Battery Electric Vehicle News / Enjoying the Transportation Revolution

Martyn1981

Interesting BEV bus milestone:

Electric Bus Fleet In Washington Has Completed 50 MWh Of Wireless Charging

According to Momentum Dynamics, which provided the wireless charging solutions, the choice was made in part due to the high efficiency of its system. The key selling point, naturally, is this allowed an electric bus to drive with essentially unlimited range thanks to automatic opportunity charging along the bus’s route. While stopping for passengers, the buses were collecting energy as well.

The news now is that 50 MWh of energy have now been transmitted wirelessly for these electric buses in Wenatchee, Washington.

Momentum notes that even during the cold 2019–2020 winter weather, a Wenatchee bus featuring the wireless system ran a 14-hour scheduled route and maintained its battery charge above 90% the whole way through the journey.

Martyn1981

I was going to pop this in the Energy News thread, but then it dawned on me that this could be a market boost for BEV's, since it adds value to the 'old' BEV battery if traded in for a new one/upgrade. I appreciate it's not new news to repurpose old batts, but if it's the economical solution/choice then that can't hurt.

MIT Study Says Using Retired EV Batteries For Grid-Scale Energy Storage Could Be Profitable

New research from MIT finds that re-purposing EV batteries for grid-scale energy storage duties can be profitable for all parties, provided some basic assumptions are met. First, the batteries should have a minimum of 80% capacity remaining. Using a hypothetical 2.5 megawatt solar farm located in California as a model, the researchers found adding a new lithium-ion storage battery would cost more than using re-purposed EV batteries, provided the used batteries cost 60% or less of their original value.

michaels

Martyn1981 said:

I was going to pop this in the Energy News thread, but then it dawned on me that this could be a market boost for BEV's, since it adds value to the 'old' BEV battery if traded in for a new one/upgrade. I appreciate it's not new news to repurpose old batts, but if it's the economical solution/choice then that can't hurt.

MIT Study Says Using Retired EV Batteries For Grid-Scale Energy Storage Could Be Profitable

New research from MIT finds that re-purposing EV batteries for grid-scale energy storage duties can be profitable for all parties, provided some basic assumptions are met. First, the batteries should have a minimum of 80% capacity remaining. Using a hypothetical 2.5 megawatt solar farm located in California as a model, the researchers found adding a new lithium-ion storage battery would cost more than using re-purposed EV batteries, provided the used batteries cost 60% or less of their original value.

Isn't this what the whole 'million mile battery' is all about - most vehicles don't need a million mile battery but if the pack is still suitable for stationary storage when the vehicle is retired at 10 years 120k miles then the cost of the battery for use in the vehicle can be calculated based on the residual end of life value effectively reducing the cost for the vehicle part of its lifecycle.

[Problem is this requires a value to be put on storage batteries in 10-15 years time - anyone care to estimate a KWH value of a stationary battery pack in 2035?!]

ABrass

It'd be interesting to read the study, from what I've gleaned it relies on batteries at 80% capacity for 60% of the cost.
Which is fine, but a battery that's at 80% capacity today has been in a car for a while. For a Nissan leaf probably around 5 years.
https://pushevs.com/2018/03/20/nissan-leaf-battery-degradation-data-24-vs-30-kwh-batteries/

However since 2015, when a hypothetical 80% battery would have been built, the batter price has dropped from around $373 per kWh to under $150.
https://about.bnef.com/blog/behind-scenes-take-lithium-ion-battery-prices/
https://about.bnef.com/blog/behind-scenes-take-lithium-ion-battery-prices/

So are they assuming that the batteries they're buying are at 60% of the original cost ($224/kWh) , in which case they're more expensive than new ones, or 60% of the cost of the equivalent rated volume at current prices, in which case they're expecting a significant discount.

Martyn1981

zeupater said:

ABrass said:

It'll be interesting to see if Xpeng can produce them in significant numbers. So far they seem to be a very small manufacturer.

The FSD hardware isn't that important, it's the software that is still lacking. For that Tesla, with nearly a million units in the road, most of which are able to contribute to training the software, is in a pretty good and unique position.

Hi

... and even more importantly, the level of 'exposure' & 'experience' the AI has had to adequately tune the internal decision making process. That's the really big advantage that Tesla has & it'll take plenty of time for any on the competition to play catch-up ... by the time they've built enough cars (a million ??) to have access to around a billion miles of autonomous driving data they may be in a similar position to where Tesla are today, by which time there'll almost certainly be millions more Teslas on the road adding billions of additional experiences to the autonomous driving 'learning' ....

... catch up can be pretty hard if you're still on the start line & the competition is already miles down the road & still accelerating as hard (or faster!) as (/than) you're likely to be able to ....

If, as widely reported, Tesla currently have a 10 year development & technology advantage over any serious competition why would we expect everyone to have caught up in 10 years time? ... wouldn't it be more likely that at the end of 10 years the very concepts of continuous improvement & growing economies of scale will have extended the gap further? ... for example, maybe in 10 years time the gap will still be 2 years, or 5 years, or 10 years ... or more! ... without a crystal ball who knows (?), but as long as Tesla continue to innovate in line with their historical trend and the competition continue to respond to the market & technology situation that existed at a point almost a decade ago things will certainly remain interesting!!

HTH - Z

Hi Z, just watched a vid on software, and whilst some of it was above my pay scale, I thought of you and this post, and that you might find it interesting as it looks at the different approaches old school car firms v's tech companies take. And the 'bod' is a software engineer, cutting his teeth on the F-18 (please tell me he's joking about the use of punch cards?)

Why Tesla's Lead In Software Is Huge & Growing

Also, having re-read your post, I note you use the term 'continuous improvement'. This wouldn't have caught my eye before, but having watched the Sandy Munro vids of the TMY stripdown, I learnt the difference between continual improvement (build a better car each time you launch a new model year, or new car), and continuous improvement (build a better car throughout the production run) which is something he tried to promote with car companies through his career.

Martyn1981

ABrass said:

It'd be interesting to read the study, from what I've gleaned it relies on batteries at 80% capacity for 60% of the cost.
Which is fine, but a battery that's at 80% capacity today has been in a car for a while. For a Nissan leaf probably around 5 years.
https://pushevs.com/2018/03/20/nissan-leaf-battery-degradation-data-24-vs-30-kwh-batteries/

However since 2015, when a hypothetical 80% battery would have been built, the batter price has dropped from around $373 per kWh to under $150.
https://about.bnef.com/blog/behind-scenes-take-lithium-ion-battery-prices/
https://about.bnef.com/blog/behind-scenes-take-lithium-ion-battery-prices/

So are they assuming that the batteries they're buying are at 60% of the original cost ($224/kWh) , in which case they're more expensive than new ones, or 60% of the cost of the equivalent rated volume at current prices, in which case they're expecting a significant discount.

Hiya the paragraph from the MIT article states:

They found that the new battery installation would not provide a reasonable net return on investment, but that a properly managed system of used EV batteries could be a good, profitable investment as long as the batteries cost less than 60 percent of their original price.

But I totally agree with you and suspect something is being lost in translation. The caveat is 'less' than 60% which could of course be 1% or zero. Totally making this up, so don't take it as correct, but perhaps the 60% figure would relate to newish batteries (I know that doesn't make much sense but I'm simply looking for meaning) whose cost is still similar to the cost of buying new batts for stationary storage, and the 'less' bit becomes more significant as we look at the original price of an old batt, which as you say would otherwise cost more than a new one.
In fact that line is starting to bug me a bit, and I think something along the lines of 'as long as the batteries are cheap enough compared to new prices' (only worded better).

Solarchaser

Not sure what average ev mileage is for a leaf, but my 15 plate (so 5 years old) just under 30k miles leaf is at  89.2% health according to leafspy,  so 80% should be easily achieved. 
I think earlier leafs (2011-13 year leafs) had different chemistry so may degrade more?

michaels

Lets say the battery pack in a Tesla today costs $150 per kwh.  It is a 1m mile battery and in 15 years when the car is no longer worth keeping on the road it is 75% original capacity but that in this time the price of batteries has fallen to 1/3 so $50per kwh, our battery now only has 0.75kwh left due to the degradation so is worth $37.50.  Not a lot but, when working out the battery cost of using the battery in the car we have an outgoing of $150 now but an income of $37.50 in 15 years - npv maybe $25.  Not huge but a useful reduction in battery lifetime cost for the car use to an effective $125.

zeupater

Martyn1981 said:

zeupater said:

ABrass said:

It'll be interesting to see if Xpeng can produce them in significant numbers. So far they seem to be a very small manufacturer.

The FSD hardware isn't that important, it's the software that is still lacking. For that Tesla, with nearly a million units in the road, most of which are able to contribute to training the software, is in a pretty good and unique position.

Hi

... and even more importantly, the level of 'exposure' & 'experience' the AI has had to adequately tune the internal decision making process. That's the really big advantage that Tesla has & it'll take plenty of time for any on the competition to play catch-up ... by the time they've built enough cars (a million ??) to have access to around a billion miles of autonomous driving data they may be in a similar position to where Tesla are today, by which time there'll almost certainly be millions more Teslas on the road adding billions of additional experiences to the autonomous driving 'learning' ....

... catch up can be pretty hard if you're still on the start line & the competition is already miles down the road & still accelerating as hard (or faster!) as (/than) you're likely to be able to ....

If, as widely reported, Tesla currently have a 10 year development & technology advantage over any serious competition why would we expect everyone to have caught up in 10 years time? ... wouldn't it be more likely that at the end of 10 years the very concepts of continuous improvement & growing economies of scale will have extended the gap further? ... for example, maybe in 10 years time the gap will still be 2 years, or 5 years, or 10 years ... or more! ... without a crystal ball who knows (?), but as long as Tesla continue to innovate in line with their historical trend and the competition continue to respond to the market & technology situation that existed at a point almost a decade ago things will certainly remain interesting!!

HTH - Z

Hi Z, just watched a vid on software, and whilst some of it was above my pay scale, I thought of you and this post, and that you might find it interesting as it looks at the different approaches old school car firms v's tech companies take. And the 'bod' is a software engineer, cutting his teeth on the F-18 (please tell me he's joking about the use of punch cards?)

Why Tesla's Lead In Software Is Huge & Growing

Also, having re-read your post, I note you use the term 'continuous improvement'. This wouldn't have caught my eye before, but having watched the Sandy Munro vids of the TMY stripdown, I learnt the difference between continual improvement (build a better car each time you launch a new model year, or new car), and continuous improvement (build a better car throughout the production run) which is something he tried to promote with car companies through his career.

Hi

Call it whatever is the 'buzzword' of the day ... 5S's, six sigma, CI, LIFE ... etc it's a pretty basic process & product concept which is central to the reality that many manufactured products from companies that have embraced the approach are generally better quality, more reliable and considerably cheaper (relatively) than their counterparts of (say) 30-40years ago, even if they are superficially the same ...

Anyway, regarding the competitor that recent remarks have raised, I'm starting to see plenty of  reports that have sparked concerns as to where some of the major stakeholders (investors / customers etc) consider the future path to be ... if a company with extraordinarily large piles of liquid cash reserves isn't eager to continue to throw money into a 'guaranteed gold mine' and is starting to share exposure with other parties,then questions open up related to their own confidence in the future of their own project!! ....

The Tesla AI approach is pretty typical and falls in line with such systems I've evaluated, implemented & worked with ... this is exactly the same as what I've seen in the past & is basically built around the processing concept of  "I know what to do" ..alt ..."this is similar but different to previous experience so I'll stop & flag (/return to manual operation mode) - should I be worried?, what should I do when I see this condition again?, does this apply to intermediate conditions between previous parameter understanding & new condition?", etc .. obviously the rate of development is highly related to the number of extraordinary conditions experienced & a significant proportion of those will be geographically, seasonally & weather interconnected, all of which are related to the 'real world' as opposed to whatever conditions a limited development team can build a limited number of simulations for the AI to encounter, so the 'real world' encounters combined with a rapid development/engineering/prototype/solution approach would likely be a far more logical & successful strategy .... whilst certain autonomy solutions have racked up ~20million miles in extremely controlled & geographically limited environments supplemented by simulated operation , others are likely gathering as much data related to 'new experiences' on different types of roads all over the world in all weather conditions whilst operating within the scope of local (/differing!) highway & operating regulatory requirements, not every decade, year or month, but  probably every week, before testing solutions through their own simulation models! ..... that's what having ~2000x more test beds which have been sold to paying customer which are being operated as data collection nodes by those customers for free provides - an economic advantage over the what is widely considered to be the main competition, who continue to operate their own fleet using employed 'backup' drivers ...

Effectively, to accelerate development one approach burns their primary capital resource, cash, whilst the other makes a return on capital or even a profit!!

HTH - Z

Coastalwatch

Good news for British car manufacturers and energy storage firms not to mention employment prospects for up to 4000 jobs. Lets hope they don't leave it too long before getting started!

AMTE Power and Britishvolt sign MoU for UK’s landmark battery Giga Factory

London, 20.05.20: AMTE Power and Britishvolt are pleased to announce plans to investigatecollaborating to build the UK’s first full cycle battery cell GigaPlant, servicing the automotive and energy storage markets. Both parties have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) focussed on each other`s complementary ambitions to create and expand an onshore manufacturing supply chain. The successful outcome of the collaboration would enable scalable production of a diverse product portfolio of lithium ion batteries to support the country’s Road to Zero targets and unprecedented transition to electrification.

Britishvolt will be a global leader in producing high performance green lithium Ion batteries. It will become one of the largest industrial investments in British history.

https://britishvolt.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/AMTE-Britishvolt-PressRelease-20200520.pdf