Re: Race to build a better battery
- From: Evgenij Barsukov <evgenij_b_no_spam@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2006 13:01:34 -0500
Presently they do contain expensive Co in LiCoO2 cathode, but change
All in all it appears to be possible to make 200 miles
battery that would be about 500 kg and 180 l sized with
1 hr recharge to 80%. Price and charge practicability
remains out of this discussion.
Well, what the hell - using again high-rate type cell
whole-sale price, 3$/cell and 5.4Wh/cell, we get the price
of 1.8Wh/$ and 32*4kWh / 1.8 Wh/$ = 71111$. That of cause
are bare cells alone without power management, charger, safety,
assembly etc. In well running mass production of notebooks
all of mentioned overhead usually adds about 3/4 of the pack
price. So welcome to your 284 000$ 200 miles car battery.
It is possible, but is it needed or desirable is a different
issue.
Regards,
Evgenij
Evgenij,
Thank you for very clear explanation of Li-ion batteries
in automobiles. My understanding is that an electric
car with a range of 200 miles is physically possible.
Many families have two cars, and one of those certainly
could have a range of 100-200 miles.
What makes Li-ion batteries so expensive? They do not
seem to contain precious metals (Platinum, Palladium,
Rhodium, etc.).
to less expensive Mn and Ni already went into mainstream.
However, main contributors of the price are
- water-free process (all components are humidity sensitive)
- nano-technology separator is about 1/3 of the cell price
- materials and electrolyte need to by high-purity, as impurities
are not acceptable in this highly reactive system
Could a well run mass-production
operation engineered to produce large capacity batteries
get the cost down 100 fold?
Actually production is already very high volume. Price have decreased 6 times since introduction of Li-ion in the 1990, while energy/cell increased twice, so 12 times decrease for Wh/$. It has not much space left for decreasing as most cell makers are already loosing money.
Hope of significantly reducing prices is associated with LiFePO4
materials, but their energy density is lower and comes close to
NiMH batteries, which at their side are still improving energy/weight
ratio, while energy/volume is already comparable to Li-ion.
So for large sized cells NiMH might put up a serious fight vs Li-ion.
No wonder that NiMH was chosen for hybrids.
Think in terms of 5 millionOne thing - according to my math above, you are underestimating the
battery packs of 200 kg each, having a capacity of 200 kWh.
could the manufacturing cost get down to $5,000?
weight about 5-3 times (remember my calcs for 128kWh pack has produced
almost a 1000 kg battery, or 500 kg using low-power cells).
To make 200 kWh battery cost 5000$ would literally means 100 times price reduction. If we expect last 10 years price reduction rate of ~10 times to remain in place, it will take another 100 years before we reach
your target price :-)
To brighten things up a little, I personally do not believe that
we need a 200 mile electric car to make most impact on average
fuel economy.
Most city/suburb dwellers need a car for going work/home/shopping with 20-30 miles capability. Battery for this will cost 10 times less than my estimate above, e.g. 28k$ (or only 7k$ pure Wh cell price assuming no price for power management, manufacturing etc). This is still a lot, but getting it down to reasonable 5 k$ is much more realistic.
Regards,
Evgenij
.
- References:
- Re: Race to build a better battery
- From: Ed Ferris
- Re: Race to build a better battery
- From: Evgenij Barsukov
- Re: Race to build a better battery
- From: Ernie
- Re: Race to build a better battery
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