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Electric Car Subsidies Won't Make EV Batteries Better

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Doug_G

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Apr 2, 2010
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Design News - Electric Car Subsidies Won't Make EV Batteries Better

However, experts say increased subsidies would not change the big dilemma facing the EV battery market. Economies of scale would help cut battery costs to some degree, but they would not necessarily bring the costs low enough or the energy density high enough for mass adoption of EVs.

"Even if you had 50 or 60 million electric vehicles on the road, it still wouldn't bring about the revolution in battery technology that all of us hope for," Beiker said.

David Cole, chairman emeritus of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich., said the technology must be allowed to mature on its own. "Everybody who's capable of engineering batteries is already working overtime. When it becomes economical, it will take off. But you can't force it to go any faster than it already is."

Industry analysts also questioned whether the incentives -- particularly electric car tax credits, which call on average Americans to subsidize vehicle purchases for consumers who tend to be wealthy -- would last long enough to create an impact on EVs 10 years from now. (GM has publicly acknowledged that the average annual income of a Volt buyer is $175,000.)

Cole said that the tax credits are likely to lose popularity over time. "We can justify the concept of tax credits over a short period of time with the idea of helping create a bridge to a new technology. But any tax credit is always going to be temporary. You can't base a business case on a tax credit."

Still, the White House said that EV buyers would see monetary advantages: Driving such a car would save the average consumer roughly $100 a month, and those savings would ultimately combine with lower up-front vehicle costs to create a better bottom line for energy consumers.

"We just can't rely on fossil fuels from the last century," Obama told the autoworkers. "We've got to continually develop new sources of energy."

They have a point about battery technology progress, but otherwise miss the point completely IMHO.
 
True, if you dump billions of dollars into something you can certainly progress faster. It may be highly wasteful, but if the end result is that important you can definitely get there faster.

Here's a real-world example (heard this story years ago from my control systems prof). The early Saturn rockets for the Apollo moon program exploded in flight because their servo control systems couldn't handle the flexure in the tank. The sensors were at the top and the servos at the bottom. This resulted in oscillations that eventually overstressed the tank.

The Russians had already figured out theoretically "state space control" laws and they used that for their rockets. The Americans hadn't developed that theory, so they basically threw hundreds of engineers (and lots of money) at the problem and solved it by brute force, basically by trying everything they could think of. They did solve it, and only later figured out the theoretical underpinnings.
 
Here's a real-world example (heard this story years ago from my control systems prof). The early Saturn rockets for the Apollo moon program exploded in flight because their servo control systems couldn't handle the flexure in the tank. The sensors were at the top and the servos at the bottom. This resulted in oscillations that eventually overstressed the tank.

The Russians had already figured out theoretically "state space control" laws and they used that for their rockets. The Americans hadn't developed that theory, so they basically threw hundreds of engineers (and lots of money) at the problem and solved it by brute force, basically by trying everything they could think of. They did solve it, and only later figured out the theoretical underpinnings.
Reminds me of this.
 
Is Envia shipping a production product already? Didn't the article say their cycle life is currently very limited, but they claimed they could get there with some tweaks. Until they meet all of the necessary performance metrics they don't have a product.

I remain highly skeptical about all new battery technology announcements. I think for every 100 announcements there has been one real success story. Am I wrong?
 
Is Envia shipping a production product already? Didn't the article say their cycle life is currently very limited, but they claimed they could get there with some tweaks. Until they meet all of the necessary performance metrics they don't have a product.

I remain highly skeptical about all new battery technology announcements. I think for every 100 announcements there has been one real success story. Am I wrong?

Other than being a bit optimistic, you're spot on.
 
They're at 400 cycles which considering the battery could enable a 500 mile EV, could be enough to start.

But the point is that subsidies have enabled many start-ups to get going. Saying they aren't helping to drive energy density is false.
 
When big oil gives up its subsidies and we stop spending hundreds of billions of dollars per year on the military to protect oilfields - all of which subsidize gasoline to the tune of several dollars a gallon - I'll happily vote for the end to EV subsidies.
 
While I agree that battery technology will continue to improve, it's not a linear, straightforward progression. We're too used to the semiconductor industry, where "all" they have to do is reduce the size of the features and everything gets faster, smaller, cheaper. (I say "all" because the effort required to continue the shrinking has been getting much greater).

Designing a battery is much less "straightforward". Making a new battery starts with a highly-educated guess ("let's try an unobtainium anode!"), followed by a lot of empirical experiments ("okay let's mix in some obtainium! or maybe some hard-to-getium!"). It's largely trial-and-error.
 
While I agree that battery technology will continue to improve, it's not a linear, straightforward progression. ...
Designing a battery is much less "straightforward". Making a new battery starts with a highly-educated guess ("let's try an unobtainium anode!"), followed by a lot of empirical experiments ("okay let's mix in some obtainium! or maybe some hard-to-getium!"). It's largely trial-and-error.

But this quote is still valid:

The Russians had already figured out theoretically "state space control" laws and they used that for their rockets. The Americans hadn't developed that theory, so they basically threw hundreds of engineers (and lots of money) at the problem and solved it by brute force, basically by trying everything they could think of. They did solve it, and only later figured out the theoretical underpinnings.

Brute force! Much more awesome than the electromotive kind.
 
Is it really trial and error? Seams to me that some of these big steps forward are being made now because people are trying to remove the trial and error.

I'm sure there are theoretical models, simulations, etc., involved. I'm equally sure that they're doing a lot of experimentation and dissecting the results with high-tech lab equipment. Mother nature knows more about physics than we do.