EVs Could Last Nearly Forever—If Car Companies Let Them
EVs Could Last Nearly Forever—If Car Companies Let Them
An electric car capable of running for 1 million miles is within reach.
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Last nearly forever? That needs to be broken down into details. Aren't batteries for EV limited to about 10 years of use? And they're a costly replacement?
A good solution would be to make EV batteries easily swappable instead of "charge stations"...
I think we will stick with built-in batteries rather than any kind of swapping. I always thought the battery swapping idea was neat, but the real world cares about money more than anything.
To have ubiquitous battery swapping stations would be a huge amount of infrastructure. But to have ubiquitous vehicle charging you basically just have to run wires to existing parking spots.
That is combined with the fact that I think batteries, especially LFP batteries, have a lot more cycles in their lifetime than your 10 year estimate would suggest. I’ve read 4000 cycles for LFP in a few places. That’s more than a decade even if you fully charge and discharge the battery every single day. Drive a more realistic number of miles/kms per day and then the chronological age of the battery might be more important than how many cycles are on it.
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Swappable batteries are a giant headache, charging is better.
Batteries are lasting longer and longer, LFP are already able to last 20 times as long as typical lithium ion, while using less cobalt.
Modern EV tech is still relatively new. It took combustion cars a long time to get to present day longevity and efficiency. EVs will catch up.
Not really. They're quite popular in Asian countries.
There's a couple thousand in China for Nio, but they haven't really taken off anywhere else.
By contrast there's over 1.8 million public EV chargers in China alone.
Batteries are heavy, which makes them hard to move and requires secure attachment to the vehicle. EV chargers have no moving parts and require much less maintenance.
The thing is you don't need heavy batteries if you can swap them every 100-150km or so.
150km of range usually requires about 200kg of lithium ion batteries. More for larger vehicles.
What's wrong with charging? At 350KW you can get 150km of range in 5 minutes.
Not if your car is a small one ala Fiat 500E. And bigger cars should not exist.
The Fiat 500e's battery weighs 295kg.
With a range of 320km. Cut it in half and it becomes very manageable. Partition it and you can replace it without heavy duty tools.