British Startup Nyobolt Demos 4-Minute Battery Charging For EVs (cnn.com) 174
Longtime Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot shares a report from CNN, written by Olesya Dmitracova: Nyobolt, based in Cambridge, has developed a new 35kWh lithium-ion battery that was charged from 10% to 80% in just over four and a half minutes in its first live demonstration last week. [...] Nyobolt's technology builds on a decade of research led by University of Cambridge battery scientist Clare Grey and Cambridge-educated Shivareddy, the company said. Key to its batteries' ability to be charged super-fast without a big impact on their longevity is a design that means they generate less heat. It also makes them safer as overheating can cause a lithium-ion battery to catch fire and explode. In addition, the materials used to make the batteries' anodes allow for a faster transfer of electrons. Nyobolt is currently in talks to sell its batteries to eight electric car manufacturers. At 35 kWh, the battery is much smaller than the 85 kWh in a more typical American electric vehicle (EV). Yet the technology may be used in larger battery packs in the future.
Independent testing of Nyobolt's batteries by what it called a leading global manufacturer found that they can achieve over 4,000 fast-charge cycles, equivalent to 600,000 miles (965,600 kilometers), while retaining more than 80% of capacity, Nyobolt said in its Friday statement. William Kephart, an e-mobility specialist at consultancy P3 Group and a former engineer, said EV batteries of the kind Nyobolt has developed could "theoretically" be charged as fast as the firm is promising, but the challenge was manufacturing such batteries on an industrial scale. A crucial chemical element in Nyobolt's batteries is niobium but, as Kephart pointed out, last year only an estimated 83,000 tons (94,500 tons) was mined worldwide. Compare that with graphite, commonly used as anode material in lithium-ion batteries: an estimated 1.6 million tons (1.8 million tons) was produced in 2023. In addition, there are currently "a lot of unknowns" with the niobium battery technology, he told CNN. "The industry will work it out (but) it's not seen by the industry as a scalable technology just yet," he added.
Independent testing of Nyobolt's batteries by what it called a leading global manufacturer found that they can achieve over 4,000 fast-charge cycles, equivalent to 600,000 miles (965,600 kilometers), while retaining more than 80% of capacity, Nyobolt said in its Friday statement. William Kephart, an e-mobility specialist at consultancy P3 Group and a former engineer, said EV batteries of the kind Nyobolt has developed could "theoretically" be charged as fast as the firm is promising, but the challenge was manufacturing such batteries on an industrial scale. A crucial chemical element in Nyobolt's batteries is niobium but, as Kephart pointed out, last year only an estimated 83,000 tons (94,500 tons) was mined worldwide. Compare that with graphite, commonly used as anode material in lithium-ion batteries: an estimated 1.6 million tons (1.8 million tons) was produced in 2023. In addition, there are currently "a lot of unknowns" with the niobium battery technology, he told CNN. "The industry will work it out (but) it's not seen by the industry as a scalable technology just yet," he added.
Clearly misleading about chemistry (Score:2)
Saying there is a risk of thermal runaway fire is only valid for the old chemistry. It's a bit like comparing Fusion and Fission.
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It's news to me that modern electrochemistry has completely solved the problem of thermal runaway. *Mitigated*, sure, but eliminated? So they don't have to put in measures like thermal fuses in the cells anymore?
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What's got to do with the article?
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Exactly as much as your comment.
From TFS, "It also makes them safer as overheating can cause a lithium-ion battery to catch fire and explode."
Did you not even read TFS?
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Unless you're specific about which technologies you're trying to compare and in what specific aspects, one can't tell if your analogy holds water even metaphorically.
At face value, it doesn't make sense at all :)
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They say, in a generally Lithium context, and they're not specific at all, that batteries are prone to a risk of thermal runaway and fire.
This is obvious not the case for their new chemistry. And is not the case for many newer chemistries and is not the case for all older chemistries as well. Eg: Lead-acid, Ni-Cd, NiMH.
It is only a problem for one class of commercially made chemistries.
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A cursory glance at a couple of reviews on the subject in science direct appears to indicate that the main factors involved in increasing the likelihood of thermal runaways are:
1) the manufacturing process quality,
2) the manner of battery operation
3) the specific type of electrodes used (which I assume is what you mean by the oblique and meaningless word "chemistry"), which, as far as I see, is less important compared to 1 and 2.
Nothing in the mechanisms of operation of the different subtypes appears to hav
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Holly cow! I even gave examples of many other chemistries that don't do that. Mistreatment is normal treatment for any of those others.
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*sigh*....JFC man!
From the article:
It also makes them safer as overheating can cause a lithium-ion battery to catch fire and explode.
That is the sum total of what is said about thermal runaway in the article. It mentions lithium-ion and it doesn't mention any other types.
From you:
They say, in a generally Lithium context, and they're not specific at all, that batteries are prone to a risk of thermal runaway and fire.
They've specified lithium-ion. You've run off and made up a ridiculous argument in your head that TFA doesn't even contradict.
Get back on the meds.
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Literally everything is the opposite of truth:
It's called NMC, not NCM (after nickel manganese cobalt, which is what cathode is made of). It's also newer technology than LFP. NMC is generally a much better choice for things that require light batteries such as mobility applications, because it's significantly lighter for same energy density.
LFP is primarily used because it's a bit cheaper. So until very recently, when Chinese manufacturers started to break through in the West, LFP was primarily used in chea
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It doesn’t really make sense to talk about newer or older technology in this context, though, because the innovations in both are happening pretty rapidly.
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It's probably just best to stick with generalities.
LFP: A bit cheaper, shorter range (lower cell voltage), more stable
NMC/NCA: A bit more expensive, longer range (higher cell voltage), less stable
As for the Nyobolt battery: "meh". This is PR flak that impresses people that don't know much about the topic. Toshiba has had SCiB cells (titanate-based li-ion) that, depending on the format, can do the same trick in as little as one minute - and they've been out for over a decade.
It's not about whether you *can*
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I think it's good to be cautious about claims, and obviously these guys have got a long way to go yet, but I think it's more a PoC than a PR exercise, so a little bit further along. I think the key question is about cost (implied by your mass manufacturability point). I don't know how much Niobium is needed, for a start.
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"A bit" is betweeen 20 and 30% depending on specifics of NMC chemistry. Newer ones are closer to 30%, older 20%. NMC had a rapid development spike in last decade, as several companies sought to further reduce amount of cobalt on anode to cut costs. Which also ended up actually improving capacity because they also adjusted other things.
So quite a lot in actuality.
As for the rest, we'll see. Costs need to be kept lower than they are, but current charging speeds are one of the main obstacles for EV adoption.
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It is not. [slashdot.org]
A reduction of cobalt inherently increases capacity, because it means more (high capacity) nickel. Cobalt's role isn't capacity - it's stability.
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On the first point no, depending on chemistry it's 20-30%. You can in fact find close to this difference in ranges of cars that shift from one to the other while retaining weight, which is probably the most pragmatic approach.
As a point of comparison, when Toyota switched from NiMH to Lithium, difference was between three and four times that. So I suppose you could argue that this is "a bit". But when you compare lithium to lithium, it's a lot.
On second point, yes that is what I said, just without the detai
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This is a conversation about prices. Why are you talking about ranges and weights?
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> It's called NMC, not NCM
It's called both because throughout news articles, industry publications, and even scientific papers, both spellings/letter orders are used.
Thanks for playing though.
=Smidge=
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"I googled it and found liberal arts majors who know nothing about technology misspell it".
Ok. Doesn't make it correct.
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" LFP still costs more than NCM"
what are the reasons? the materials appear to be much less expensive
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It’s not true. LFP is substantially cheaper as a tech than NMC for EV applications — about a third cheaper at pack level.
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Try ~10-15% cheaper [fordauthority.com]. It's really not that much of a cost difference. Part of the reason for such a small difference is the fact that, while the cathode saves you a lot on nickel and cobalt, the lower voltage means that you need more of everything else (lithium, graphite, copper foil, alumium foil, separator membrane, casing, and electrolyte) to store a given kWh.
But it is a cost difference, and also, it's a lot easier to get new capacity for producing battery-grade iron phosphate in bulk online than it is
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Different sources say different amounts; my claim was based on this article: https://www.energy-storage.new... [energy-storage.news]
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That's a bad metric, comparing packs rather than cells. LFP packs are much more common in China, where everything is cheaper, including pack assembly, and where you're generally looking at lower-end products on average (for example, packs with slower charging, less cooling, etc). But in terms of raw cell costs, LFP cells are only 10-15% cheaper in bulk to manufacturers.
EV manufacturers themselves have repeatedly commented on the cost differential (I listen to earnings calls) for bulk cells. It's usually
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We don't compare anything like this in context of using said thing, because we are goal oriented beings. We're not interested in unattainable and useless hypotheticals, we're interested in how useful applications compare.
And in useful applications, the difference is 20-30%.
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Green stuff costs more upfront. Likely always will. Have a look at the monster hurricane Beryl. On July 2.
Brought to you by your subie and other fossil fuel combustion. As EVs grow in market share, cheaper refurb batteries will also grow in availability; market forces will ensure that. And when that industry matures, EVs will likely last 20+ years almost en masse (sans salty winter states) and 30 years won't be unusual.
EVs aren't yet at that longevity, but we absolutely have to stop burning fossil fuel
Re: Clearly misleading about chemistry (Score:5, Interesting)
Brought to you by your subie and other fossil fuel combustion.
The problem you have is he is right. I have a Nissan Leaf in my car collection and I got it (already degrading badly) at 60k miles and now it's degraded a bit more down to about 70 miles per charge (40KW model started at @130/charge). It will never make it to 236k. I hope someone makes a replacement battery, as the Leaf is a very common EV with high numbers in the field, but the only options now are $12k to Nissan for a new battery, or $8k to some refurb shop to swap some of worst battery packs out and get it back to about 110m/charge or so. Yes, there are newer EVs with better BMS and cooling, but what he's saying isn't wrong.
EVs will likely last 20+ years almost en masse (sans salty winter states) and 30 years won't be unusual.
That's speculation and hope in a goopy mix. We will see, but it's not looking good. [arstechnica.com]
we absolutely have to stop burning fossil fuels basically yesterday.
We actually don't and we actually aren't.
Personal cars are *terrible* energy use wise, no matter the fuel.
Sounds like you are all abort the collectivist mass-transportation train, so to speak. Sounds like people's personal freedom to choose the transport that works best for them annoys you. You mad about people driving, bro? Get over it.
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And you can't see beyond your immediate selfish needs it would seem...but not really unusual for a troll who didn't even respond to the arguments
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The problem you have is he is right. I have a Nissan Leaf in my car collection
No, the problem you have is that you have an edge case vehicle not at all representative of modern EVs (or even one or two generation old EVs) and you continue to perpetuate the myth that batteries degrade horribly. They don't. That was a very early EV problem, Leafs are known for this, and are known for being an edge case.
In the mean time there are plenty of Teslas in the wild with with +300k miles on them and are still at greater than 80% of the original mileage, which according to the current stats on av
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Sounds like you are all abort the collectivist mass-transportation train, so to speak
yes, collectivist mass transit is awesome. I love it. I also love my human powered hippie machine (bicycle).
At this point feel free to insert fanfic about my life and others in my general area about how we can't possibly be living day to day. I always enjoy those.
Sounds like people's personal freedom to choose the transport that works best for them annoys you
Aaah whatever happened to "the freedom to swing your fists ends at
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sorry, too late for that... the 1C max temperature increase already been reached, people should have reacted sooner, but trump, stupid social networks, wars and "lets move to china as is cheaper" broke most attempts to really limit that.
So it will take several decades to reduce the hurricanes... but it can help so they don't get even stronger!
Re: Clearly misleading about chemistry (Score:5, Informative)
"We need to remember that our current grid can't handle our current electrical needs. In 20 years, maybe our grid can. I'm talking about the US grid"
The USA is more than one grid.
The CAISO demand has been nearly flat since 1998, usually peaking around 41 - 45GW and getting to 50+ GW only 3 times - Jul 24, 2006; Sep 1, 2017 & Sep 6, 2022
https://www.caiso.com/document... [caiso.com]
In that time, the population has grown from 32 million to almost 40 million & the numbers of EVs from essentially zero to 1.4 million
https://www.macrotrends.net/gl... [macrotrends.net]
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Great fuel economy from an old Subaru? I call shens. Unless you've modified it and you're a hypermiler or something.
Re: Clearly misleading about chemistry (Score:5, Informative)
I'm making some assumptions here so bear with me.
Oil changes, every 5000 miles. Assuming $75 (high for 2002, low for 2024) = 47 x $75 = $3540
Gas, assuming 25 mpg and $4 per gallon (high for 2002, low for 2024) = $37,760
So you spent over $40,000 on fossil fuels over your 236k miles. Assuming a Tesla battery replacement is about $15,000 you could replace the battery almost three times. I do understand that these comparisons do not take into account the cost of recharging the EV batteries.
Other maintenance items like transmission oils, belts, exhaust pipes, plugs, and muffler bearings are also not needed in an EV. With the added reduction in pollution production, EVs are a viable replacement for your exceptional Subaru.
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EV vs Gas Cost per Mile Numbers (Score:2)
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So at that point, at best, about $100 annual savings, effectively a wash.
And the annualized share of a battery replacement, which pushes the wash point down much closer to needing home charging.
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I'm an EV proponent but I have a serious question: Do you actually change oil every 5000 miles? I haven't done that since the 90s. My last petrol car from the mid 2000s required an oil change every 21000 miles (35000km). Some modern ones go even longer than that.
So you spent over $40,000 on fossil fuels over your 236k miles. Assuming a Tesla battery replacement is about $15,000 you could replace the battery almost three times.
Teslas don't charge for free, you recognised that but it is not something you can reasonably ignore in your calculation because it is not insignificant. There are some oddities though, for example my neighbor is on a power plan where he gets *charge
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your mileage may literally vary.
I literally LOL'ed! Thanks.
Re: Clearly misleading about chemistry (Score:5, Informative)
The article *literally says* the expectation is 80% SoH after 4000 cycles and even helpfully translates this into range for you: 600,000 miles. In case you’re as hard of thinking as you appear, 600k is nearly three times the 236k on your Subaru. No EV besides a first gen Leaf would need a battery pack replaced once, let alone twice, to achieve 236k, you muppet, even with standard NMC chemistries.
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Quite a few first gen Leafs got to over 250k when used as taxis in the UK. What tends to do them no good is leaving them at 100% charge for long periods. If you cycle them a lot (taxis were doing one AC charge overnight and sometimes a rapid charge during the day) they hold up pretty well.
Of course modern chemistries are a lot more robust.
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Yes, I know the first gen Leafs often held up pretty well. My phrasing was possibly misdirecting: I was implying that the only model I could think of that had a chemistry & BMS that was sufficiently poor that it was ever conceivable that some individual cars of that model might need a battery pack replaced before 236k miles was a Leaf. With everything else, whether a first gen Zoe or a latest gen Ioniq 5 N, I'd expect the failure rates to be in effect zero, ie just a few oddball failures out of hundreds
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Never mind that they also demanded 100,000 data points against their single data point, and they couldn't bother to include their own maintenance costs while bitching about completely fabricated FUD as you pointed out. It's a typical FUD monster - using a personal anecdote as if it's some massive disproof of the statistical trends that have held for years, because the FUD monster doesn't understand statistical distribution.
How much did they pay for the 100,000 mi timing belt and water pump change? Twice?
H
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*Coughs in head gasket failures, cracked ring lands and spun bearings*
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now have a 100000 EVs use this constantly
Why would this have to be used "constantly"?
How often does an EV need to be charged in four minutes?
I do 95% of my charging overnight while I sleep.
If four minute charging was available, I might use it once or twice in a year.
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Sure, level 2 charging is plenty for anyone using his car for commuting and chores.
This is more like fast dc charging, which nobody needs at their house. It's for a road trip. Fast DC charging makes it a lot more feasible to take a long highway trip. Four minute charging would make it pretty much just as convenient as gas.
Four minute charging would also make cars with smaller batteries more practical for taking a highway trip. Say you had a 120 mile range battery. You'd have to stop to "gas up" every ho
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Stop with the myths about EV batteries. Replacing them is an exception like replacing a blown ICE engine.
With regards to the grid, its being improved e
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True. Lab-demo to reliable product is not assured at all and can take anywhere from 10 to 100 years, sometimes longer. But lab-demo means it is worthwhile looking into it some more. Of course, these days many people are intent on having a product in 5 years or so, but that is not how reality works and how progress is made. That is just for assholes wanting to get rich fast.
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I still get great gas mileage and it's better than most budget EVs. I wouldn't have had to replace the battery pack at least once if not twice to get the same mileage.
Literally no EVs need the battery changed within that range. Many real world tests of EVs from 2 or 3 generations ago are still going strong at mileage higher than that. Sure there's the odd failure here and there, but then I had to have my entire ICE rebuilt on my previous car and it didn't make it to 236k. On average real world experience from early Teslas show that you still get between 81-87% of the nameplate capacity at 10 years and >200k miles. There's some great articles already up about people wi
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So you want other people to work with 100k data points, but you're good to refute them with your singular data point that talks about maintenance spend on an EV, but completely ignores the maintenance spend on your singular data point?
How many oil changes have you done on that Subaru in that 22 year lifetime? How many major services on the engine and transmission, such as head gasket replacement, timing chain / belt, etc.? How many sets of brake pads and calipers? How many thousands of dollars of fuel ov
Please check my maths (Score:2)
But like uh that's at least a constant 680a @480v dc isn't it? All things considered like nonlinear charge curves, 100% efficiency
Or did I miss a critical thing here. I do that.
We don't really have EVs charging with that current do we :D?
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Re:Please check my maths (Score:5, Funny)
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The Cylons do not stretch!
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It works out to approximately 124 Libraries of Congress or 630,000 all-beef hotdogs.
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I'm blown away, that's sick!
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yeah it was eye opening when you read the 'cables' need their own cooling for the current blasting through them
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They do not really. But the problem is they get heavy without it. If you, say, push 800V at 1200A (bout 1 MW), that needs something like 2 x 500mm^2, but it will get to something like 90C and weighs something like 10kg per meter without insulation. To make that usable for a normal person, you need to get both weight and temperature down, and cooling the cable is an easy solution for that.
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Similar to how I think fast charging has too many drawbacks (heat, power loss, sudden load on current grid could easily happen, etc), I am curious how much copper is going to be needed for windings, cables, etc, above current usage. If there's good supply, I then think of how much more copper may cost. Then the follow-on thefts just for that copper. A couple to several dozen pounds of copper in electric motor(s), at $4-$5 per pound currently, isn't terrible. What if it goes up drastically. Then seeing
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The ones Tesla talks about for their Semi donâ(TM)t even exist yet
They do. Liquid cooled cables have already been demonstrated and are currently being trialed. They aren't available in public infrastructure or as a product, but they objectively do exist.
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But like uh that's at least a constant 680a @480v dc isn't it? All things considered like nonlinear charge curves, 100% efficiency :D?
Or did I miss a critical thing here. I do that.
We don't really have EVs charging with that current do we
Just checked the video and it notes (at 70s) [youtube.com] "initial in-vehicle testing ... using 350kW, 800V DC fast charger ..."
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Following up. From the video description / transcript:
Initial in-vehicle testing this month using powerful 350 kilowatt (800 volt) direct current fast chargers has already confirmed that the Nyobolt electric vehicle’s 50 ampere-hour 35 kilowatt-hour battery can be charged from 10 percent to 80 percent in four minutes and 37 seconds. A full charge allows the prototype to achieve a range of 155 World Harmonized Light Vehicle Test Procedure miles, which is twice the speed of most of the fastest charging vehicles available today. Notably, the first four minutes of charging at a constant current of 500 amperes provide 120 miles of range.
Re:Please check my maths (Score:5, Insightful)
The car is a PoC.
The tech is focused on allowing 500A (not merely 437.5A) at 800V DC to be pumped through it *without* it being destructive to the battery, by making the battery with a new chemistry. The key question is going to be: can it be scaled at reasonable cost? Because Niobium is about 50 bucks a kilo, so far as I can tell, so it depends how much of it is needed (plus how expensive the rest of the pack manufacture is).
I think it’s best to see this as just one of the many new technologies being built out to improve battery performance. Who knows which will succeed and which won’t, but some of them certainly have succeeded so far, and it’s led to a steady stream of new gen batteries with lower costs, faster charging, longer range, greater density, etc.
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Problem is that the video states that this car they made "is aimed at validating..." which means that technology is not validated yet.
This is not a "problem". It means this is an extended lab demo and that is a normal stage on the way to a product. A reliable and cost-effective product is not assured though and may take anywhere from 10-100 years. But having an extended lab demo is a lot better than many other new battery technologies being reported on.
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That's a massive problem, because a lot of battery technologies we got to work in a lab didn't work in real life.
If what you're saying was true, we'd be two decades into widescale EV adoption.
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Who exactly is going to be lifting the cables is the first question that comes to my mind.
The shore power cables on the boat were rated for 400 amps at 480 v. So it would take two of them. You'll need full service attendants at the stations again.
Note, the boat had three cables for 1200 amps total.
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Apparently, EV chargers get around that using active cooling for the cables. More complex and less efficient but much easier to handle.
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Actually not bad on the efficiency side. Insulated cables are really bad at radiating heat. For short lengths, the losses are pretty small though. Hence cooling does not actually need to get a lot of heat out of the cable, but no cooling and cooling, say, on the level of a PC watercooler is a massive difference.
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The plan is to make the cables a lot lighter and cool them. As the cables do not actually produce a lot of heat (they are just bad at radiating it), that should work well enough.
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Even if you were correct about having to use ridiculously heavy cables, there's still ways to do that without requiring service attendants. Like a cable suspension system that unloads most of the weight when an operator is moving it, for example.
You might think of it as "the same thing millions of garage doors do, in able to allow people to lift them" because they can get pretty heavy too - even more heavy than an EV charger cable!
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800V DC is a new standard in modern EVs, but charging is usually capped at around 400 or so amps at that voltage.
At least with our CCS combo europlugs that have those massively thick twin wires under the revolver cylinder style AC charging pistol.
Here's the relevant regulation:
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/lega... [europa.eu]
You want to look at Annex 3 for details (close to the bottom, just search the document for "Annex III"), which specifies power output. Category 2 (DC) level 2 is specced at power over 350kW. These don'
Re: Please check my maths (Score:2)
No, because that would be an insane amount of power. The cables I could find for this weigh about 15kg per meter, so a hefty workout if you want to plug this in.
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I have a personal estimate for 1MW cables at 10kg/m just for the copper and running at 90C. For regular temperatures and with insulation probably something like 40-50kg/m. But once you cool the cables you can bring that down dramatically.
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Do you also require "a hefty workout" to open a garage door, or does the spring system make that several-hundred-pound lift a bit easier?
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Two things:
1) You won't charge these at 480V. Existing >250kW fast chargers already support 1000V and many cars coming to the market have 800V battery packs.
2) We don't have EVs charging at that current *yet*. In fact many chargers are already capable of 400A + on existing standards and cables, while emerging standards are coming out as well. A liquid cooled charger has already been demonstrated putting out 990kW at just shy of 1000A for fast charging a truck.
4 Minutes? (Score:3)
4 minutes is not nearly enough to have a pee and get a coffee.
15 minutes is about optimum for a road trip break while charging. My Tesla is a bit slower than that for 10-80%, but not by a lot. 4 minutes would involve having to plug in, then go back to the car and move it before you're done with whatever leg stretching you have to do.
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Re:4 Minutes? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:4 Minutes? (Score:5, Insightful)
You forgot to add that you are also doing this in the context of mysterious, nonspecific haulage job which you do on the weekends.
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Too short for me. I gotta take 10-minute long pee breaks, in sitting position of course, while I ponder how I'm ever going to make it on that next long, grueling 1.5 to 2-hour stretch of barren highway to the next charge, trying to avoid all those mad max crazies doing 75 in a 65, practically running me off the road. And after that I need to peruse the aisles looking at all the magical delights abound trying to pick just the right combination of sweets and salties to get me through those next 150-200 mil
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"change my catheter bag, take some more amphetamine & caffeine pills,"
clearly you don't belong here, space diapers make it so no stop is necessary.
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Re:4 Minutes? (Score:5, Interesting)
move it before you're done with whatever leg stretching you have to do.
I know that's what we'd all like to think. "Man, this 15 to 20 to THIRTY minute break sure is great."
But the reality is that it's only marginally acceptable for the first stop of your trip. And MAYBE the 3rd or 4th. The other times, it's tedious and annoying and extends the arrival time by an hour for every, say, 600 miles of a trip.
I own a Tesla. I love it. I own several ICE cars. I loved them too, but that love is quickly fading. The point is, I absolutely have nothing against electric vehicles.
But I routinely take my Tesla on long road trips (600-800 miles per day) to go hike mountains and shit. The same trips I took with my ICE cars in years past. The difference in those trips is VERY noticeable. I could fly along for hours in my ICE cars, stop in for a *quick* 3-4 minute gas up, walk in for a 5-minute shopping trip for sodas and snacks and be back on my way. Every time. Without fail.
With the Tesla...well, it varies. First, I need to research if I can find 250 kW charger or not. Then, assuming I can, I need to make sure the battery is preconditioned. Yes, the software tries to do that for you, but I'm telling you...having taking a few winter trips in this thing, that software fails. It's either starting the precondition too late or, perhaps, it just can't precondition its way out of 30F ambient temps. But even when it's 60F or 70F out, I've still arrived at the charger, plugged in and waited for 20 minutes while the same software that JUST did the preconditioning for me based on my arrival time scolds me and reminds me that I can get quicker charging times if I precondition the batteries before arrival. Yes...I did that. No, wait, YOU did that. I told you where I was going, you picked a station for me to charge at, you knew when I was going to get here and you managed the precondition process yourself! So WHY is my charge going to take 25 minutes now!? I'm not even charging to 80%!?
Ok, sorry, got a little caught up there...but that's the point of this post. It's NOT just a "boy, this is great to stretch my legs for a few minutes" type issue. Sometimes it's that, maybe. But MOST of the time, it's "g'dammit why am I wasting my time sitting here watching Netflix waiting for the charge to finish when I REALLY wanna go hike some mountains"!?
So, yes, if it were possible to charge in 4 minutes, I'll take it. All day long, every time. I would NEVER try to argue "but that's not long enough to go pee". That's pure silliness, IMO. Comments like that will make eyes roll from anyone even considering a switch to electric. It's got shill written all over it.
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But the reality is that it's only marginally acceptable for the first stop of your trip. And MAYBE the 3rd or 4th. The other times, it's tedious and annoying and extends the arrival time by an hour for every, say, 600 miles of a trip.
Good. It's preferable than extending your arrival time to infinity after dying on the way due to driver fatigue. If you have a petrol car do yourself a favour and take a 15-20min break every 2 hours. Not doing so literally impairs you the same way as drink driving does. If you won't think about others you can potentially kill, at least be selfish and think about your own survival.
By the way a modern EV already is capable of reducing these breaks in road trips below the minimum recommended time. It doesn't t
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You're peeing and getting coffee _every_ time you refill/recharge? You might want to see a doctor about that! Besides, 15 minutes isn't long enough to watch a feature film, so 2 hour charging is good for everyone! /sarcasm
The goal is BEV/PHEV to get refueling parity with ICE/hybrids. BEVs are like vehicle ownership on hard mode - unless you're a homeowner with vehicle parking, the logistics of recharging are very different than ICE/hybrid.
If you want everyone to wait 15 minutes for your pee breaks, you can
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Just because it *can* charge in 4 minutes, doesn't mean it has to. Also, this battery pack is half the size of what's in a Model 3 and while the charge rate is not linear, you could still expect a 85kW pack to take more time than the stated 4 minutes.
You do get irony points though - usually the goalpost moving in this subject is always about charging being too slow. A post lamenting charging too fast is a breath of fresh air.
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4 minutes to get to 80%. Your 15 minutes may get it to 90%.
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Not scaleable. (Score:2)
More batteries, damn you, more batteries! (Score:2)
So, they will need... batteries in every station to buffer the peaks.
Unobtanium (Score:2)
Insane power (Score:2)
For one car.
Good luck.
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The fine article did say they used a rare 350 kW charger for this demonstration so it looks like the math checks out.
What I find interesting is that they claimed a recharge from 10% to 80% but then kind of bury the point that this was with a battery that's much smaller than most BEVs would have. In other words it is likely most any existing BEV could get the same amount of miles with a 4 to 5 minute charge from one of these DC fast chargers. For most drivers that is what matters, keeping the stop for a re
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The fine article did say they used a rare 350 kW charger for this demonstration so it looks like the math checks out.
350kW chargers are only rare in the USA. In Europe they are rapidly becoming the norm at service stations.
but then kind of bury the point that this was with a battery that's much smaller than most BEVs would have
They literally dedicate a paragraph to it in TFA, and literally mention it in the first paragraph of TFS. It's not a point buried as much as it is laying on the ground as a tripping hazard.
Could really be a game-changer... (Score:2)
...if it pays off. /. since 2021 or so, so as cool as this sounds, nobody's holding their breath.
I think we have a 'breakthrough new battery tech" story posted about once a month on