It's the Batteries, Stupid!

[JRP3]

Except most people aren't willing to pay upfront for that type of life when they won't keep the vehicle for that long and the vehicle itself won't last that long. You are also assuming the only way to increase pack life is to make it larger, which is not the case. It is possible that a future chemistry is extremely cheap, and energy dense enough, but with poor cycle life, that it would make sense to build the pack you suggest, but I doubt it.

[Doug_G]

Design News - Why Is EV Battery Development So Hard?

Most of the battery experts that I've interviewed over the years say it's unfair to compare the rapid development of electronics to that of batteries. Electronics have been using the same material (silicon) for more than a half-century. To reduce the feature sizes of their chips, semiconductor manufacturers keep improving their chemical deposition processes and photolithography techniques. Their efforts are essentially a triumph of manufacturing.

In contrast, battery makers are constantly searching for new materials, combining them, testing them, and then waiting for the results. It's a physical sciences challenge. And it's limited by nature. "You're always working with something new, like a cobalt oxide one day and a manganese oxide the next," Brodd said. "You can do anything you want to those materials, but you aren't ever going to get any more energy out of them than the thermodynamics allow."

[Mile Erlic]

I'd think every traveler would use fast charging if there was any available. Even with fast charging, it's still 45-60 minutes. Or did you mean that just a small percentage of vehicles at any given time are travelers?

About once or twice a year I do a 1000 mile round trip, usually to a son's sports tournament. I'd be happy to charge twice on the way there and twice on the way back at a McDonald's or Starbucks. Other than this, my daily average driving is about 50 mile per day, easily covered by regular charging.

What I'm trying to figure out is what are all those corner lots going to be used for that are currently gas stations?

[jerry33]

What I'm trying to figure out is what are all those corner lots going to be used for that are currently gas stations?

Because they will be very cheap, I'm sure there will be lots of uses.

[Norbert]

What I'm trying to figure out is what are all those corner lots going to be used for that are currently gas stations?

Electric helicopter heliports, as they will be very inexpensive to operate once we have good batteries and lots of solar.

[Norbert]

Not only would density need to improve dramatically costs would also have to drop dramatically to make it practical to put 1000+ miles of range into a vehicle, something that no one actually needs, so I doubt it will ever happen.

Yes we would also (and perhaps first) want them to come down in price by at least a factor of 4, so that's another decade or more (unless there is a huge invention).

Is anyone really going to invest in a massive, expensive high output recharging infrastructure that will be useful for perhaps just a decade, perhaps 3 decades at most?

The US spends more than $400 billion on gasoline per year. Per year. Compared to being able to save even a quarter of that, even just one year earlier, the cost of fast-charging infrastructure all over the US is pocket change. However the only one who I'd currently trust to do this well is Tesla.

[raymond]

Of course, getting 85kWh of power into a battery in 5 minutes requires a rate of charging of about 1,900 kW (including losses). Pzzzap!

Would you prefer 4,750A at 400V? Or rather 1,000A at 1,900V? And did you remember to bring a couple of friends to help plug in?

Is there an EE in the house that can give me a realistic upper bound on the amount of power through a cable I can at least carry without help from my friends?

[Norbert]

Would you prefer 4,750A at 400V? Or rather 1,000A at 1,900V? And did you remember to bring a couple of friends to help plug in?

Is there an EE in the house that can give me a realistic upper bound on the amount of power through a cable I can at least carry without help from my friends?

I think they are still researching on carbon nano tubes which have the potential to reduce this by, I think, a factor of 10x for the same volume and by an additional 6x less weight. They still need to find a way to separate conductive CNTs from semi- or non-conductive CNTs, though, and other problems of production. Maybe some day.

[JRP3]

Another "breakthrough"? WSU News Center - WSU researchers develop super lithium-ion battery

[dhrivnak]

Is there an EE in the house that can give me a realistic upper bound on the amount of power through a cable I can at least carry without help from my friends?

If you have handled the Tesla HPC the current cord is quite large at over an inch. It contains 3 #4 wires i believe. That will safely carry 100 amps. I do not think we can go much over that current and cord size and expect the average user to use it.