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Developing Battery Replacement Infrastructure For Electric Cars
Posted by
Soulskill
on Wed Apr 22, 2009 09:50 AM
from the not-free-of-charge dept.
from the not-free-of-charge dept.
FathomIT sends in a NY Times profile of Shai Agassi, owner of a company named Better Place, who is working to build the infrastructure to support large numbers of small-scale charging spots for electric cars, as well as fast, automated battery swap stations.
"The robot — a squat platform that moves on four dinner-plate-size white wheels — scuttled back and forth along a 20-foot-long set of metal rails. At one end of the rails, a huge blue battery, the size of a large suitcase, sat suspended in a frame. As we watched, the robot zipped up to the battery, made a nearly inaudible click, and pulled the battery downward. It ferried the battery over to the other end of the rails, dropped it off, picked up a new battery, hissed back over to the frame and, in one deft movement, snapped the new battery in the place of the old one. The total time: 45 seconds."
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Why bother? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Why bother? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Why bother? (Score:5, Funny)
iCar? I suppose it will have some sort of circular gizmo to control which direction you want to go.
It may also have a shuffle feature that takes you to random destinations.
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Re:Why bother? (Score:5, Funny)
Or, if Google gets in the act "I'm feeling lucky" (only drives you to certain bars).
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Re:Why bother? (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, there are battery designs where the container can be reused an "unlimited" number of times. One such design is the vanadium redox battery [wikipedia.org]. Unfortunately, they do not begin to compare to lithium ion batteries in terms of energy density. However, if this tech or similar tech could be improved to the point where you could build an auto-sized vehicle that could get 150-200 miles per charge, then it's not hard to imagine a world where gas stations have been replaced by "electolyte swap facilities" where the discharged battery is "recharged" quickly by draining and replacing the electrolyte solutions. The same car could also be recharged by mains power at night.
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Re:Why bother? (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, vanadium redox *can't* be improved to that point. Take the molecular weight of the relevant ions and the reaction potential, and that will give you how many electrons at how many volts a kilogram of the relevant chemicals can produce, which is just a units conversion away from joules or watt-hours per kg. Add even a modest allowance for stuff to dissolve those ions in and acidify the solution, and it doesn't stand up to LiIon for capacity.
However, capacity per kg isn't the only metric of interest -- cost and ease of refueling / recharging are both quite relevant. The lack of aging problems with the electrolyte is also useful. I suspect vanadium redox will never see widespread use outside of stationary load-leveling applications, but there's no guarantee of that.
The other major tech to watch, of course, is EEStor's capacitors. They claim energy densities similar to current LiIon tech with a number of improved capabilities, but last I heard still hadn't (publicly) demonstrated a working prototype.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not sure if you want to be swapping electrolytes at a 'charging station'. Ever gone to a gas station and they had the hose leak? I know gas stations where that has been the case for at least 6 months, nobody is fixing it. Then there are the gas stations where the ground has to be sanitized after one of those large containers has sprung a leak, a preventable problem to begin with and regulations have required the container to be inside some type of enclosure for the last few years so you can imagine how
Re:Why bother? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Interesting... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Interesting... (Score:5, Informative)
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Not reported != not happening (Score:4, Interesting)
That's interesting, since a co-worker bought her Prius in 2002 and got a surprise battery replacement in 2006. (She hadn't noticed any problems, and isn't the type to ask questions; she took the car in for routine maintenance, they told her they'd replaced the battery and weren't charging her anything for it, she said "Cool!")
I don't know how prevalent this is, but for my N=1, I'm seeing a 100% replacement rate at four years.
Of course, the weasel words "due to wear and tear" let them get away with anything.
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Re:Not reported != not happening (Score:5, Interesting)
Depending on the environment, the Lead-acid battery can need regular replacement. The NiMH battery should not need replacing unless it was defective.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Not reported != not happening (Score:4, Informative)
I am familiar with this recall because my wife has a 2007 Prius, and I would not buy a Prius until the bugs had been worked out of the system. This was one of the two noteworthy bugs.
This problem was contamination or corrosion or something on the positive terminal resulting in increased resistance. The engine computer notes the increased internal resistance of the pack, says WTF, and sets a code. There is much debate as to the proper fix, with some dealerships swapping out the battery pack entirely, and some expending considerable labor hours completely disassembling the pack, cleaning the terminal, and reinstalling. In some countries they all swapped, in some they all rebuilt, probably depending entirely on the cost of local labor vs the cost of factory new.
Also, I would take a wild guess that Japan told them it would take 15 minutes labor each, then the dealers found out it took 3 hours, and the end result is the first few people got the reassemble procedure and PO'd techs and the last few people all got the swap procedure. Perhaps if you make an appointment they'll assume you've got the time to do the reassemble procedure, vs if you're just there for an oil change you'll get the swap procedure.
There is quite a bit of info on this on Google. But don't confuse it with the recall around 03, where the engine computer shut down the engine too quickly, so it would stall on the highway occasionally. That was a simple firmware flash.
Other than that, a remarkably recall free vehicle, at least compared to domestic models.
Also wear and tear weasel words do not apply until after 100K or 10 years whichever comes first.
Finally since there is no market for the batteries, there is no 3rd party market for the batteries, thus the ridiculous $3K cost is the usual dealer and OEM markup. Just like you can pay $25 for an oil drain plug at the dealer, or $1 at autozone. I am sure that in a decade you'll be able to buy a prius battery from batteries plus for perhaps $300. If I recall correctly, its just a huge array of NiMH D cells, not anything exotic at all.
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Re:Interesting... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Interesting... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Will this work with the Apple iCar? (Score:3, Funny)
In future news, Apple announces the release of their new, sleek iCar! With touch-screen capabilities, smooth acceleration, and lots of eye candy. Better Place, however has been stymied by the fact that the iCar's batter is sealed and hidden inside of the frame of the car, and cannot be swapped out. Millions of iCar fans can only hope to travel 250 miles and struggle to find their lost iCar charging adapters, while Microsoft and PC-maker made Windows-Roadsters take advantage of the Better Place swapping program.
gCar and kCar enthusists, while having the first electric cars out there can be seen at the side of the road, can be seen hand-wiring in their own D-cell battery replacements every 100 feet, soldering gun in hand.
Re:Will this work with the Apple iCar? (Score:4, Funny)
In future news, Apple announces the release of their new, sleek iCar! With touch-screen capabilities, smooth acceleration, and lots of eye candy. Better Place, however has been stymied by the fact that the iCar's batter is sealed and hidden inside of the frame of the car, and cannot be swapped out. Millions of iCar fans can only hope to travel 250 miles and struggle to find their lost iCar charging adapters, while Microsoft and PC-maker made Windows-Roadsters take advantage of the Better Place swapping program.
gCar and kCar enthusists, while having the first electric cars out there can be seen at the side of the road, can be seen hand-wiring in their own D-cell battery replacements every 100 feet, soldering gun in hand.
The only problem with the Better Place swapping program is that you have to hunt all over the place to find them, answer a stupifying amount of questions to gain access and then accept a GRA (Genuine Roadsters Advantage) tracking device/kill switch to make sure that you don't violate the TOS. The gCar and kCar include a Battery Manager that finds the nearest Power Stop for you, guides you there and charges the car for you when you arrive.
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Standard values not applicable here. (Score:5, Insightful)
When you buy a litre of petrol, it should take you a set distance. When you fill up on LPG, Hydrogen or whatever, the same is the case. There is one important factor in the battery swapping idea that is fundamentally different though. Batteries degrade and can at times do so in strange ways.
Say, for example, that someone has let a spare battery sit idle for some months, charges it up at home and, knowing it's rubbish now, goes off to the nearest fuel stop to change it. Automated process charges it, dispenses it. You get stuck on the freeway after only a few kilometres.
If you stick to your own battery, then you can tell the condition of the battery over time. No dramas. Even with thorough checking though, battery changing services have a lot of questions in regards to reliability and liabilities if it is to work. Who picks up the tab for a dead battery? The owner or the 'fuel' vendor?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Who picks up the tab for a dead battery? The owner or the 'fuel' vendor?
In Agassi's plan, the "vendor" owns the batteries. Whenever you "fill up" your car by swapping them out, you're basically renting the batteries for the duration.
Re:Standard values not applicable here. (Score:5, Informative)
Plus, the battery packs are not the same as ordinary batteries. There are brains built into them to monitor health, balance cells, control charging and discharging, and generally prevent degradation in the first place.
time will tell if your concern is borne out in practice, but I personally am not too concerned.
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Re:Standard values not applicable here. (Score:4, Informative)
Better Place Business Model [betterplace.com]
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
When you buy a litre of petrol, it should take you a set distance.
On what planet? It depends on how fast and well you drive, how powerful your engine is and what condition it is in...
What you mean, is that a litre of standard petrol contains a known amount of usable chemical energy, whereas the yield of a fully charged battery will decline over time.
battery changing services have a lot of questions in regards to reliability and liabilities if it is to work.
You never actually own the battery - it belongs to the power company - you just pay a deposit when you pick up your first battery. Regular wear and tear on the battery is included in the fuel costs - mistreat it and you lose y
Re:Standard values not applicable here. (Score:5, Informative)
Does anyone know if battery testing technology is sufficiently advanced for this to be feasible?
Shouldn't be too hard. Apply a voltmeter and then draw a heavy current on a separate circuit over a set time. That should a reasonable indication of the basic quality of the battery. Same way you test a car battery now. Apply voltmeter, crank motor. If the voltage drops fast, the battery is toast.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If you paid by amps (or whatever the relevant unit of electricity is) instead of miles, it would further encourage you to drive in an efficient manner. Sounds like a win-win.
Of course, the car is going to need an accurate way to gauge how far the battery can go, and service stations would probably
Re:Plenty of problems. (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine if the automobile industry was just starting today, or perhaps was always electric cars but we had to switch away from it (say, discharging batteries were found to cause cancer), just imagine what all the nay-sayers would be saying if someone proposed a system where the average moron could just go to any corner service station and start pumping extremely flammable/explosive liquid that has percent-levels of known highly potent carcinogens (note surface water needs to be in the part-per-billion of such compounds to be considered safe). Imagine the liability of a bunch of grease monkeys managing storage tanks with 1000s of gallons of this toxic stuff.
Puts things in context. Anyone can come up with good reasons for not doing anything. The key is selecting the best of an array of imperfect choices.
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Propane Tank Model (Score:4, Insightful)
This is similar to the Propane Tank business model.
The BIG problem I see here is that with a propane tank, you always get the same amount of propane in return. I see potential for old batteries to float through the system, getting less charges.
Now that I think about it, I bet this will be like buying "premium" gas.
Premium = Batteries 2yrs old, etc. /rambling
Standardize battery pack (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Standardize battery pack (Score:4, Interesting)
Manual? Are you serious? What are we, weightlifters?
A lot of battery pack swapping proponents have no clue how big and heavy EV batteries are. Let me be specific: picture an internal combustion engine. Now double its dimensions and mass. Give it high voltage connections that must be firm to prevent arcing, and keep it securely in place so it doesn't shift around. Now go manually swap that.
And no, a battery is not a battery is not a battery. Go try to shove a laptop battery pack in your flashlight or a AA in your car's engine or a lead-acid battery in your laptop. Different vehicle size, shape, weight distribution, price, performance, and technology profiles have different requirements of size, shape, chemistry, wiring, fuses, and series/parallel cell arrangements in an EV's battery pack.
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free battery replacement (Score:4, Informative)
The next item is battery theft. You might laugh and say they're too bulky, but battery theft has become a serious problem here. The race between locks and thieves was altered by the presence of a widely adopted new design, so thieves just started pulling batteries out of electric bikes and taking those instead (about a third of the bike's cost to replace). Now, there's a new cage add-on thing that you can buy to enclose your battery in a protective shell. Crazy. Point is, I've been riding around on the same battery for a while, it's time to change, and I wish there was a replacement depot I could dump my old battery on and get a fresh new one for free.
Re:free battery replacement (Score:4, Insightful)
This sounds like a great way to use the hell out of my batteries, and then swap them for a brand new set.
Since you're only renting the batteries short-term in this plan, there's no financial reason for you to abuse them and then swap them out.
The next item is battery theft.
Who would a thief sell them to? The vendor who owns them? I can't imagine the electric company will pay top dollar to buy back its own property, as opposed to just siccing the cops on the thief dumb enough to try.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You have to have leased batteries for this to make sense. But then leasing costs for the battery would end up being more than Gas and remind people how uneconomical BEVs really are.
That's the plan: to lease the batteries. They contend that they can sell you power cheaper per mile driven than you can buy gasoline, and they're probably right. Among other things, consider that they can charge the batteries at night when electric demand (and costs) are lower, and potentially sell back excess during peak times. The charging plant could very likely be a profit center even if they never rented a single battery to end users.
Swap/recharge my car (Score:5, Insightful)
I was wondering when this would come up. I know way (way) back in the day when they were first almost seriously talking about electric cars, they seemed to indicate swapping the batteries.
A battery swap makes a LOT more sense than recharging in the vehicle. Waiting for an hour or more for batteries to charge would really ruin a road trip, if you had to do it every 300 miles or so. Every 4 hours of drive time on wide open interstates would become 5 hours or more.
Think of a cross country drive. 2500 miles between two places I've driven between a few times takes 41.6 hours, when average 60mph. I could usually average 60 by only stopping to buy fuel and go to the bathroom (same stop). Ya, even those stops really ruin your average speed. That would make it a 52 hour drive instead. I'd rather be at my destination for those 10 hours, rather than still driving. :)
But, there would be other considerations. Does the battery swap location have sufficient batteries to handle peak demand? Like, on a holiday weekend, when everyone's driving electric cars, and they're all going out of town, a swap/recharge facility may be swamped, and not be able to have charged batteries fast enough.
I worked in a warehouse for a while. The battery room not only recharged, but rebuilt the batteries as needed. All the heavy equipment in the warehouse used the same batteries (more or less). We had moments, particularly towards the end of the day, where equipment was being run hard, and they had simply run out of charged batteries. It was simple enough to move people over to doing things by hand if they couldn't use the heavy equipment. In the case of a car, towards the end of a busy day, customers aren't going to be satisfied with "Sorry, we're out of charged batteries. They'll be ready in 2 hours, but we close in an hour. Come back tomorrow, or plug in for the next few hours and charge it yourself."
They will also have attrition to contend with. As batteries fail, they will be pulled out of service. This is a good thing as far as the car owners are concerned. We have the same situation with propane tanks right now. They have a life, where they must be reinspected before use again. There are plenty of places that take your empty tank, and hand you a full one. I've been BBQing for many years with propane, and never had to buy a "new" tank. I have been refused a full tank because they didn't have any though. It's not pleasant to hear that I can't BBQ when friends are already coming over, because I can't get a full tank. Luckily, I've always been able to find another location with available full tanks. It gets tight on holiday weekends though.
RTG's, baby... (Score:3, Interesting)
Someone needs to shoot this battery idea in the head.
RTG is the only logical source of power for a tractor-trailer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator [wikipedia.org]
You need A LOT more power per gram than batteries will EVER allow for if you intend to start replacing infrastructure.
People KNOW this. Why, then are they pushing us towards failure? What's in it for them??
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:RTG's, baby... (Score:5, Insightful)
You need to give a bit more justification than 'it can be done' if you want people to take you seriously. RTGs have a terrible power to weight ratio. The best one in the article you linked to is around 0.06W/Kg just for the power source. Let's assume that this is a terrible design and we can improve on it by an order of magnitude, giving 0.6W/Kg. Now let's assume that the car and passengers weigh nothing.
The formula for kinetic energy is E = 1/2 mv^s. By dividing both sides by a time factor, we get P = 1/2 ma^2. Divide through by mass, and we get P/m = 1/2 a^2. Substituting in the value from the RTG output (Power / mass) we get 0.6 = 1/2 a ^2, or a = sqrt(1.2), approximately 1.1 metres per second per second.
Remember that this is for a massless vehicle with an RTG with an order of magnitude higher power output than any that anyone has built so far. It would take a little over 26 seconds to reach 60mph. Even a fairly rubbish battery powered car can reach 60mph in under 10 seconds - this hypothetical RTG-powered car would take 13 seconds to go from 0-30mph, which is a dangerously low acceleration for most urban roads. And, note, that this is assuming that the (massless) engine is also 100% efficient. In the real world, you would be lucky to get a tenth of this acceleration, so you'd take more than 2 minutes to go from 0-30mph. Not really a very practical solution.
RTGs are great for applications where they do not have to move (or, as with spacecraft, where the motive force comes from elsewhere), or which have a constant power drain. They are incredibly badly suited to automotive applications. Betavoltaics, as I said, are potentially a viable solution, but RTGs are not. Just because something can give 40W for a number of years does not make it a good replacement for something that gives several kW for a few hours. Sure, the energy output may be the same or greater, but the power output is much lower.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
RTG is the only logical source of power for a tractor-trailer.
Very true, if you want a tractor-trailer with a maximum speed of a few feet per minute but runs decades without refueling.
RTGs produce very little power for a given size/mass. Their advantage is that they can keep doing it for a long time.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Great Plan! (Score:3, Insightful)
Just remember to get the automakers to buy in and actually *use* standardized batteries and mountings.
Good luck with that. I don't see many advantages to Toyota adapting their designs to whatever Ford chooses.
I don't see car makers actually choosing even very limited (2-3) types of battery/mounting combinations. There are more variables in vehicle design than that, and it's unlikely that you can accomodate the same configuration in a next-gen Prius that you do in an electric Escape that you do in an electric Civic.
Of course, we could all drive cars very similar in size, layout, and rear-end shape. Sure. that's the solution, make us all drive the same car. I'm sure whatever they have in mind will let me drag home a few bales of organic mulch, or a new big-screen TV, or that new sofa I've been just creaming over at the store.
Nope, not likely. Nice idea, and if it serves 50% of vehicles out there, it might be worth it. Just don't think it will be the one-size-fits-all fix. I wish him the best of luck, and hope he can make it work for half of us.
Why not avoid batteries altogether? (Score:4, Informative)
1. batteries in general are a poor solution because of several things:
a. poor energy density compared to chemical energy
b. battery production is inherently filthy, and quite bad for the environment on its own
c. charge times are awful. people like the model of gas. several hours to deplete the energy, but you can replenish it at a filling station in under 5 minutes, assuming you don't have a semi or something.
d. even the best batteries are quite heavy, and thus make the car less efficient.
happily, there is a very good solution. ultracapacitors, sometimes known as ultracaps. they hold more than batteries, weigh an order of magnitude less (sometimes 2 orders) and can be charged, quite literally, in seconds. (not with plugs at your house... you'd have to go to a filling station that can generate a LOT of current to recharge this fast. you could still trickle charge at home in the evening, but for a quick fillup, you'd need a power station). ultracaps are not dirtier to make than LiON batteries. ultracaps have good staying power, last virtually forever (no practical limit on charge cycles) and hold much more than a battery of similar size, and orders of magnitude more than a battery of the same weight.
Re:Why not avoid batteries altogether? (Score:5, Informative)
happily, there is a very good solution. ultracapacitors, sometimes known as ultracaps. they hold more than batteries, weigh an order of magnitude less (sometimes 2 orders)
That's pure, unadulterated BS!
The best ultracaps have less than 10% of the energy density of a rechargeable battery: 30Wh/kg as compared to 300Wh/kg for LiIon and 370Wh/kg for zinc-air. To put things in perspective, the gasoline energy density is 12500Wh/kg, 30 times better than the best commercially available batteries...
Ultracapacitors cannot even begin to compete with batteries as the primary energy storage, their role is limited to storing regenerated energy (e.g. from braking).
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Re:Why not avoid batteries altogether? (Score:4, Informative)
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zinc-air (Score:3, Insightful)
That's where the future lies, not H2 and not LiIon. "Recharging" involves removing the spent anode and inserting a fresh array of zinc rods and can be done fast. The salt can then be processed off-site to retrieve the zinc metal, usually by electrolysis (that's the true recharging step).
It's a proven technology,already powering mass transit and postal systems in US, Europe and Singapore, it's cheap, has good power density while still having room for improvement, what's not to like about it?
Re:it was my idea (Score:5, Informative)
No indeed. It's called a staging-post. It's where a stagecoach would stop, and rather than waiting until the horses were fed and watered and well rested, they'd simply drop off the horses there and take fresh horses for the next stage of their journey.
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Re:it was my idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, the "long tail" argument -- that old zombie of electric vehicles. No matter how many times you knock it down, it comes coming at you.
Power plants are more efficient than internal combustion engines. While the engine itself can *peak* at a fairly high effiency number (percentage-wise, as much as the upper 30s for gasoline and mid 40s for diesel), that's not what you get in practice, as that's only for a narrow torque/rpm range. In practice, you also have parasitic and braking losses. Total well-to-wheel consumption is about 14% for gasoline and 17% for diesel. Engines are slowly getting more efficient, but at the same time fuel production is getting *less* efficient as we have to move more to syncrude and deepwater (think tar sands and outer continental shelf). Power plants, however, are only getting more efficient, and fairly rapidly. Well-to-AC power for an average coal plant in the US is 32%, and natural gas is 42%. Those numbers are higher in Europe. Next gen coal plants are over 40% and next-gen natural gas 60%-ish. Coal, the dirty fuel, is only half our generation. After that is natural gas (a very low carbon fuel per unit energy) and nuclear (a near zero carbon fuel). After that is hydro and then wind (both near zero carbon). There's also a smattering of other generation methods such as diesel, solar, geothermal, and biomass that combined make up a couple percent of our grid.
AC power transmission in the US averages 92.8% efficiency. Your typical EV charger is 92-93% efficient (rapid chargers, closer to 90%). Li-ion batteries are generally 96% (rapid charge) to 99% (trickle charge) efficient. Electric drivetrains average 85-90% efficient (they can peak at over 95% on a really good one). And regen braking is pretty much standard. So your net well-to-wheels efficiency is very high, and your carbon is low. And while petroleum gets dirtier, the grid gets cleaner. Last year, for example, over 2/5ths of our new power that went online was wind, and most of the rest was natural gas.
But wait, it gets better. Most EV charging is done at night, on a timer to take advantage of low off-peak rates. Coal power plants take a while to ramp down. In the process, you can sometimes get what's called "spinning standby" -- power generation capacity that's literally wasted because there's nothing to consume it. This mainly occurs in the evenings. Charging off of it is literally free of environmental consequences. Furthermore, most power plants run more efficiently at higher capacity. Evening out the day/night peaks makes the grid as a whole more efficient.
Perhaps having a DOE study conducted at PNL [pnl.gov] explain it to you will help. Here's a graph [daughtersoftiresias.org] comparing the efficiencies of different drivetrain options, and here's one for emissions [daughtersoftiresias.org].
Can this zombie of a notion please accept its headshot and stay down?
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Re:Future benefits (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Given the last two posts, I feel that in order to fit in I should say something about a particular organization for African-Americans of unorthodox sexual orientation. Either that or I could share an anecdotal story about a strange experience in a men's lavatory culminating in very strange items being put into a freezer.