Charles, I agree completely with you on this point. I'm driving a Toyota Pre-Runner and I cannot justify an EV at $40k as a replacement. I have a 74 mile round-trip commute every day to one client. Right now, until the industry can generate more miles between charges and bring down the purchase price, an EV is just not in my future.
I agree, Chuck. The lithium-ion battery seems to have hit a wall. But who knows. In the time it takes for a battery based on alternative chemestry becomes feasible, the lithium-ion battery may have sacled its wall.
Good point, Dennis. I drive a car with 175,000 miles on it and I believe it's got at least another 75,000 left. My son drives a car with 190,000 miles on it. Average vehicle life has soared over the last 20 years. Regarding high volume EVs: You hit it on the head. The key lies in your use of the words "high volume." Pure EVs are great, fun vehicles to drive, but the average consumer can't afford a second car that costs $30,000 to $40,000. Until higher energy batteries are readily available and until cost drops, pure EVs will see low volumes.
I agree, Rob. If EV battery chemistries are going to come remotely close to what gasoline already gives us, this is the way it will happen. The people I spoke to said we have to be ready to move beyond lithium-ion, and the ARPA-e program is a great way to start doing that.
@Contrarian - Be prepared for news headlines like "heavy rains and flooding take toll on cardboard bikes". Will be drying the bike for a long time to use it as fuel to keep warm over the winter nights.
First, we need to acknowldge that Moore's law only applies to the manufacturing technology side of product advancement. What batteries need now is a discovery of additional physics and chemistry functionality. So the advances are not guarranteed. The other challenge is that even after discovering some combination that will provide some mechanism for greater energy storage, it will still need to be made durable and inexpensive and cheap to manufacture. Just because something works in a simulation model, or even in a laboratory, does not mean that it can ever be practical or producable. Reality can be so very harsh.
It really would be very funny for some fantastic battery technology to be developed, and then have it forbidden in the state of california because it was "toxic". Actually, it might point out the folly of letting emotions run your show. I would certainly be one to laugh loud and long if it happened.
It would be interesting to hear from the environmentalist 9green) lobby if it turns out that the only method of improving EV technology involves toxic materials
Little about any EV is "green". When you factor in all that goes into raw materials (plastic, metal, rubber, electronics), fabrication, energy storage, operation/maintenance and disposal (plus the roads they're driven on) all vehicles are a messy proposition. EV's are the great fallacy of green initiatives. If it were up to the enviroweenies we'd all be driving these:
The one comment given that the Lithium-Sulfur battery could be looking at a vehicle life of 150K miles seems really short sighted to me. Many vehicles today break 200k or even 300k without major repairs.
Interesting article.
More than anyone else I've read Charles, you have convinced me (through the data presented) that a commercially viable, high volume, EV is still quite a way in the future.
It stands to reason that any improvement in battery energy density technology will first be applied to less demanding applications, such as mobile computing and communication devices, and only later scaled up to the kilowatt range demanded by transportation. In fact, the technology might not prove to be scalable at all.
It would be interesting to hear from the environmentalist 9green) lobby if it turns out that the only method of improving EV technology involves toxic materials (such as lead-acid). Would it be banned in California?
Chuck, while the payoff for new battery chemistry may be years away, it's good to see this deep research going on. There is a ton of common technology that wouldn't exist now if not for the deep, raw research.
Andrew Morris designed a circuit that could detect a stroke victim's groan and convert the sound into a signal so caregivers would know when help was needed.
New disc magnet motors fit into the design trend of stepping up to closed loop performance while maintaining the cost advantage of stepper motor technology.
At the Design News webinar on June 27, learn all about aluminum extrusion: designing the right shape so it costs the least, is simplest to manufacture, and best fits the application's structural requirements.
On April 21, NASA launched a novel project, putting into orbit three satellites that employ an off-the-shelf commercial smartphone as the control system.
From Dell / Intel® New Paradigms in Design Work Scott Hamilton, vertical market strategist for Dell Precision workstations, 5/2/2013 5
Early in my career, I worked as a draftsman and remember the days of drawing on vellum with numbered pencils and Mylar with plastic lead. This was a fun experience in the sense that I ...
I've been using workstations for more than 10 years and love finding ways to get more performance from my system. With demanding professional applications that require more power each ...
A lasting memory from my first job as an engineer in an auto assembly plant is standing on hard concrete at six in the morning, vending-machine coffee clutched in hand, listening to ...
For industrial control applications, or even a simple assembly line, that machine can go almost 24/7 without a break. But what happens when the task is a little more complex? That’s where the “smart” machine would come in. The smart machine is one that has some simple (or complex in some cases) processing capability to be able to adapt to changing conditions. Such machines are suited for a host of applications, including automotive, aerospace, defense, medical, computers and electronics, telecommunications, consumer goods, and so on. This radio show will show what’s possible with smart machines, and what tradeoffs need to be made to implement such a solution.
To save this item to your list of favorite Design News content so you can find it later in your Profile page, click the "Save It" button next to the item.
If you found this interesting or useful, please use the links to the services below to share it with other readers. You will need a free account with each service to share an item via that service.
Tweet This
0 
