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The first EV with a lithium-free sodium battery hits the road in January
(www.engadget.com)
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this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2023
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We've only got a stated range out of this (252km/157mi) but there are a lot of factors where this could do well. Sodium batteries should be cheaper, so it'd be great if that translated to the final sale price. Depending on charge times and where you live, this could be a perfectly practical vehicle. If it doesn't degrade like lithium batteries, then that'd be even better. Might make for a great secondary vehicle (or everyday driver, depending).
I'm expecting to see dual battery EVs in the not too distant future. A Sodium battery for the primary that gets the most charges and discharges which can be easy and cheaper to replace. Beside that a Lithium battery which would only be drawn from after the Sodium battery was exhausted. This way if you're doing shallow discharges for your "around town" driving then charging at night, and deep discharges for longer road trips where the energy density of Lithium shines.
Lithium batteries dont like being stored fully charged they will degrade over time.
This is a solved problem. Most EVs won't let you charge it to the actual 100% level or discharge it to 0.
Exactly. Really, "fully charged" should just be conceptualised as being at a sensible safe point, with the acknowledgement that it's possible to "overcharge" the batteries to an even higher level, chemically speaking, but that all sensible devices don't let you do this.
So only charge it to 80% and pretend 80% is 100%, like iPhones do. Why is that a concern?
Or you could just use all of the space for a sodium battery and fully charge it as it won't need long term storage in that state.
You're right. Forgot about that. Shoot.
I'm still dreaming of seeing EVs with flexible battery space, which users can fill according to their needs.
Like a car comes with space for 10x 10 kWh slots.
If 20 kWh serve your usual needs, the other spaces remain empty.
And if you plan longer trips and don't want to recharge each 100 miles, you put in additional batteries. Those batteries don't need to be owned, but can be rented.
Ideally there are lots of battery rental stations, where you can get charged batteries and instead of recharging the batteries in the EV, the rent'n'swap stations recharge them.
During (EV) wise low use times, these stations can provide a buffer to the energy grid.
...one can dream...
Do not encourage businesses to rent more necessities to us.
Then buy it. No need to rent it then.
The main focus was on flexible energy packs not on the renting, although I'd find it convenient if done right.
You have far more faith in capitalists to do the right thing than I. They'll put this shit behind user hostile DRM the same that Disney does for drink refills.
Idk about renting, sounds like ass.
A core charge would make more sense, like swapping propane tanks you get a discount for having the empty core with you.
Wpuld you rather purchase an 80 kWh battery, alrhough you need most of the time only 20 kWh or purchase only 20 kWh and rent/swap some batteries when needed?
I'm no talking about renting all battery capacity the whole year, just the extra capacity for the 2-4 weeks in the year when long-distance rides are in the mix.
I've seen a video with some electric mopeds that had very easily removable batteries. Like you just pop it out and exchange it at a gas-station equivalent.
It'd be ideal if we could settle on a few sizes - kind of like how we have AA, AAA, C, D, etc. batteries. One can be for such mopeds, one larger for cars and some smaller ones to fill various otherwise empty spaces in a car.
So if your battery goes bad or just want to change its tech you can do that.
For normal city driving you carge the car at home. If you go on a trip make a few stops for charging. If you're really in a rush, you can always pay a premium for swapping your drained battery for a prefilled one at a gas station equivalent.
To me this seems like the ideal solution for EVs and I wonder what facts make it unrealistic.
This is precisely where we're going to get fucked, though, because the modern pathological mindset of every tech company now is to try to build their own proprietary walled fiefdom to try to lock in ~~suckers~~ ~~recurring revenue sources~~ customers and they won't make their stuff compatible with anyone else's unless the government forces them to. Maybe if we're lucky there will be a decade or two of highly public bitching (see also: the Tesla charging connector) until someone eventually capitulates.
Different battery chemistries have different charging requirements. So you'd have to have more complex charger/battery interaction requirements. Not insurmountable but another layer of standardization
Yup, I've been thinking along those lines as well. I can't believe that every manufacturer is doing their own standards again...
You know, putting and removing batteries would be a very tedious task and I really doubt that many owners will bother with it.
It wouldn't be necessary very often unless you'd want to take advantage of swapping instead of reloading.
also it's not a trivial task to engineer for swapable EV batteries, doing so comes with a whole host of disadvantages / compromises that don't make sense for most (I guess) consumers right now. It's not very different from the phone battery issue, except on a huge scale and with much more severe consequences if things go wrong
Yes, you need to make the puncture proof, they are a fire hazard if stored at home, they degrade over time and if left empty long enough might not even work, etc.
The enginnering part is for sure one of the reasons we don't see that idea in the wild (yet?).
The fire hazard at home and degradation when stored full or empty (speaking of lithion ion based batteries here) go away if you lean on the rental approach.
Wouldn't it be nice to save investment and weight by using the required amount of battery capacity while still being able to extend the range of your car easily when needed?
I mean, US Cellular had a free battery swap program for a while. If you were a subscriber and your phone battery was low, you could go into any store and they'd swap you out for a fully charged battery for free. I presume they just ate the cost of damaged or degraded batteries as part of it. I only used it a couple times, but it was kinda nice.
Interesting idea. I hadn't thought of that possibility!
The other thing is that it could also potentially be significantly cheaper to replace if it wears out. And could potentially be easier to recycle too, if it's common salts. I'm optimistic about it!
That's a perfect range for me. If it's relatively cheap and charges reasonably well in the winter, I'll buy it.
We currently have two cars:
A lot of my neighbors have a similar setup because either one person doesn't work or works at home, but they often need to use both cars simultaneously. If it's priced well, it'll sell well.
The main problem with existing EVs are that they either have far too little range (e.g. original Leaf w/ 70 miles range), or are way too expensive because they try to get too much range (200+ mile range). That higher range is kind of necessary because of degradation, whereas if the battery were cheaper to replace, more people would be willing to buy something with lower range and replace the battery after a few years.
252km is 3 days worth of commuting for many people I know. For me personally it is one and hald days of work, moving around in a diesel beast. I would go stupid giddy if I was handed one of these for a daily work driver
The economics of an undegrading car battery are interesting.
It's looking like these batteries will allow electric cars to be comparable to an ICE car in terms of price and cheaper to run.
So people will buy them as it makes sense. Then run the car until it falls apart then they will have a very large battery effectively for free. Does that get placed in a new car? Converted into home storage? Grid storage? Cheaply recycled?