#Batteries

Thinking about getting an EV? Better move to a balmier state.

“It turns out batteries are like people. They love room temperature,” Bill Wallace, director of Global Battery Systems at GM said at an energy forum at the University of Chicago. He had come under fire, ammunition courtesy of Consumer Reports which said its tests showed the battery’s range of the Chevy Volt would last only 23 to 28 miles in cold weather.

Unimpressed by BYD’s aborting of the pure plug-in EV, Nissan is betting the farm on us plugging in instead of gassing up. A few days ago, Nissan officially introduced the Leaf, the world’s first mass-produced EV in the standard passenger class, seating five. It won’t totally replace the internal combustion engine, at least not at the plant where it is made.

Did you know that the Volt’s most important and priciest ingredient comes from Korea? The Volt battery is made by LG Chem, the battery arm of the Korean company formerly known as Lucky Goldstar. Noises coming from Korea indicate that GM might be building more Volts than thought. How do the Koreans know that? GM ordered more batteries.



Editor’s Note: On Monday, TTAC’s Martin Schwoerer wrote about a planned record-breaking non-stop run of 600 KMs, from Munich to Berlin, with a car that was equipped with a “revolutionary” electric battery system. Something smells funny, he said, and vowed to donate 100 Euros in case the drive was completed. Well, it was. So, how does it feel to have pie on your face?

How about Vegetarians Against the klan? Or maybe the Tugg Speedman Foundation? No, there are probably better organisations to give my money to. Guess I’ll ask the Best & Brightest…

Volvo, now in the hands of China’s Geely, may revolutionize the way electric and hybrid cars are built. Currently, you have to shove a big honking battery into an electric car, and a simple honking battery into a hybrid. This adds weight, and obesity is a killer when in come to mileage. Volvo, working with the Imperial College in London has a wild idea: Why not dispense with the big honking battery and use the whole auto body to store electricity. Say what?

Recently, Nissan claimed that their Leaf will have a battery production cost of $375/kWh. A what? Anyway, this was:

1. Surprising as battery costs for an electric cars were forecast to be between $400 – $700/kWh.
2. Meaningless, as long as people thing in lease rate /month and MPG (and conveniently forget it.

But Tesla’s founding father didn’t like that at all.

What about battery production? It’s one of the most popular criticisms of the green halo surrounding battery-electric vehicles, and one that’s widely circulated in anti-EV circles. Battery production, it is argued, requires the mining, transportation and processing of minerals which puts EVs at an environmental disadvantage compared to ICE vehicles. Needless to say, quantifying the impacts of ICE and electric drivetrain production is extremely difficult, due to the complexity and global supply chains required to produce both (not to mention the inherent difficulty of quantifying environmental impacts). But a study by the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology [via Green Car Congress] took on just that question, and indicates that

the impact of a Li-ion battery used in BEVs for transport service is relatively small. In contrast, it is the operation phase that remains the dominant contributor to the environmental burden caused by transport service as long as the electricity for the BEV is not produced by renewable hydropower.

Range anxiety. The performance angst and penis envy of the new millennium. So you want to be nice to the planet. You no longer want to desecrate dead dinosaurs. You want to plug in and tune out.

But you also want visit grandpa and grandma who live 150 miles away, and you don’t want to overstay your welcome with an orange cord dangling out of the window. What to do? It’s so simple, that we wonder why nobody has thought of it:

Which part of the car of the future can cost more than half of the car, but has a lifespan a little better than a set of brake disks? The battery. No wonder that battery making is what suppliers focus on. If EVs catch on, you want to be in the battery business. Toshiba and Mitsubishi Motors have ganged-up to produce batteries together, says The Nikkei [sub].

After one year of ownership we would expect EV residual values to be above the segment average expressed in terms of pound values. But, if the battery is owned rather than leased, and lacks the appropriate extended warranty, the value of the typical EV will then fall dramatically until the vehicle is five years old, at which point the car will have a trade value little more than 10 per cent of the list price

So says Andy Carroll, managing director of the British car-buying bible, Glass’s Guide. He tells BusinessCar that Nissan and other firms launching EVs in Britain should take out the battery cost and lease it to customers with minimum monthly performance clauses. This, he says, would dispel concerns, drive sales, and transform the resale picture. It’s also what Project Better Place is doing, albeit in a complete regional package with battery-swap stations and charging infrastructure.

When people get married, they normally follow it up with a honeymoon and (at least traditionally) the consummation of said marriage. So, when Daimler and Renault-Nissan got hitched, how do you think they’d celebrate their first year of marriage? Build a car a together? Announce a joint venture factory? Start sharing dealerships? No. They had an argument. Just like your old polyamorous married couple.

After a two year neck-and-neck race between battery makers LG Chem and A123, GM awarded its Volt contract to Lucky Goldstar – make that LG Chem, or rather their subsidiary Compact Power: Now the Lucky Guys are waiting for the thing to hit the road in large quantities. A123 was widely regarded as the far better technology, the Koreans most likely were cheaper – we’ll most likely never know.

Now, A123 cut a possibly much bigger and more lucrative deal. A123 is forming a joint venture with China’s top carmaker SAIC to build and sell battery systems for electric vehicles in the world’s largest auto market, and possibly beyond.