Out of Juice! 10-5-98

October 5, 1998 Design News

ANNUAL AUTO ISSUE Cover Story

Out of juice! Nation's charge toward electric cars stalls

After spending more than a billion dollars to develop battery-powered cars that most consumers don't want, automotive engineers admit they don't have a clue when those cars will be practical or economically competitive. This exclusive Design News report tells why.

Charles J. Murray, Senior Regional Editor

Orlando, FL--Dreams of an electric-car revolution any time soon are dead. Despite more than four decades of development effort, the most critical component--the battery--is nowhere near ready. And, automakers don't expect it to be by the end of the century.

Nor in 2010.

And probably not in 2020.

That's the consensus of engineers, industry analysts, and others interviewed in an eight-month Design News investigation into the state of electric vehicle battery technology. While executives at The Big Three and elsewhere still publicly express optimism, many engineers admit privately that they are now concentrating on the development of hybrid vehicles that use internal combustion engines to power electric drivetrains.

The toughest technical challenges stalling development of battery technology: energy density--the amount of energy engineers can squeeze into a battery pack--and cost.

The toughest political challenge: overcoming government ignorance of technology, and lack of commitment to its own programs.

Objective research shows little hope for solving these problems soon. A Delphi study published by Argonne National Laboratory predicts moderate energy density increases for EV batteries during the next 20 years--not enough to make a serious difference. "The outlook for pure electrics is not rosy," explains Anant Vyas, research engineer for Argonne National Laboratory's Center for Transportation Research.

Similarly, a separate Delphi study conducted by the University of Michigan's Office for the Study of Automotive Transportation forecasts that the number of so-called "pure" (not hybrid) electrics will inch from essentially 0% in 1997 to 2% in the year 2007. Privately, many automotive engineers consider even these dismal numbers to be optimistic.

Meanwhile, automakers are paying exorbitant sums for the EV batteries they use in the current generation of electric vehicles. Ford engineers say the company pays more than $30,000 for the nickel-metal-hydride battery pack for the Ranger EV, which it sells to the consumer for $32,795. Reports from GM indicate the cost of the battery pack for the EV1 is about $45,000 per unit. The vehicle sells for $33,995.

Nissan makes them look cheap. According to one source, the cost of the lithium-ion battery for the Altra is $600,000 per vehicle. While Nissan claims that figure is vastly inflated, the company did acknowledge in a December press conference that the per-unit cost is more than $100,000.

Experts are quick to point out that such figures are based on extraordinarily low volumes. But they also warn that the road to lower cost is a long one that will require patience on the part of automakers.

For reasons such as these, some automotive engineers have begun losing faith. They look at the cost, range, recharge time, and the dismal sales figures, and wonder aloud how higher volumes will ever be achieved. "Would you drive around in a car that offered 50-mile range?" asks one high-ranking EV engineer. "The people who buy electric vehicles have too much money."

Another puts it more succinctly: "The people who buy these vehicles must be wackos."

How can the country that put men on the moon be so confounded by the development of a battery? The answer: NASA engineers never needed to satisfy the pocketbook of the American consumer. "When we landed men on the moon, we didn't have to do it for $100 per kilowatt-hour," explains Donald R. Sadoway, a professor of materials science and engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a nationally recognized battery expert. "It's (battery development) the scientific equivalent of quicksand, deceptively simple, yet enormously complex."

Energy density. Despite four decades of trying, engineers have yet to find the right mix of chemical, electrochemical, material science, and manufacturing technology to boost energy density sufficiently. Average energy density in today's EV batteries is about 70W-hr/kg (one W-hr/kg is roughly one mile of range in a four-passenger sedan). Automakers say that providing far-greater driving ranges will require years of basic research by battery makers to find new alloys for cathodes and anodes. Merely cutting the weight of mechanical components--thereby enabling a vehicle to pack more batteries on board--is not enough.

So far, each new breakthrough has run into a major snag. If the battery's materials are reactive enough to produce high energy, they often suffer from corrosion, material instability, or unwanted reactions. 

Low production volumes account for part of the high-cost of EVs today. But even higher volumes won't eliminate all the extra costs

Cost control. Battery cost is far more critical for autos than it is for, say, laptop computers or cell phones. Laptop computer owners, for example, typically pay $5,000-$10,000 per kilowatt-hour for a battery. Cell phone users pay approximately $1,000 per kilowatt-hour. Automakers say they need to offer their customers $100-per-kilowatt-hour batteries.

They're not even close. The best long-term EV batteries now cost $10,000 to $20,000 per kilowatt-hour. Getting to the $100-per-kilowatt-hour level, automakers say, will require battery makers to invest in basic research in electrochemistry and material science. Then they must raise the production volume, and do the necessary manufacturing engineering studies to lower the cost even more. But, despite claims to the contrary, all of that cost cannot be removed merely by raising production volume.

Failure to solve these problems is among the reasons that public acceptance of EVs is low. General Motors has delivered just 432 EV1s since introducing them two years ago. And the numbers for other EVs are similarly puny (see chart on p. 99). After two years of effort, the world's biggest automakers have combined to sell or lease less than 1,500 electric vehicles.

Short-term thinking. Despite the obvious need for long-term research to build a future for electric vehicles, automakers say government agencies are forcing them down a path that actually hurts the long-term chances for electric vehicle battery technology. Federal agencies threaten states with cutoffs of highway funds if they don't clean their air. So, instead of encouraging work on long-term technologies that might actually be competitive, state agencies have forced investment in short-term fixes--and threaten heavy fines when automakers fall short.

"Despite everyone's best efforts, our progress in batteries isn't where we'd like it to be," notes Marty D. Friedman, strategy and planning manager for alternate fuel vehicles at Ford Motor Co. "You just can't wish technology into existence, and you can't regulate it into existence, either."

Conflicting views. Overwhelming evidence to the contrary, some are still supremely confident of the technology's ultimate success. Among them: politicians and environmentalists, many of whom discount the engineering challenges. "If they developed and marketed these the way they market sport utility vehicles, electric vehicles would have no problem in New York," a New York-based environmentalist told The Wall Street Journal last December.

Similarly, battery makers have been unflinchingly optimistic. "The genie is out of the bottle and no one can put him back in," notes Subhash Dhar, president and chief operating officer of Ovonic Battery Co. "The electric vehicle will be an everyday transportation vehicle, if not in 1999 or 2000, then certainly by 2001."

Automakers, however, see it differently. Many automotive engineers believe that battery manufacturers have repeatedly overstated their forecasts. And knowledgeable observers agree that such practices are commonplace. "If the battery maker doesn't promise to meet the automakers' goals, however ridiculous they may be, then they don't get any money," notes Elton Cairns, professor of chemical engineering at the University of California-Berkeley and a developer of EV batteries for GM in the 1960s. "So it becomes a sort of liars' contest. Whoever tells the most credible lie gets the money."

Disappointing history. So what happened to the bouncy optimism of the late 1980s? Reality checked in, bringing with it a string of disappointments in battery technology.

After a half-century hiatus, engineers resurrected EV battery technology in the 1960s, then stepped up the pace during the oil embargo of the 1970s. Since that time, suppliers have touted the potential of a long list of different solutions, including: zinc-air; lithium-sulfur; zinc-nickel oxide; sodium-sulfur; nickel-iron and lead-acid, among others. Most solutions have dropped out of the picture, for reasons ranging from temperature problems to cycle life shortcomings.

The new crop of batteries, however, has also disappointed automakers. Predictions of battery packs that would provide 300 miles of range and 15-minute recharge times haven't materialized, despite more than $260 million in funding from the United Sta