Samsung Unveils New Electric Car Batteries For Up To 430 Miles of Range (electrek.co) 90
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: At the Frankfurt Motor Show (IAA Cars 2017) this week, Samsung's battery division, Samsung SDI, showcases a new "Multifunctional battery pack" solution to enable more range in electric vehicles as the Korean company tries to carve itself a bigger share of the growing automotive battery market. Most established automakers, like Nissan with the LEAF or even GM with the more recent Chevy Bolt EV, have been using large prismatic cells to build their electric vehicle battery packs. Tesla pioneered a different approach using thousands of individual smaller cylindrical li-ion battery cells in each pack. Earlier this year, Samsung unveiled its own '2170' battery cell to compete with Tesla/Panasonic. Now they are claiming that they can reach an impressive energy density by using those cells in new modules: "'Multifunctional battery pack' of Samsung SDI attracted the most attention. Its users can change the number of modules as they want as if they place books on a shelf. For example, if 20 modules are installed in a premium car, it can go 600 to 700 kilometers. If 10 to 12 modules are mounted on a regular sedan, it can run up to 300 kilometers. This pack is expected to catch the eyes of automakers, because they can design a car whose mileage may vary depending on how many modules of a single pack are installed."
Multifunctional? (Score:4, Funny)
So it also works as a road flare in case of emergency?
Re:so...? (Score:5, Funny)
Will it take AA batteries?
This car does. [nbc.com]
Fine as long as. (Score:3, Funny)
Relevant questions (Score:4, Insightful)
Compared to existing batteries:
1) How much does it cost?
2) How fast can you charge it?
3) Are any affordable cars going to support it?
Re:Relevant questions (Score:5, Interesting)
Beat me to the punch ;)
Gravimetric energy density is one of the least important aspects these days. Back in the lead-acid days, improving it it was a huge deal because lead-acids made cars impractically heavy for a reasonable range. Those days are gone. As noted in this post: [slashdot.org]
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Re:Relevant questions (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, it's really not. Note the above with the Model 3, for example: adding ~41% more range from batteries increases the vehicle mass by only 7%, which in turn translates to a loss of range at highway speeds of 2-3% 41% vs. 2-3%; it's not that meaningful. It'd be more like 5% for city driving, but then again, nobody cares about EV range in city driving - EVs go much further in city driving regardless, and who drives 310+ miles in-town-only per day?
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Actually, it's really not. Note the above with the Model 3, for example: adding ~41% more range from batteries increases the vehicle mass by only 7%, which in turn translates to a loss of range at highway speeds of 2-3% 41% vs. 2-3%; it's not that meaningful. It'd be more like 5% for city driving, but then again, nobody cares about EV range in city driving - EVs go much further in city driving regardless, and who drives 310+ miles in-town-only per day?
Sure, if you limit your scope to those who don't care about range, then range doesn't matter. But if you are trying to increase range, vehicle weight does matter.
Re:Relevant questions (Score:4, Insightful)
When you are trying to squeeze out as much range as possible, curb weight reduction is very important.
It's less important than you think. Mass matters little on long trips, unless you have poor throttle control. And EVs have regen, so if you drive correctly, it matters less than you think it does in the city, too.
How it compares with ICE weight is meaningless.
False. Totally false. How it compares with ICE weight is totally relevant at all times. Making a car more massive means you need more tire to pull the same number of lateral Gs, which means more rolling resistance which means poorer economy. As such, EVs tend to have narrow tires which compromise handling. Even without exotic materials, you can build a sports car under 3,000 pounds with a gasoline engine.
People commonly described the original Prius as handling like a 1970s land yacht. It wallowed, it slid sideways going over cracked pavement in a turn, and it didn't really want to turn. Making a vehicle heavy and compromising its traction is always a down side. The up sides might well outweigh that, but a lighter vehicle is always going to be more fun to drive. It's going to remain relevant as long as we are permitted to drive ourselves.
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When you are trying to squeeze out as much range as possible, curb weight reduction is very important.
It's less important than you think. Mass matters little on long trips, unless you have poor throttle control. And EVs have regen, so if you drive correctly, it matters less than you think it does in the city, too.
How it compares with ICE weight is meaningless.
False. Totally false. How it compares with ICE weight is totally relevant at all times. Making a car more massive means you need more tire to pull the same number of lateral Gs, which means more rolling resistance which means poorer economy. As such, EVs tend to have narrow tires which compromise handling. Even without exotic materials, you can build a sports car under 3,000 pounds with a gasoline engine.
People commonly described the original Prius as handling like a 1970s land yacht. It wallowed, it slid sideways going over cracked pavement in a turn, and it didn't really want to turn. Making a vehicle heavy and compromising its traction is always a down side. The up sides might well outweigh that, but a lighter vehicle is always going to be more fun to drive. It's going to remain relevant as long as we are permitted to drive ourselves.
A Tesla weighs what a Tesla weighs. Its range is a function of its capacity, curb weight, and aerodynamics. It doesn't matter what ICE cars weigh. You might compare to other EVs instead. They could be heavier, or lighter than an ICE, but that doesn't matter because the Tesla weighs what it must. ICE car weights are irrelevant. If ICE cars got heavier tomorrow, Tesla would perform no differently.
And weight does matter for range, no matter how much you want to ignore it. You'll notice that the most fuel
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A Tesla weighs what a Tesla weighs. Its range is a function of its capacity, curb weight, and aerodynamics. It doesn't matter what ICE cars weigh. You might compare to other EVs instead.
You might, but in reality, people are going to compare to all the available options which might fit their needs, not just the most similar ones.
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Volumetric efficiency, and battery cost is king. Charge/discharge rates and battery life (capacity loss rate) are secondary but important
An EV being somewhat heavier isn't a significant hinderance (within bounds of course, a 5000kg sedan isn't going to go over well) since the energy normally lost to accelerate a heavier car comes back via regenerative braking.
However, fitting enough battery capacity for good range at a reasonable cost is what it comes down to. If the batteries were a few 100's of kh heavi
Re:Relevant questions (Score:5, Insightful)
From what I can tell it's nothing revolutionary chemistry-wise. They adopted the round cell form-factor similar to what Panasonic/Tesla use, but the real innovation here is that the battery is modular. You can relatively easily add and remove capacity, meaning you can build identical cars on your production line and then fit whatever size battery the customer wants at the last minute. Customers can also pay for upgrades later, or even rent some extra capacity.
So the battery itself isn't that interesting, it's the BMS (battery management system) and mechanical construction that is quite clever.
The figure that matters... (Score:5, Informative)
.... is not Wh/kg. It's $/kWh. That is by far the number one aspect for increasing adoption. Tesla for example gets a constant stream of companies pushing new battery technologies, wanting to talk about every aspect except for that one: cost per unit energy. They're always asked to cut straight to the chase.
Of course, we're not even given Wh/kg here in this article.
After cost per kilowatt hour, the number two factor is longevity. Because it correlates directly with cost. Generally it means you have to have shallow cycles (low DoD) if the battery isn't durable, meaning more batteries. In particular, longevity in varying temperature and charging condtions is important. In short, longevity works out to just another aspect of cost.
Barring some unusual problems, cell safety is usually #3 or #4. Not higher, because failures can, and already are, controlled. See for example fire tests of Tesla powerwalls [electrek.co]. A combination of physical isolation, active quench (circulating coolant), passive quench (coolant / structure thermal mass, expansion space, venting), and a wide range of other mechanisms mean that you really have to pull out all the stops to burn the packs; there have been Teslas which burned to the ground [electrek.co], down to smouldering wrecks, still without managing to ignite the pack.
(Honestly, it amazes me that it's considered acceptable to store massive amounts of gasoline just in one big open tank - no isolation / compartmentalization / quench systems. Just dump it in and there you go! Not surprising that there's ~200k car fires in the US alone every year)
The other big competitor with safety is power density - the mix of ion mobility (how fast it's physically possible to charge / discharge the cell) and efficiency (how much heat you have to remove from the cells to do so). The heat removal rate is also affected by the heat tolerance. Charge speeds are a more significant limiting factor to the number of purchases than range, and the power output of the packs and high torque they allow are one of the big selling points of EVs.
Heck, Wh/kg (gravimetric energy density) isn't even the most important energy density measure. Practical EVs are not limited by their weights - heck, the Model 3 SR slots right into the middle of its class (compact midrange sedans in their various configurations, and the LR, while on the heavier side, still has some heavier ICE competitors). Their ranges are limited by how many cells you can physically fit into the pack without making the skateboard unreasonably bulky. For example, the Model 3 skateboard, at current cell volumetric energy densities, simply can't scale to higher than 75kWh. Doesn't matter what the gravimetric energy density is - if you want more, you need to improve the volumetric energy density.
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2 days? I think you need to look up Superchargers ;)
The short of it: your car recharges while you're eating lunch or whatnot. The Model 3 LR for example recharges at 340 mph when it's low on charge and goes 310 miles per charge.
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The Model 3 LR for example recharges at 340 mph
It's a car, not an airplane. ;-p
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I know it's not something ICE drivers are used to, but it's a very meaningful way to measure charge times: how many of miles of range you get per hour spent charging.
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Actually, I do like C++ ;) But discussing charge rates in mph or kph is extremely common among EV owners. Because it's literally what you're getting: X miles/kilometers range per hour of charging.
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Also, half your miles on each trip would be at wall socket power rates (let's say you pay $0.12/kWh on both ends?) and the rest at supercharger rates ($0.20/kWh). A Model 3 LR consumes about 240 Wh/mi on the freeway (EPA 5-cycle rating (or equivalent thereof), same as your diesel). Each round trip thus costs you $46.
I don't know what mileage you get in your diesel. Let's guess 35mpg? And your diesel costs, what, $2,40/gal? So you pay $82 per round trip. Cost difference, $36 per round trip. For what penalty
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Re: The figure that matters... (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly; when you run the numbers it's easy to see the profit margin on them. They buy power at industrial rates (huge bulk), which in the US average something like $0.06-0.07/kWh, and sell it back for $0.20/kWh. The demand charges can be significant at low/uneven utilization rates, but that's not what we're talking about here, we're talking about "when electric vehicles become more popular". The station is much cheaper than a gas station to build; a typical 8-stall supercharging station today costs around $250k on average, and we're nowhere near mass production now. Punch in the numbers at say 30% average utilization and you find that it's easy to show significant profitability.
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Wait, you can bill your refueling time? So shouldn't you want longer breaks then?
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Last I heard several years ago, at the end of the year North Carolina will send you a tax bill for $1000 is you have an electric car. That cost is assumed to be built into the purchase of the diesel fuel.
Somebody has to pay for laying all that asphalt and concrete.
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there's enough data from car rental companies of teslas that have run between 100K and 300K miles and show very little battery performance downgrade. That covers the mileage/cycles part. If there are concerns about downgrade with age, we may have to wait a bit for that. But if you get 300K for your car in 10 years and have to replace the battery, are you going to complain? its not that much different from a ICE wear and tear at that point. Just a thought...
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That's simply not true. Here [google.com] is a survey of data gathered from Tesla owners. Click charts. Typical first-year degradation rates are about 4%, but then it slows down significantly from there. Average year-5 degradation appears to be a total of around 6-7% versus a new pack. A gas or diesel car's efficiency (and thus range) will have generally dropped well more than that by year 5.
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Utter idiotic bullshit. My Golf TDI has now been on the road for 17 years, and gets exactly the same fuel mileage that it got brand new: about 45 mpg real-world. You're living in the 1930s or 1940s if you think annual tune-ups are a thing.
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It's also worth pointing out that "6-7% loss" on a 30mpg car is 2mpg. An amount that the average person wouldn't even notice.
It's funny when people put old cars on the dynamometer how much power they turn out to have lost. There's so much that can rob a car of power as it ages. Just to pick a random example: my high mileage Insight at one point was having trouble starting, and they took out one of its catalyst packs, and discovered that it was literally clogged to the brim with carbon buildup. To the point
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Yes, it does. Backpressure like the above reduces your vehicle's efficiency. The more the backpressure, the more work that has to be done by the engine to clear the exhaust (which is experienced as greater engine braking). That's the very reason why vehicle mileages dropped when the government started mandating cats.
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A gas or diesel car's efficiency (and thus range) will have generally dropped well more than that by year 5.
Bollocks. My 1998 A8 Quattro gets the same kind of mileage it did when it was new, which admittedly ain't great. Regular oil changes and a superior design (to other ICEs) to start with have kept its engine in practically like-new condition. Compression is still well to the high end of the range, the cylinders are smooth like glass as one would expect (they are glass, it's got an Alusil block) and it passes an emissions test with absolutely flying colors.
Now granted, we've also got a 2000 astro that's had bo
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Not surprising that there's ~200k car fires in the US alone every year
I think it's past time we call a carbecue a carbecue. ;)
Re:The figure that matters... (Score:5, Interesting)
Obviously both Wh/kg and$/kWh are important. Until the Wh/kg and Wh/m^3 figures for a new tech get good enough to make it physically practical, $/kWh is irrelevant; but beyond that with most new tech there's usually an adoption curve.
After you've done all the lab based tinkering you can to make new tech affordable, there comes a time when the only way to make it cheaper is to make it in quantity. But unless you are lucky (or persuasive) enough to be swimming in unlimited investor dollars, chances are you don't have the money to set up an operation on that scale.
That's why you target niche applications and early tech adopters. Elon Musk was smart about this: he didn't set out to build the electric equivalent of the Model T; he started out with an exotic roadster and then a near-as-exotic high end luxury sedan.
But then Henry Ford didn't start out with the Model T either; his first car was the Model A. The original 1903 Model A cost $800, at the time when the median US income was $543. He sold about 10,000 of them. The Model T was introduced in 1908 for $825, but five years later he managed to drop that price down to $440; sales increased twentyfold. By 1925 he'd managed to drop the price to $260 (the equivalent of less than $3700 in 2017 dollars) at a time median income had risen to $750. Not surprising he sold nearly two million of the things that year.
That's the power of the adoption curve. Early adopters bootstrap economies of scale you need to make something cheap enough for everyone.
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And easily modifiable to the user's needs too. That was possibly the coolest thing about the Model T, which is why the basic design lasted for twenty years, well after it had become hopelessly archaic. It was easy to hack. For the modern equivalent of three grand you got a basic, functional vehicle that could be turned into a cargo van, farm truck, or ski slope rope tow by anyone who could wield a hacksaw.
Better range (Score:2)
Than my hyundai. 80 more miles (per full tank(
Of course the real concern I'd have is what charging stations are available outside of my garage. you know, in case I want to drive more than 430 miles... As far as I know all brands of gasoline work in my car, and I don't have to use a GPS and the Internet to find a compatible gas station.
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Teslas can charge on almost anything. They can charge on superchargers, CHAdeMOs, J1772s, RV sockets, dryer outlets, range outlets, wall sockets, etc. The only thing they can't charge off of are CCS Combos - but those are generally paired with CHAdeMOs.
The nav system in Teslas knows where all of the superchargers are. It'd be nice if it also knew where other chargers are, but they're generally not needed.
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The irony being that CCS combo has pretty much won the charging battle at this point. Only Tesla and Nissan use something else, meanwhile BMW, VW, Audi, Chevrolet, Mercedes, and Ford all use CCS combo for DC charging.
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The irony being that CCS combo has pretty much won the charging battle at this point. Only Tesla and Nissan use something else, meanwhile BMW, VW, Audi, Chevrolet, Mercedes, and Ford all use CCS combo for DC charging.
My Volt (Chevy) uses J1772. The CCS combo chargers are mostly used in what I call the "barely legal" EVs. Basically hybrids with bigger battery packs so they can be called EVs and sold in California to cover a legal requirement which means they don't have to give $$ to Telsa to sell cars in California. I don't tend to see them in the more popular EVs that are designed for actual use/impact (Volts and EVs with 300+ mi range).
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The future looks likely to be a CCS variant, however. That said, Tesla is a member of CharIN, so will probably be adopting the next standard.
I'm so glad that Tesla is in CharIN, by the way. Why is it that the only company who seems to know how to engineer a proper connector is Tesla? Always sleek, easy, minimal form factors with extreme power - never giant, awkward, limited-power frankenconnectors like others seem to design.
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I hate to burst your bubble, but there is no single "Tesla connector". In the US Tesla uses a connector designed entirely by themselves. In Europe they're mandated to have a Type 2 port - but instead of awkwardly tacking on two DC pins like CCS Combo does, they managed to work it into the already-mandated Type 2 port.
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My Volt (Chevy) uses J1772.
Yes - that's because everyone other than Tesla uses J1772 for AC charging. CCS combo is J1772 + some extra pins to enable DC charging too. The only Chevy that currently supports DC charging is the Bolt - which uses CCS combo.
As I said above - every EV maker other than Tesla and Nissan that supports DC charging uses CCS combo.
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Yes, everyone except Tesla (top EV seller in the US) and Nissan (top EV seller globally).
And, of course, Honda (Fit EV).
And let's not forget Citroën (C-Zero, Berlingo)
Kia too, of course (Soul EV).
Then there's Mazda (Demio EV).
And Mitsubishi (MiEV, Outlander PHEV - the latter being the top selling PHEV in Europe)
Peugeots use it too (iOn, Partner - although they're just rebadges)
Subaru? You betcha (Stella)
Toyota? Sure (eQ, new RAV4)
But you know, apart from all of them, nobody uses CHAdeMO.
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Simply not true. First off, in many places (including the US), the "majority of public chargers" are superchargers. Not that most of the DC charger icons on Plugshare will be superchargers, but simply because there's so many stalls per supercharger site.
Let's zoom out to a far view of the US and start picking random DC icons on PlugShare, shall we? Here's my results:
Dennis Dillon Nissan: EV Plug (J1772), CHAdeMO DCFC
St. George Supercharger: 8 Tesla Superchargers
Woodstock Supercharger: 8 Tesla Superchargers
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When I randomly pull up DC charging stations in continental Europe on plugshare, that's not what I find; I find mostly A) superchargers, and B) dual-plug CHAdeMO/CCS. There's the occasional pure-CHAdeMO and the occasional pure-CCS, but I'm not finding many of them in comparison to the others.
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Re: Better range (Score:4, Insightful)
Technically inferior.... lol. A form factor half the size of a CHAdeMO but delivering three times the current, "technically inferior"? Yeah, try again.
CHAdeMO is a pefect example of how not to design a connector. CCS combo is okay, but still a Frankenconnector, needlessly large and awkward, and with too little current support.** Tesla has by far the best connectors. Even in Europe where they were mandated to include a Type 2, they modified the Type 2 so that it can handle both low power AC and extreme power DC charging in the exact same connector. Rather than CCS which decided that you needed to add a big two pronged "growth" onto your connector to do so.
** - There are a very small number of high power CCS stations, ~150kW or so. But they do this by increasing the voltage, not the current. Which is great if you have a mythical EV with a 1000V battery pack. Even the nominal ~50kWh stations often play the voltage game; that 50kW is often assuming that you're charging at 500V, but most packs have a well lower voltage than that.
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I covered both CCS and CHAdeMO in my above post. How did you not notice that?
I hear you can... (Score:2)
..reach around the same vertical range letting ISS crew see your burnt corpse when it explodes.
For its next development, (Score:2)
Samsung will add a 'feature' to the battery pack control electronics that spies on the car's occupants and reports back to headquartes in Seoul.
Electric Pinto (Score:4, Funny)
Electric Pinto -- enough said.
Good Start! (Score:1)
Ferret
It is not enough for me. (Score:2)
2170 cells look great but are also unavailable (Score:2)
Until they start selling 2170 cells to the general public, we'll have to keep using 18650 cells in our projects.
430 mile range is not the big thing (Score:2)
The key metric is mean time between spontaneous combustion.
One Time Use (Score:2)
Awesome! Now they can create a car that never needs charging ever! Just install about 10,000 of those bad boys and you get about 300,000 km per change! Seeing as the car probably won't last much longer than that anyway, you can just use your car, never charge it, and then just toss it away! Perfect!
How customizable is this? (Score:1)
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Sure, if you like installing objects that weigh hundreds of kilograms each.