MIT Technolocy Review on Lithium-ion for transportation

[kristopher]

An Electrifying Startup

A new lithium-ion battery from A123 Systems could help electric cars and hybrids come to dominate the roads.

It is the quickest electric motorcycle in the world. On a popular YouTube video, the black dragster cycle nearly disappears in a cloud of smoke as the driver does a "burn-out," spinning the back wheel to heat it up. As the smoke drifts away, the driver settles into position and hits a switch, and the bike surges forward, accelerating to 60 miles per hour in less than a second. Seven seconds later it crosses the quarter-mile mark at 168 miles per hour--quick enough to compete with gas-powered dragsters.

What powers the "Killacycle" is a novel lithium-ion battery developed by A123 Systems, a startup in Watertown, MA--one of a handful of companies working on similar technology. The company's batteries store more than twice as much energy as nickel-metal hydride batteries, the type used in today's hybrid cars, while delivering the bursts of power necessary for high performance. A radically modified version of the lithium-ion batteries used in portable electronics, the technology could jump-start the long-sputtering electric-vehicle market, which today represents a tiny fraction of 1 percent of vehicle sales in the United States. A123's batteries in particular have attracted the interest of General Motors, which is testing them as a way to power the Volt, an electric car with a gasoline generator; the vehicle is expected to go into mass production as early as 2010.

In the past, automakers have blamed electric vehicles' poor sales on their lead-acid or nickel-metal hydride batteries, which were so heavy that they limited the vehicles' range and so bulky that they took up trunk space. While conventional lithium-ion batteries are much lighter and more compact, they're not cost effective for electric vehicles. That's partly because they use lithium cobalt oxide electrodes, which can be unstable: batteries based on them wear out after a couple of years and can burst into flame if punctured, crushed, overcharged, or overheated. Some auto­makers have tried to engineer their way around these problems, but the results have been expensive.

A123's batteries could finally make lithium-ion technology practical for the auto industry. Instead of cobalt oxide, they use an electrode material made from nanoparticles of lithium iron phosphate modified with trace metals. The resulting batteries are unlikely to catch fire, even if crushed in an accident. They are also much hardier than conventional lithium-ion batteries: A123 predicts that they will last longer than the typical lifetime of a car....

http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=20570&ch=specialsections&sc=batteries&pg=1

[HysteryDiagnosis]

1. Bad link I think. Please check, perhaps it is overloaded, one can

only hope. :)

[kristopher]

2. Worked fine, if a little slow. nt

[HysteryDiagnosis]

4. Here's a couple for you, I'm sure you've already been into this but

just in case....

Tesla Roadster: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhgctsVIrWc

You've just got to see this....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqqtJpfZElQ

[phantom power]

3. I love their name. It's like a plumbing company advertising in the yellow pages.

In fact, they should have gone with "AAA123 Systems"

[kristopher]

5. They probably got tired of worrying about irrelevancies. nt

[JohnWxy]

6. very interesting article. Of course, you realize if this is recharged off the power grid

YOu will be switching one fossil fuel for another, petroleum gasoline for coal and natural gas.
It's going to take a while (decades) to get wind power up to a significant portion of the total power output for the U.S. Unless the car owner wanted to buy his own smaller wind-turbine (not sure how much they cost (assuming he lives somewhere that will allow such installations)).

I think JD. Powers estimate of when GM will be selling 300,000 per year (by 2014) is a bit of science fiction, really.

But still, it is a technology worth pursuing.

[kristopher]

7. With gas over $4 a gallon, people's buying habits are going to change

Wind is already 39% of new installed generation, and that is with lackluster government policy support. It will take decades for renewable to fully supplant coal, but it isn't going to take decades to start taking advantage of the synergy between electric drive and load balancing for renewables. The main obstacle to this point for renewables has been the cost the renewables themselves - but wind has now dropped to competitive levels - and the cost of load balancing and dispatchability in a system dominated by greater intermittency. We now have cost effective answers to that obstacle also, so given the advancing price of carbon fuels, I think that at this point massive penetration of the market is only restrained by manufacturing capability. There is presently a three year wait on turbines and it is increasing. Manufacturers are trying to ramp up, but they can't move fast enough. As an international example, China just raised their goal from 20 GW by 2020 to 100 GW by 2020.

And I believe that switching to plug in EVs, even in the present grid configuration, produces a significant reduction in carbon emissions because of the tremendous inefficiencies of the internal combustion engine. I don't think there are any firm numbers on this because of the variation in local fuel mixes for the grid electricity and uncertainty over rate of market penetration for the EVs and renewables.

Finally another factor you'd want to include in your forecasts would be increased CAFE and Zero Emissions standards; both of which are policy tools induce the introduction of electric vehicles.

[TheWraith]

11. Even if you assume that's true, it's still better.

For one thing, on a pure energy for energy level, a coal plant is actually more efficient than a car. Second, you're forgetting that a large part of our grid electricity is already clean, in the for of nuclear and hydro power.

Frankly, I don't find 300k by 2014 at all unreasonable.

[JohnWxy]

12. According to the U.S. Energy Inforamation Administration -(DOE)

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/pdf/pages/sec1_5.pdf
Energy Consumption U.S.
(Quadrillion Btu)
Year fossil nuclear renewable total
......... fuels ................ consumption
-------------------------------------------
2006 84.760 8.208 6.844 99.873 <-----------(fossil fuels look to be about 85% of total)

Excel table, Production by source:
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/merquery/mer_data.asp?table=T01.02

also:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/pdf/pages/sec1.pdf


HIgher level link (one level up)
Annual Energy Review (AER) - long-term historical statistics all in one place:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/overview.html

[kristopher]

13. Coal averages about 46% of our electric energy mix

And coal is the main culprit.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat1p1.html

Battery EVs charged off the existing grid use are less carbon intensive than petroleum ICE.

[diane in sf]

14. If you remember my previous reply to you--it's still way less energy and CO2 productive

to charge off the grid instead of using fossil fuels--even when the grid is powered by coal.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x145833

[Duppers]

8. the lithium-ion batteries

for my electric scooter are so expensive. I hope the new ones are more cost-effective.

[kristopher]

9. How are they performing?

The cost will come down as more manufacturing comes online, just like any other mass produced commodity.

Power tool maker are switching to LIon, that is a nice sized market to get things rolling.

[93ncsu]

10. These guys need to get together with the Stanford researcher ...

who discovered how to increase battery storage 10 times:

"Stanford researchers have found a way to use silicon nanowires to reinvent the rechargeable lithium-ion batteries that power laptops, iPods, video cameras, cell phones, and countless other devices.

The new technology, developed through research led by Yi Cui, assistant professor of materials science and engineering, produces 10 times the amount of electricity of existing lithium-ion, known as Li-ion, batteries. A laptop that now runs on battery for two hours could operate for 20 hours, a boon to ocean-hopping business travelers.

"It's not a small improvement," Cui said. "It's a revolutionary development."

The breakthrough is described in a paper, "High-performance lithium battery anodes using silicon nanowires," published online Dec. 16 in Nature Nanotechnology, written by Cui, his graduate chemistry student Candace Chan and five others.

The greatly expanded storage capacity could make Li-ion batteries attractive to electric car manufacturers. Cui suggested that they could also be used in homes or offices to store electricity generated by rooftop solar panels.

..."

Nanowire battery can hold 10 times the charge of existing lithium-ion battery

[kristopher]

15. They know about it, and are extremely excited

This development, should price effective manufacturing techniques work themselves out, represents clearing the final hurdle to public acceptance of the battery electric vehicle. I understand that the actual capacity is about 8X current capacity. Since the eBox battery now in use delivers between 120-150 miles per charge, this is expected to up the range to between 840-1000 miles per charge.

The word is you wont see them coming off the assembly line in less than 8 years, however.

We can hope for sooner if the new pres. pushes R&D and manufacturing infrastructure funding.