From the article it claims charge speed 10x that of lithium and 50,000 cycle lifetime. I don’t know about you but a EV that can go 150 miles and charge to 80% again in 2min would be super compelling to me.

Solid commuter car but not too annoying on the rare roadtrip.

But, I am guessing grid frequency regulation use cases are going to make these too expensive for a car for a long time.

I missed the 10x charge speed- that is a killer feature that more than makes up for the reduced range.

Agreed, I just learned that the next formula for Formula E will eventually have charging stops. The spec will allow 5kwh of charge in 30 seconds, which is 10% SoC in their case. Pretty cool.

Sounds like their current strategy is stationary-only, i.e. not for use in vehicles, owing to the lower power density of sodium batteries. But that does not mean it's a problem that won't be solved in the future.

I wonder what that will mean for charging infrastructure that suddenly has to deliver 10x power to enable that. Not sure that sort of charging could be as ubiquitously placed as gas stations

Just have the same batteries in the charging station to smooth out power usage? Seems a lot cheaper and operationally less complex than a gas station.

Those would need to get cycled a lot(many times per day). You might want one for your house if you wanted to charge quickly at home, but for charging stations, I think more realistically they'd have 10x less charging spots if each person was only there 1/10th the time.

So the peak would be the same, but if there were too many customers then sort of like at a busy gas station people would be waiting for a spot rather than waiting for charging to complete.

> Those would need to get cycled a lot(many times per day).

Fortunately these batteries have "an estimated lifespan of 50,000 cycles". Also, since there aren't super-dangerous elements in them, they should be much easier and cleaner to recycle/renew - especially with the giant recharge-station-scale ones' we're talking about, which could be designed specifically for that.

This assumes that the same number of vehicles use the charging station. Lower charge times means potentially higher steady-state throughput.

Higher steady-state is mostly a good thing. You need to bulk up the power lines, but you're making good use of them and have lots of money to spend on them.

Having lots of money doesn't mean spending lots of money. Budgets often get cut for no good reason.

Okay, I mean I'm aware of that perfectly generic information but "sometimes management sucks" doesn't impact a feasibility analysis much. And this hypothetical station was already willing to spend on a lot on batteries.

Just because they want to spend on batteries doesn't necessarily mean they can spend on power lines. Most of the time you can't just pay the power company to bulk up your lines, just like you can't always pay an ISP to install a faster connection, even if they provide that service to another area.

Okay but that's a completely different objection from the one in your previous comment.

And yes it's not always possible but it'll be available in enough places.

If a particular station can't get better lines, then as someone else said they could have fewer charging spots. High load per spot still works out well for them, because they can save space.

I had an engineering colleague who previously worked at a company that reconditioned Prius batteries. It involved cycling powe in and out of the battery several times. Where did all that power come from? Another battery.

i doubt if the batteries can handle the type of surge output as the superchargers require.

They easily do. Discharge rates are typically higher than charge rates. For stationary batteries it's all easier due to being able to have larger, more parallel batteries, and better cooling when weight is not a concern.

Battery-backed charging stations are already common, because it allows use of cheaper grid interconnection, and use of cheaper off-peak or renewable energy.

If the car batteries can handle some amount of power, batteries on the other side can handle the same amount.

Especially because the station would want to have multiple cars worth of energy stored, which means the load is divided among more cells and they don't have to work nearly as hard.

It just means the infrastructure gets the same cheap batteries as buffer.

Not that much, grids can and do deal with highly variable loads all the time, as all the heavy machinery involved in traditional power generation (=generators, gearboxes, axles, turbines) has a lot of inertia that buffers sudden changes.

However, as more and more generation capacity shifts to renewable sources that by design have very small (wind) to zero (solar) inertia, there will be a requirement to build out frequency stabilizer units like the Tesla unit in Hornsdale, Australia [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornsdale_Power_Reserve

Aren't batteries quite limited in their ability to provide synthetic inertia? Sure, they can respond on a second or tenth-of-second scale, but they don't provide the kind of instantaneous inertia you get from spinning rust. Inverters aren't exactly designed to just eat power surges, they'll instantly disconnect instead.

That's why the UK grid has been building some "high-inertia synchronous compensators", and a 2019 outage showed that it's urgently needed.

Can't you make them behave however you want with sub millisecond reaction time?

Advanced solar and wind inverters can also push back on grid changes to mimic inertia.

Also I'd say the inertia in a normal wind turbine doesn't count because it's not tied into the grid frequency.

Indeed the charging cables are already massive. Just need some superconducting cables.

Liquid cooled cables aren't too bad.

Megawatt charging system is big but doesn't seem unreasonable, and that gives you 5x the amps. In two minutes it can add 80kWh to an 800 volt battery, and the max voltage is 1250.

https://resources.news.e.abb.com/images/2023/5/12/0/Next_gen...

https://www.engineerlive.com/sites/engineerlive/files/ITM.11...

Even today's charging can be severely lacking, imho

Unless they also use these batteries to store the charge. The batteries an be charged slowly like a capacitor.

My Model 3 already charges at 180kw. Are they saying cars built with these batteries will charge at 1.8Mw? How are they going to build charging infrastructure at that level?

To take advantage of that charging speed, you have to supply 10x of charging power though.

10x of charging speed of Li-ion would be in megawatts per single charging device.

Compelling to me also, as a person who has shied away from EVs because of charging time annoyances. I'd gladly trade the mileage for charging speed every time. Getting excited for what's to come.

It's very likely that we'll end up with tiered batteries in EV's before long. Some amount of the capacity will be fast charge/discharge, some amount of it will be capacity with slower charge/discharge with a higher density available.

Think of it like modern SLC backed QLC flash storage. As long as the usage profile fits inside of the cache, it runs as though the entire system is cache.

Is charge time important because you can't install a L2 charger at home / apartment to keep it "always charged" or because your usage pattern is too heavy duty for a 30 minute break every 200-300mi?

If it's just the former, the slow steady march of EV mindshare might solve your needs before the "L4" super-fast-charging battery. I am starting to see L2 chargers pop up in apartment parking lots, for example. IMO, "always charged" is significantly more convenient than short stops at a station, so it would still be desirable in a world where "L4" batteries and stations were common.

The latter, actually. I'd much prefer to stop for five minutes every 2 hours than 30 minutes every 4 hours.

I'd prefer shorter times on road trip charging, too. But I still ended up buying an EV because I only need road trip fast charging a few times a year, and now I don't have to carve out 20 minutes every couple weeks to go find a gas station and fill up. The overall time savings for me is significant.

The current state of the art is somewhere in between with 18 minutes per ~3 hours. It even helps to split charging into shorter sessions (2x 9 minutes), because batteries charge fastest when they're about 25% full.

Keep in mind that EVs charge unattended, so you only spend a minute plugging in, and can leave to get a coffee, etc.

How 'guaranteed' is that rate? I don't keep up with it like I probably should, but seem to often read that some chargers are outdated, and sometimes you have to 'share' if somebody else is charging nearby?

In the EU, there are Ionity and Fastned networks that can guarantee their chargers will be fast enough for this (>=250kW), and together they have a pretty decent coverage along major highways.

There are setups that have their max rated power per dispenser (“pump”), and halve it if two cars are plugged in to the same dispenser at the same time. Good chargers can do 300kW. If that splits to 150kW it’s not too bad - maybe 5 min slower, rather than double. That’s because the max speed the car can take is a curve, and that only flattens the peak.

However, for the 18-min charging the biggest gotcha is the temperature. In Hyundai/Kia it requires the battery to be at 20-25°C. That’s easy in the summer. In the winter the charging speed can drop as low as 80kW.

Last time we had to fast charge on the way to Yosemite, we had lunch at a strategically parked taco truck in the same lot (they even had a picnic table).

We would have walked to a nearby restaurant if needed.

I also think the roadtrip inconvenience is vastly overblown. Had an EV since 2018. It is our roadtrip car. It turns 12 hour roadtrips to 14 hour trips but if you plan around eating, it doesn’t extend any trip by much.

I still have a gas vehicle but I never want to use it for long trips.

In my only attempted road trip with my EV, the only charger available within any reasonable distance of our destination failed to charge the car due to a "firmware issue" that they had been aware of for quite some time but did not bother to fix. We were unable to charge there. Luckily, we had enough juice to make it back to the charging station at our halfway point by turning off the climate control.

So on a road trip that I only wanted to charge twice for, one of the stops didn't work. Oh, and on the way back we had to wait for access to the faster charger. Maybe not so overblown.

Yeah my concern with charging is more time and effort to get it to an open working charger than it is charge time.

> But, I am guessing grid frequency regulation use cases are going to make these too expensive for a car for a long time.

Not sure I follow here. Can you elaborate?

Are you saying the the demand for sodium batteries for power grid backup is going to be high vs supply such that they're not going to make it into cars anytime soon? Isn't one of the Chinese EV makers starting to use sodium batteries?

Yeah I am thinking grid applications will take up most of the available supply for the next few years. That charge/discharge speed makes it perfect for helping to stabilize the grid, frequency regulation, as well as for replacing peaker plants. Lithium batteries are already being used for these two applications but I think these sodium batteries would be better.

Depends on the production economics, how fast they scale, and what issues are discovered in real world use. There is some risk for everyone with new tech.

Large scale grid project are planned years in advance so unlikely to eat up all the production as factories will need a constant demand source to clear inventory and have regular cash flow so I think home batteries like Tesla powerwall are going to have big boom soon specially as people getting paid less and less for their home solar output from the grid. If I am not wrong chinese largest battery manufacturers have started looking at home batteries as some car manufacturers were complaining about not enough demand for ev.

The main blocker with ev charge speeds now is the charging station capacity though, no?

Having said that - if we can get cheap and safe batteries installed within the charging stations, this would make for an awesome improvement

Most charging stations already have lithium batteries installed as a buffer for the grid, and those batteries tend to be safer designs since there's no weight/density penalty for fixed infrastructure. Sodium batteries would just make charging stations cheaper to build.

A lot of people tend to think of the ideal charging station as a gas station, where lots of cars go to quickly add range. But gas stations have large capacity because of their disadvantages. Ideally if they were safe, cheap, and compact, wouldn't you want gas stations everywhere? I'd love to have a gas station at home, in every parking garage, and at every scenic viewpoint on the road. The reason we don't have that is because gas stations emit toxic vapors and have giant tanks of combustible liquid. They need tanker trucks to regularly refuel them. Charging stations don't have those problems, which is why you can make them much smaller and put them almost anywhere. You don't even need a grid connection. Solar + batteries works in places where land is cheap.

Two minutes is about the amount of time it takes to fill my ICE car, so yeah, that'd be nice.

Yeah but do you have a gas station at home so it's "always full"? That's really nice ;)

You certainly can, provided you have a truck, and a DOT certified fuel trailer, and a transfer pump.

That system also allows you to participate in oil futures as an end user, not to mention it lets you keep your generator up and running for a very long time.

Downside is, modern e10 gasoline tends to adsorb water from the air over time, so fuel isn't stable long term. Most guys doing this are running diesel cars/gensets for that reason.

The model is, go to a truck depot with a 300 gallon trailer, fill up trailer and truck, park the trailer at home. Then fuel the truck off the trailer until it needs to be filled again, repeat. Do understand that, you can get a larger tank, but anything over 1000 gallons requires a placard/permit to haul around. That's in a single tank, so, in theory, a legal length 5th wheel trailer could have multiple tanks under that and be compliant. If you want the tanks attached to a vehicle itself, the maximum size is 150 gallons, hence why semi trucks have multiple fuel tanks that are smaller than that.

Really the only difficulty is finding a place nearby that is willing to sell that much fuel to an individual.

Is running a generator for long periods cost effective? If someone lived where the grid wasn't reliable, and could make the initial investment for all this fuel storage stuff, why not do solar?

Usually it's a backup thing, not a 24/7 thing. If you're really out in the sticks, solar/battery/genset is a very likely complete system. I know of a couple places way up north in Saskatchewan that have what amounts to a mining village running off a big portable genset backed up with batteries, and one of them I know was just on a very big genset, and they were able to pay for a battery bank by downsizing their generator significantly due to the disparity between peak load and average load. I'd share the article I read about it, but, in spite of my normally excellent google-fu, I've been unable to find it.

Either way, people forget about this, because if you have any sort of power generation, doesn't matter the method, if you go over capacity, you have brownouts/blackouts/grid failure/etc. What is deployed now, for the most part, is sufficient genset capacity to ramp into peak load, and most of it is under-utilized the majority of the time. Batteries eventually pay for themselves because of this, as they allow for peak load handling in addition to allowing generating capacity to stay online and remain profitable outside of peak load events. It really is revolutionary.

More or less, gridscale batteries are what dams/reservoirs were to water systems, and if you consider the impact of us as a species being able to save water for later use at-will, the promise we're looking at is going to really change the way we live.

Here in Ukraine, the grid is no longer 100% reliable for obvious (and highly intentional) reasons. Solar is somewhat inconvenient to use in large cities, and cloudy days are common. A variety of generator types and sizes can be seen instead. Living in an apartment, I have an Ecoflow Delta 2 Max as my first line and a 3.5kW gasoline/natgas generator as my second line. Most of the time, there is some power at some hours of the day, so the Ecoflow can store it. If it runs out, I can run an extension power cord down from my balcony, lug the generator down into the yard, and use it to charge the Ecoflow. I do have plans to buy a solar panel and put it on the building roof with a Starlink, but it would require negotiating with the neighbors and stuff. Gasoline storage really is an issue, though. Currently I just hope I'll have enough money to buy it as needed.

"You mean I can't just drive the car? I need to think about how to find fuel for it every couple of days? And then I have to drive there and hope nothing explodes?"

It takes me significantly longer than that. The pumps aren't infinitely fast. The cashier is serving other clients. I have to drive to the gas station and back. All of that adds up to more like 15 minutes.

2 mins to charge a 40 kWh battery is 1.2 MW. I can't see that happening any time soon.

And I just don't think it's needed.

You are almost certainly not charging from 0->100%. It's probably more like 10%->90% which gives you 32kW to charge. We currently have 350kW chargers on the market, they'd do that in ~6 minutes.

At some point trying to get 2 minutes vs 6 minutes is just silly nit picking.

Just install an SMR at every gas station. Problem solved! :P

Fast charge speeds make electrified highways a more viable option. There are some projects in Europe using overhead lines (for trucks) or power rails embedded in slots in the road surface (usable by cars or trucks) so that vehicles can recharge while moving. Building a network of electrified highways is expensive though.

One way to reduce initial costs is not to electrify the whole length but to have, say, one mile of electrified road per every ten miles of highway. To get unlimited range from that 1:10 ratio, you need the vehicles to have batteries capable of absorbing power 9x faster than the vehicle uses it to maintain highway speeds.

I could see EVs having a large lithium ion pack and, if this technology is really that good, a smaller sodium ion battery to act sort of like a capacitor to smooth out intermittent charging.

I could also see low-capacity-high-power-density batteries being used in hybrids, though those need to be able to sustain high discharge rates as well as high charge rates, and I don't think the article mentioned discharge rates.

Charging private vehicles while they move sounds very complicated

This is one way to do it:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/12/worlds-f...

Overhead cables are simpler and cheaper, but not easily compatible with cars (which would need a comically tall pantograph to connect to the cables).

(Induction is a third option, but it's not really viable except in certain special cases because it's way more expensive, can't deliver as much power, and tends to be less energy efficient.)

Electrifying highways may sound expensive or complicated, but consider what the alternatives are. We could stick with fossil fuels. The U.S. burns about 4 million barrels of gasoline and about 4 million barrels of diesel a day, most of which is used to push cars and trucks around. That's not simple or cheap, we're just accustomed to the cost.

Another option is we switch to EVs and rely on big batteries for range. That kind of works, but battery manufacturing scale isn't there. It's also kind of wasteful to have a substantial portion of the vehicle weight being batteries. It means cars and trucks are heavier than they need to be, and they can haul less cargo.

If we could get to the point where, say, someone could drive coast-to-coast without ever having to stop to charge with only 30 or 40 kwh battery, that would be huge. It would reduce EV costs dramatically, it would reduce average vehicle weight, and you might even get better performance.

(This wouldn't completely eliminate the need for some long-range vehicles for areas not served by electrified highways, but for most uses it should be fine.)

Trolleybus is a technology from over 100 year ago.

Yes, but a primary advantage to private transportation is the ability to drive it in locations other than predefined routes in dense city centers.

I think the point they were making is that a suitable technology to deliver power to a moving vehicle has been around a long time, not that everyone should get rid of their cars and use trolleys.

If we combine a modern EV with 100 year old tram technology, you get the ability for a car to charge itself when travelling on roads that have a compatible system of overhead power lines. Having a huge pantograph on top of the car is kind of impractical, but powering cars from underneath via power rails embedded in slots in the road, like a full-sized version of those toy slot cars that used to be popular, is another option that's been tried on some roads in Sweden.

My point is that those solutions are impractical for any sort of widespread use.

Impractical compared to what? The U.S. burns about 4 million barrels of gasoline and about the same amount of diesel per day, mostly just pushing ground vehicles around. That sort of works, but I wouldn't call it practical in the long run.

Converting to EVs is the obvious alternative, but batteries are expensive and we haven't scaled up battery manufacturing yet to the degree necessary to replace ICE vehicles. We can get more EVs on the road though if the average EV can get by with a much smaller battery.

On some level it's an optimization problem: using the U.S. as an example, there are about 280 million cars/trucks currently registered. Is it cheaper/better to build about 280 million EVs with about 60kwh of batteries each on average, or build 280 million EVs with about 30kwh of batteries each and electrify our major highways?

If batteries cost $100/kwh, then 280 million * $100 * 30 = 840 billion dollars. If electrifying the major highways can be done for under $840 billion dollars, then it makes sense to do.

The interstate highway system is about 50,000 miles.

Sweden spent about a million euros per kilometer to electrify a section of road using the slot-embedded-in-the-road system. That's about $1.7 million per mile, or $86.5 billion.

You'd probably need to do more than just the interstates, but then at the same time you don't need to electrify 100% of the length of those highways. Maybe just 10% or 20%, as long as electrified section come at regular intervals.

This is all kind of simplistic and hand-wavey, but it seems like it passes the threshold of "we should at least consider doing this."

> Impractical compared to what? The U.S. burns about 4 million barrels of gasoline and about the same amount of diesel per day, mostly just pushing ground vehicles around. That sort of works, but I wouldn't call it practical in the long run.

Maybe you mean it isn't 'sustainable'? ICE vehicles are the epitome of practical, they are used in practice all around the world.

> You'd probably need to do more than just the interstates, but then at the same time you don't need to electrify 100% of the length of those highways. Maybe just 10% or 20%,

The people who developed that project estimated they'd need to implement it on 25% of all roads. Also the project is just in a technical demonstrator phase. It is literally just a tech demo, and there are still major concerns about adoption, implementation, and maintenance.

> This is all kind of simplistic and hand-wavey, but it seems like it passes the threshold of "we should at least consider doing this."

I agree it should be tested further, but there are likely significant barriers that will prevent it from being useful, particularly in less dense areas.

The focus of the effort to make overhead charging viable is on large trucks that already drive mostly, but not completely, predefined routes on highways and in cities, which are often too lengthy to only rely on battery packs.

Others up above were discussing passenger vehicles.

For trucks on the highway, it is a much better idea, but for many of those cases, you'd be significantly better off investing in more rail.

Transporting refrigerated goods over moderate distances and last-mile delivery from the train yards are where trucks using overhead cables can shine. I also read that there existed trolleybus lines that went several miles/kilometers between towns that weren't connected by rail. It's especially useful in mountainous terrain.

imagine this!

Have short charging strips at traffic lights then prioritize lanes with cars that dont need much charge.

That's an option, though I think the amount of time cars spend at stop lights is so highly variable that it'd be hard to make that practical. Also, in-town driving is usually short range anyways. For that, having a 100 mile or even a 50 mile battery is plenty, and people can charge overnight at home. (And yes, ideally apartments ought to have EV charging stations.)

Where people are more likely to need the extra charge is on the long country roads between major cities. Probably a high priority could be on the major highways going into and out of cities, as those are the roads people are likely to use for long daily commutes.

There are so many options. Things will just have to be tried until the best marketing formula wins.

I really have dozens of strange ideas. If the charging stations need to be equiped with similar batteries we might as well make all cars into charging stations. You can charge your much to large 3x per year road trip battery with your much to large solar array. Park it some place (preferably in need), flag the car in the app as wont move for x hours and has y kwh availble then charge your 40km range coworker premium tarif while you work.

A rail with a towing cable could also charge batteries while also usable for ic engines.

> to 80% again in 2min

Needs say 720kW delivery for those two minutes (need higher if counting inefficiency losses).

Note that Tesla 's V3 Superchargers provide a maximum of 250kW. I've assumed a 30kWh battery charged to 24kWh (80%), because the spec for a new Nissan Leaf is 59kWh battery for 385km driving range.

Yeah we are for sure talking about the future here. There are already vehicles capable of handling 350kW chargers. Probably not too crazy to think that could double in the next decade.

But I am definitely not expert on this.

Why do people need 200 mile range for an EV?

For example, my daily mileage averages about 5 miles. As an errand-runner, a 30 mile EV would be very practical. The huge benefit of this is a smaller and cheaper battery, and the biggie - much less weight. Much less weight leads to much less tire/brake wear and tire/brake dust pollution.

I'd still have a second gas car for the trips.

Some people (including myself) only need cars for long-distance trips where air or train travel is not feasible, and for most people, even if their car is mainly a grocery-getter, psychologically, they want to know they can drive across the country with it.

Most people do not want to have to own two cars.

If you rarely need to take long distance trips you can rent a car that does it.

There are a wide variety of cars to suit various needs. There's a large place for a lightweight 30mi EV. Especially for people who don't want to pay the huge premium for a 7x times more expensive battery.

We road trip with our Tesla ~5 times a year and I never want to own an ICE car again.

Citroen Ami would be great for you. There are now cars built for this type of thing.

>Why do people need 200 mile range for an EV? For example, my daily mileage averages about 5 miles.

The average one-way commute for someone in the United States is ~28 miles. Most people would love your commute.

> Why do people need 200 mile range for an EV?

> I'd still have a second gas car for the trips.

I feel like you answered your own question here. Having two cars is pretty expensive, if nothing else you have to pay for insurance for both.

Driving around yesterday, I noticed that most houses have a 2 car garage. The ones with a 1 car garage always have one or two cars parked in the driveway. I see one car garage homes obviously renovated to make them two car, or a carport added on for the extra car.

This was a lower middle class area.

In my experience the miles they advertise are no where near the reality. My Model Y has never given me 320 miles on a charge and it's not like gas stations where you can hit one up at the last moment, on a trip you gotta start finding a charger once you hit around 20-25% charge left.

My first EV was a Volt which had only ~30 miles of EV range before it switched to gas. I bought it because I was EV curious but worried about range and I got a crazy cheap lease from GM. I drove it for three years and did a few short road trips. When I returned it, my total driving stats: 99% on electrons.

Hybrids get a bad rep. It makes for such a difference: knowing that you don't need to worry about that 1%.

The argument against hybrids that's always resonated with me is that you get the maintenance costs of a gasoline engine with the upfront costs of a battery. I've owned a Leaf and found it relatively trouble-free but never a hybrid. Am I just buying into FUD there?

Prius are pretty well known for being cheap to drive for a long while no?

Sure, they are always going to be more complex than a full electric but good gasoline cars are don't have any huge maintenance costs for a good long while.

It's easy to like plug-in hybrids (I do), but it does feel transitional. As you pointed out, you have the potential for higher maintenance costs, _plus_ during electric operation, you carry the weight of ICE, fuel, fancy transmission, etc. which makes electric operation less efficient. And vice versa, during ICE operation you have a big battery and motor to carry around, reducing fossil fuel efficiency. I guess you could add a boiler and coal hopper for tri-modal steam operation.

One caveat is, depending on your workload, you might put only 25% of the time on the ICE per mile driven (since most short trips would be electric). I.e. if an ICE car runs the engine for 2,500 hours per 100,000 miles, a plug-in hybrid might only have run the engine 500-600 hours at 100k miles.

In the Voltec drivetrain when the ICE is running the whole battery system is complimentary to it, not a detriment. It is precisely what allows it to be efficient. It uses an Atkinson cycle ICE for higher efficiency, and then uses the electric motor to augment locomotion, and the battery as a "buffer" with regen, etc. I rarely use the ICE mode, most of my driving is within range, but when I do, it's very performant and efficient, and hard to tell you're switched to combustion if it wasn't for the noise. It still drives mostly like an EV.

And honestly, the ICE itself isn't very heavy -- nothing compared to a battery -- and as I said elsewhere, maintenance hasn't been an issue in the 5 years I've had mine. Oil change every 2 years (or more if you use the ICE a lot... I don't), that's it.

The heaviness argument is especially baffling to me. Carrying around a 60kWh battery pack that you only use for road trips is way heavier and less efficient. Most drivers are not using their whole battery pack in daily use, so it's just stupid expensive dead weight, much heavier than an ICE you use occasionally.

I want an ICE-less future as much as the next person, but it kinda pisses me off how EV purists who actually knew very little about the Voltec drivetrain basically got that product killed off. Emissions on roads would be drastically reduced if vehicles were switched to that model (which is not a PHEV like the other junk hybrids, but more of a range-assisted EV) without the very high cost and weight of large battery packs. Very much a "best is the enemy of the good" situation.

I'd like about 10kWh more in my Volt, and 6kW charging. Other than that, perfect car.

I used to think of it as transitional too, but 1% net use isn't really. That is a level that seems sustainable to me, perhaps even competitive after you subtract the production impact of an equivalent battery pack.

I've had a Volt since 2018 and there's basically been almost no "maintenance" on the ICE. Just an oil change every two years. Maybe I'm due for a coolant flush or something, I dunno. It has 120,000km on it.

The most maintenance on this car ever has just been the breaks, because like most EVs, they're prone to corroding because they don't get used as much due to regeneration.

The "ICE is a maintenance problem" thing is honestly kind of a bogus argument borne out by people's hunches, rather than reality. Most reliable vehicle I've ever owned, and, yeah, I am about 95% electric only on it.

That's interesting, I always assumed the brakes would be MORE reliable because there's essentially no wear on the brake pads.

They're reliable, but they get rust corrosion from lack of use.

Haven’t own an EV but I have done lots of research.

For the BMW i3 which is another series hybrid with more range, it seems 60% of owners think the engine isn’t worth it, but the rest love having the engine. There is no in between.

The original i3 had 80 mile range, the second generation 120, and the last 150. From what I saw in researching by the time the range was up to 150 the BEV only folks were loudest.

True, but they win despite that.

Plug-in hybrids, that is.

This falls in line with a plug in hybrid being an excellent alternative to evs for most people. 30-50 miles of driving around town for work an errands, with an ICE for the occasional longer trip. Almost all driving will be electric without the charge anxiety.

My hesitation with hybrids is that I keep all the associated maintenance costs of an ICE engine. Now I have two power trains and energy systems to maintain instead of just one.

Well, hybrids sometimes get to replace the transmission with EV bits, like Toyota's system. Imagine an engine and exhaust system; now multiply the complexity by 100 and you have a modern transmission. Toyota hybrids (and GM/Chrystler/Honda) replace all that with a single planetary gearset, or with Honda, one clutch.

Other systems, think Volvo, pop the EV bits in the back of the car and replace where the drive shaft used to be with batteries. That seems like a decent trade to me as well. Still have a transmission, but at least it's not purely additive.

AND one man's added complexity is another's redundancy. If the charging module goes bad in a hybrid, you can still drive. Or if you run out of gas.

All that said... I still prefer EVs to hybrids. Do one thing, do it well, I say!

Modern transmissions can’t be two orders of magnitude more complicated than a modern ICE. If they are then I need to get into transmission design. An automatic transmission is basically just a series of planetary gears anyway. I would expect the marginal complexity between an ICE transmission and a hybrid transmission to be within a multiple of 2, but closer to parity. They’re both extremely reliable but an EV transmission (gearbox) will be even simpler.

The thing that mechanically totals modern crap cars (think cheap Nissans and Subarus) is often the CVT. Ford and GM have transmission problems pretty often. GP is totally right that the planetary eCVTs actually make cars way simpler. Look at Ford's (horrendous reputation with small cars) hybrids from the 2010s, lots of them running around with 300k on the clock.

> (think cheap Nissans and Subarus)

You don't even need to limit it to the lower end models with Subaru. The top trim Outback and Ascent have a CVT these days. If you want an automatic transmission in your WRX, same thing - a CVT. Anyway, you're not wrong.

A CVT is even simpler than an automatic. They may be less reliable but not necessarily more complicated.

I dunno, maybe 100x was an exaggeration, but not by much! Take a look at this transmission from 2007. They haven't gotten simpler. Lot's of cars are sporting 10-speeds these days.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_transmission#/media/...

The number of speeds is a function of the number of planetary gearsets. They’re just connected in series. More speeds isn’t more complex, it’s only a larger part count. By the time the transmission is computer controlled and has two speeds it’s as complex as it’s going to be.

Modern ICE are also extremely complex. Turbo systems, sensors, air management, heat management, the list goes on.

So yeah, a modern transmission is complex but a modern ICE isn’t simple. By comparison they’re very similar in terms of complexity, the ICE possibly being even more complex.

>By the time the transmission is computer controlled and has two speeds it’s as complex as it’s going to be.

I don't disagree with your posts greater point, but I disagree with this.

There is an endless amount of variable complexity in the engineering behind friction materials, actuation styles, the control systems within the computer control, the material selections.. the list goes on.

I mean entire branches of metallurgy were more or less founded in the pursuit of finding stronger alloys for gearbox work. entire branches of metrology were developed for the sake of gearbox failure analysis -- there is a lot of complexity.

It's stupid to get into a pissing contest between engines and transmissions, they're both astoundingly complex.

The complexity of a transmission relative to another of the same design is not a function of the number of usable gear ratios it provides.

A clutch-and-planetary hydraulic transmission is just a series of the same basic gear set design. That gear set may be made of exotic materials but once you have one the rest are basically identical. Combining them is only a question of packaging, control, and manufacturing tolerance. All complex on their own but equally important to an ICE.

The linked AA80E from 2007 is an 8 speed. 10 speed designs are not much different.

They’re all fundamentally the same selectively lockable series of gearsets we have had for the better part of a century.

I don’t buy that transmissions are somehow unique or even exceptional in motivating improvements in design and materials science. The ICE will benefit from the same improvements and has even more opportunities to utilize those improvements.

Look at a workshop maintenance manual to get a rough idea. One car I had, about a third of the book was dedicated to the automatic transmission. Auto transmissions are very complex.

Yes, in a past life I rebuilt automatic transmissions so I am familiar with their complexity.

Transmissions are complex but so are a lot of things. Internal combustion engines are more complex than transmissions.

Pages in a shop manual are a proxy for the complexity of service, not of the component itself.

Other than spark plugs, belts, oil changes and other such consumables I don't remember having to do any engine maintenance on my cars for the last 10 years. Of course, it helps that I am buyer of boring Toyotas and Hondas.

But all those costs are correlated with engine hours, in a hybrid used most of the time for commuting, ICE engine hours would be really low

You do, but at least repair costs should be low because typically you won't put very many miles on that engine.

Suppose 90% of your miles are electric. After you've put 250K miles (400K km) on the car, you've only got 25K miles (40K km) on the engine. Rarely do you have significant engine trouble at that mileage.

Also, the engine design can probably be simplified if it's just acting as a generator. You don't need a turbo to provide extra bursts of power. Nor things like variable valve timing for good performance across a wide range of RPMs. Maybe you could even use an air-cooled engine like old VW Beetles and Porsches.

I wish they'd just sell/rent little trailers with a charging engine on them you could take on long trips.

I know that tesla's won't allow you to drive while charging the car. It throws an error if it's plugged in, so, that's a no-go without significant hackery.

That said, they certainly have tow-behind generators, and they're certainly available for rent, it's just without modification you'd have to stop in order to charge. I've seen people with a model X doing exactly this out in the desert. Seemed to be an ok solution honestly, because they were camping and had genset power for camping needs, assuming of course that the whole electricity while camping thing is something you're into.

I'd avoid any car with two powertrains, but there are systems that have an all electric powertrain with the ICE being used as a generator instead. It is a simplified system that, if designed correctly, can allow all battery or all generator to move the vehicle.

Just buy a toyota hybrid and have 0 worries to 200k miles then.

One of the fuel injectors died at 190k miles in my Prius, so not quite 200k. At 210k now.

Only other thing is that it is consuming more oil now so needs topping up every few thousand miles.

That is just a meme without substance. The ongoing maintenance cost of a mature Japanese ICE drivetrain is negligible compared to the overall operating costs of the whole car. There is a reason why Toyota hybrids are by far the most popular cars for Uber drivers.

Total cost of ownership of a Toyota hybrid is less than many other entirely ICE cars lol

True. I think people just over-estimate the cost of an ICE drivetrain. Yes, they have thousands of parts. But they don't cost anything to build. It's Japan's whole thing. You can get an entire Prius long block engine in a crate delivered for $2k. This is about half the cost of 1 headlight assembly from a Model S. Cost is not about complexity, it is about scale.

But how often do you have issues with the engine. My last 3 cars never had a single engine issues for at least 175.000 miles. Its very rare today to have big engine issues.

Clearly you're not buying quirky over-engineered German cars loaded with exotic but mostly useless luxury features. They are well built and last forever, but typically require very frequent tinkering to keep them working.

It's the powertrain that's far more apt to be the problem. Hence a plugin hybrid generator style should be far simpler than a system with both an ICE and electric powertrain.

For most Toyota hybrids they use a single planetary gear set to combine electric motors and a gas engine into a single unit. That's the entire transmission. It's far more efficient than bolting a generator on an electric car.

For climate control, they are nearly identical to a gas Toyota.

The funniest part is that the way Toyota hybrid powertrains work, if either the ICE or electric motor doesn't work, you cannot go anywhere. It's LESS systemically reliable than either a purely ICE or purely electric powertrain, and yet STILL Toyota hybrids are some of the most reliable cars you can buy.

Their engineering is just that insanely conservative. They just make giant, absurdly understressed engines. You can pull a 2.5L 4cyl engine out of a Camry, designed to make 180 horsepower, replace only a few components, and make 400hp with the reliability you would normally expect from an engine built for endurance racing. They are super popular in drift racing leagues.

I'm not actually sure how many plug-in hybrids go for an all-electric power train, versus a dual power train.

I know the Chevy Volt had an all-electric power train, and the ICE is purely a generator that dumps power into the electrical system, and the Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid has a dual power train, but I wasn't able to find a concise list of which hybrids have taken what strategy.

parallel versus series hybrid. Series will have ICE generate and the only thing attached to the wheels is electric motors. Parallel (like the prius) the electric motor and the ICE are connected to the wheels. There are reasons for both, but freight trains in the US are series. In my opinion, series is probably the best, since you can engineer the ICE to be as clean and efficient as possible at exactly 1 RPM setting - making them last longer to boot.

I apologize for forgetting the benefits of parallel hybrid systems, but i know there are some, including needing a smaller ICE, all things equal.

Some hybrids don't, they just have a very small engine that charges the battery.

A lot of maintenance items simply don't exist in a modern full hybrid. Typically there is no accessory belt, no alternator, no starter. Filters, coils, spark plugs and engine oil will last longer since the engine doesn't run nearly as hot (usually it's "atkinson" cycle) and isn't used constantly.

And brakes last longer, since they aren't used nearly as much.

Taxi drivers like Prius cars because their maintenance costs are low, not just because they are really efficient.

I like the idea of a hybrid, but I need around 100 miles to make it worth the transition for me, otherwise I'll just go all electric or stay part of the problem. I still need the EVs to come under 30k to make sense, as that's the upper limit I set on vehicle cost for the present.

Yeah, they seem like a nice solution. The good plug-in EVs are still too new and expensive for me, so I had an old ICE vehicle and an old EV. They were both actually the exact same car model in the same color even, the ICE and EV versions of it.

I believe that most people with a plug in hydrid actually forget to plug the car in, so the car is almost never in electric.

That is... debatable. The study that showed that came out of Europe, where a huge percentage of cars purchased new are fleet vehicles, and not owned by individuals/families. Why would I plug a company car in when I pay my electric bill but have a corporate card for gas?

I still drive a low ranged early EV (2012 Leaf) and it still works very well for me (we probably get about 35 miles of real range per charge.) I would be delighted if I could replace the battery with something like this.

I worry that I’ll never see a compatible replacement battery with the tech though.

The problem is that these batteries are much heavier.

From the article, these are estimated at 70 Wh/kg. Pretty abysmal for EVs, but the trade-offs likely aren't too undesirable for home battery backups or utility-scale batteries.

From what I can gather, 160 Wh/kg is currently possible with sodium-ion, maybe even a bit more in the future.

100 mile range battery - that’s about 30kwh or a whopping $1500 worth of battery cells. ICE won’t be able to compete to this.

that much range currently costs about $6000 for a Nissan replacement. Rumors are a longer range current EV battery like in the Ioniq is $50k to replace.

I don’t expect replacements to drop in price.

Also that’s just cell cost. It takes quite a bit to assemble a pack, plus profit margin.

p.s. I doubt that rumour, unless Hyundai really likes to milk their customers. Teslas largest packs are less than 20k. Small ones less than 10k (which is how much I save per year because power is cheap and gas is expensive here).

The problem lies on electric grid capacity. If we're phasing out fossil fuel powered transportation, we will have to upgrade massivelly electricity productions well as in grid capacity.

> The highest peak electricity demand in the UK in recent years was 62GW in 2002. Since then, the nation’s peak demand has fallen by roughly 16% due to improvements in energy efficiency.

> Even if we all switched to EVs overnight, we estimate demand would only increase by around 10%. So we’d still be using less power as a nation than we did in 2002, and this is well within the range the grid can capably handle.

> In the US, the grid is equally capable of handling more EVs on the roads – by the time 80% of the US owns an EV, this will only translate into a 10-15% increase in electricity consumption.1

https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/journey-to-net-zero/ele...

The way I think about this is that I use an L1 charger at home that draws 1500 watts about half the time (on a normal day).

That's ~= 15 light bulbs from the 1990's, or roughly 6 desktop PCs. I switched from incandescent to LED bulbs, and a desktop to a laptop, so that's almost enough to offset the EV's usage. Also, we have solar panels, and a house battery that can time shift our energy consumption.

A modern fridge and washing machine are both vastly more efficient, too.

Switching overnight is a silly scenario, and I agree we shouldn't pay much attention there.

The power grid also naturally grows from year to year. As more and more battery systems come online and are available to store and discharge power (your car, a household power backup system, solar, etc), the load on the grid will smooth out.

It would be really nice if there were a battery technology that could charge 100 miles in a few minutes, even if that meant you would be constantly charging on longer trips.

> I imagine a lot of people, that would be totally acceptable if it means lower cost, and batteries that effectively last forever without replacement.

MBAs at car manufacturing companies will ensure that battery pack cost savings are NOT passed on to the consumer, don't worry about that.

We were supposed to hit $100/KWh on battery packs several years ago, but EV prices skyrocketed instead, despite literally being in the same plastic/aluminum shitbox where every car looks alike.

Cheap battery packs = higher margins for companies.

Prices have already moderated a bit with slumping sales.