worst. There is no counterpart for gas cars really. In my whole life I have not seen a gas station out of order entirely.
3 replies →
Chances are when these batteries become commonplace, there will be chargers for it (eventually, in some cases)
The trip was totally fine though. Apart from lunch we only stopped for 1x15min per leg during 7 hours of driving.
This is just the first round of solid-state batteries. Toyota has a technology of their own. So does TDK. It's going to take a few years for this to settle out, but it's looking pretty good, with all the big players getting close to production.
Does that mean charge rate is completely independent of battery size? I use to think smaller batteries must be able to charge faster. Meaning any battery type could be 6c if it was small enough.
no worries, US will ban Chinese battery in no time: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-lawmakers-call-add-china...
Damn, i've wanted to buy CATL stock for years, why is it so hard?