National Vehicle Electrification: Battery Swap vs. Fast Charging

The cart is dragging the horse as the economically and electrical engineering clueless are now debating where to put the infrastructure for recharging (fueling) electrified motor vehicles.

All we have to do, they say, is change the transportation fueling, the shopping habits, and the daily routines we have built up over the last 100 years as soon as possible.

They skirt around the fact that we will also have to reconstruct our electric power distribution grid, and do so in the light of changing our electricity demand cycles, and avoid fast charging except in emergency situations while we're at it. But wait. What was that last thing we need to do?

There is today NO widely distributed system to provide fast-charging stations for large numbers of electrified motor vehicle batteries to be recharged at random times.

The reason is simple; it is FAR EASIER, safer, more economical, and less time consuming, to swap a charged battery for an exhausted one than to give a "low" battery a "fast charge." Why is this, you ask? It is because "fast charging" a battery shortens its cycle life. It is an emergency procedure only for today's universally used lead-acid storage batteries. GOT THAT? Fast charging is deleterious to the mechanical structure of all known existing widely used storage batteries. Plus, since we don't have a fast charging network isn't it easier to build vehicles that will not need one?

No lithium-ion, nickel metal hydride, or lead-acid storage battery system existing or under development has been shown to be able to survive multiple fast charges without degrading its performance, structure, and its cycle life. Some lithium-ion battery types, including the most power efficient, the lithium-cobalt-oxide type-today widely used for lap top computers-are likely to overheat during a fast charge and rapidly degrade without much advance notice.

Fast charging of a storage battery of any type used today is an emergency system only; it is not practical, economical, or safe for routine daily use.

So why do we keep hearing that THEY will solve the problem of the amount of time it takes to fully recharge a battery by making it so that the battery can be fast charged?

In general the answer is that stock promoters, poorly educated journalists, and college professors with ideas for building "advanced" batteries cannot raise money by highlighting technological problems, so they resort to glossing them over, or, in the case of neighborhood recharging stations and "fast charging" they simply make lemonade from lemons. They tell you that the problem is an opportunity to make even more money by building charging stations in Big Box Store parking lots where people can spend more time than they could economically (for the fueling station) at a fueling station, at which fueling station the wait even to fast charge a car battery would be many times the wait for a gasoline or diesel fill-up. They also tell you that every business, public parking lot, and state park can make money putting in fast charging stations; it's as easy as that. Just open your wallet.

Think of a battery as a 5 gallon container with a narrow filling neck. If you pour electricity into it one cupful at a time then it will take whatever time it takes you to fill, carry, and dump 80 cups into the container. Obviously if you bring the electricity in gallon jars it will only take 5 trips, and if you deliver the 5 separate gallons in the same time as the 80 cups you will be fast filling the container.

Some of my readers will say that you can also widen the filling neck. The way you do this with electricity is to raise the voltage. But if you raise the voltage and the current carrying capacity of a home or "gas station" it will be just to fuel electrified motor vehicles. It is economic nonsense to equip every home with the equipment to "fast charge" a car, because the equipment would sit idle almost all of the time. At a gas station even a fast charge for a Chevrolet Volt would take 15-45 minutes (by contrast with overnight at standard "normal" household voltage and current capacity.) Compare this with the 5-6 minutes it takes to deliver 20 gallons of liquid hydrocarbon fuel, and you will see immediately the birth of a bottleneck for fueling stations.

All other issues being ignored it is impossible to see how a fueling station operating only as a fueling station could service cars coming in (only) for a fast charge unless the station had a huge parking area and a huge supply of electricity from the grid around the clock. Do Los Angeles brown-outs from air conditioning overuse come to mind?

If our society were being logical in prioritizing the electrification of the personal motor vehicle for private passenger carrying use then the government would create a "National committee to engineer an electrified motor vehicle and develop a fueling system for it."

The Committee would inquire: WITHOUT ANY INITIAL REGARD for the personal enrichment of the shareholders OR MANAGERS of any particular existing company:

1. Which is the best way to electrify the personal private passenger carrying motor car? Should it be:

A. A hybrid of some type,
B. A battery powered only vehicle
C. A vehicle connected to a grid by wire or induction?

2. Having chosen a system, such as one above, the committee would then ask:
Does the USA have the natural, intellectual, and industrial resources to do
the job?

3. Then the committee would ask: Can the political objections to producing the natural resources, finished goods, and rights of way (e.g., for a national smart grid) be overcome?

4. If and only if a system has been chosen and the resource and political impediments are agreed to be surmountable, then the committee must ask:

• What steps, in what order, must be taken to accomplish the goal of electrifying the personal motor car for private use with the chosen power train,
• What timetable will be optimal for solving the basic problems (How do we prioritize the R&D?), and
• How do we as a nation underwrite the very long term investments, i.e., those with very far out returns on investment that will be necessary to privately
• A. produce the natural resources and design, engineer, and build facilities for manufacturing the necessary equipment (such as batteries or fuel cells), and
• B. Build the necessary infrastructures in terms of power plants, a national smart grid, and local fueling stations.

Politicians do not like to think in terms of cures for diseases, they prefer to offer free band-aids.

The political and Wall Street solution to the problem of fast-charging is to gloss over it and try to be sure that every lab experiment on fast charging is promoted as the "solution" to the problem.

We are going at the electrification of the personal privately owned motor car ass backwards. We need to identify the roadblocks and see if there is a solution possible in a reasonable time for ALL of them. If we do not we are just pouring our nation's resources of money and time down a black hole.

The solution is to determine if we can electrify the nations' motor car fleet economically and in a reasonable time. This requires that the US Congress and public be educated and an agenda to answer the question be set and followed by those without a conflict of interest or hidden agenda of personal gain from a specific technology or political solution.

There is no way at all to FAST CHARGE this scenario. If we continue on the path we are on we will accomplish nothing and waste our precious resources.

Comments

[Davewmart:]

Thanks for a stimulating article Jack.
My take is that in practise any fast charge facility would be rarely used, as for some time electric vehicles will be essentially town runabouts, charged at home or from a much cheaper, 220volt street charger.
So if you do an 80% fact charge only a couple of times a year, then degradation of the battery due to this cause would be much reduced.
I am much more concerned that the battery that seems to be being used in the Nissan Leaf may have a such a short expected lifetime anyway that it raises the cost per mile of travel to very high levels - around 22cents per mile for the battery alone:
'Based on AESC’s testing, the cells will retain more than 80% capacity after 7 years, including 70,000 km (43,496 miles).'
www.greencarcongress.c...

This compares with the expected lifetime of 150,000 miles for the Volt, which presumably has a higher mileage expectation because it is a very conservative design, only depleting to around half before the ICE motor kicks in, and also as you say does not ever recharge.

If this is indeed the specs of the battery that Nissan is using, then it would suit drivers who do on average only around 16-17 miles a day for the 7 years, so I can't see they will be doing much fast charging, or battery swapping either.
The economics of the car works only in areas like London, where a £5per day congestion charge from which the Leaf would be exempt basically pays for the batteries.
If you only do 16-17 miles per day, so it is a kind of shopping trolley, economically speaking you would be better off buying one of the NEV's for perhaps £10k, with correspondingly cheaper batteries, than the $25-$33k Leaf.

If this is the state of play in batteries, then EV's will have a very limited market.

Aug 10 07:05 AM

[Davewmart:]

Sorry, s/be 'The Volt does not ever need to FAST recharge the battery'
I wish we had an edit facility!

Aug 10 07:07 AM

[John Petersen:]

Jack, another wonderful article that ties perfectly to an Instablog entry I wrote this morning that said:

"This morning a reader sent me a link to an article in Planet Ark that talks about how PHEV and EV charging stations are going to be a fabulous business opportunity.

While reading the article, I couldn't help but think back to the consistent message of Storage Week 2009; that the electric grid is already stressed to the limit by demand growth from a combination of new construction and increased per capita electricity use and the only cost effective solution will be adding major new storage resources to shave the peaks and smooth the variability.

I can't even begin to imagine the fun a charging station developer will have walking into his local utility and saying "We want to build a 40 vehicle installation that will recharge 25 kWh of car batteries in a half hour and only put 2 MW of highly variable power load on your local substation."

I can almost see the utilities lining up for that business. A few years ago a client of mine had to pay almost $500,000 in interconnect charges to connect a 5 MW peaking plant to the grid. With charges of that magnitude for installations that help solve the problem, I can't even imagine what the interconnect charges will be for 2 MW addition to the problem.

The charging station gods must be crazy, or at least ignorant of the very real transmission and distribution constraints faced by utilities. On balance I think charging station developers will probably need to buy several MW of batteries for each installation if they ever expect to get a grid interconnect.

seekingalpha.com/insta...

Aug 10 08:41 AM

[User 95972:]

Haven't you heard of Altair Nanotechnologies's Lithium Ion titanate battery that can charge at any rate with no harmful effects?

Aug 10 09:30 AM

[ag4u2c:]

Hi,

I'm not certain the effectiveness of replacement batteries holds any water in the morphing auto industry. From a practical point the business model makes no sense. There will be no consensus battery pack for decades. Imagine a "changing" station having to store multiple battery packs for the Japanese models, European brands, what I call the new Asians(India--Tata entry; China--BYD, FAW,etc.) and as a separate unit the Koreans-who have their own agenda. Different sizes for different models complicate the matter considerably. The capital investment required to have a change operation in rural America wont cut it.
BYD has a rechargeable battery where recycling is a priority. The CEO drank the "acid" of a used battery. Recharging 90% of all local vehicles at your home on a nightly basis creates ease of use. If all gas stations set up an electrical recharge section, the infrastructure
would complement the transition-- not require a catastrophic migration.
A rechargeable battery pack with a supplemental gas engine for on the fly use is something I would purchase. If I saw one line for swapping out a battery pack, which might take 10 minutes to do...please-- it's hard enough to get an oil change these days without a time commitment.
Regards,
ag4u2c


On Aug 10 07:05 AM Davewmart wrote:

> Thanks for a stimulating article Jack.
> My take is that in practise any fast charge facility would be rarely
> used, as for some time electric vehicles will be essentially town
> runabouts, charged at home or from a much cheaper, 220volt street
> charger.
> So if you do an 80% fact charge only a couple of times a year, then
> degradation of the battery due to this cause would be much reduced.
>
> I am much more concerned that the battery that seems to be being
> used in the Nissan Leaf may have a such a short expected lifetime
> anyway that it raises the cost per mile of travel to very high levels
> - around 22cents per mile for the battery alone:
> 'Based on AESC’s testing, the cells will retain more than 80% capacity
> after 7 years, including 70,000 km (43,496 miles).'
> www.greencarcongress.c...
>
> This compares with the expected lifetime of 150,000 miles for the
> Volt, which presumably has a higher mileage expectation because it
> is a very conservative design, only depleting to around half before
> the ICE motor kicks in, and also as you say does not ever recharge.
>
>
> If this is indeed the specs of the battery that Nissan is using,
> then it would suit drivers who do on average only around 16-17 miles
> a day for the 7 years, so I can't see they will be doing much fast
> charging, or battery swapping either.
> The economics of the car works only in areas like London, where a
> £5per day congestion charge from which the Leaf would be exempt basically
> pays for the batteries.
> If you only do 16-17 miles per day, so it is a kind of shopping trolley,
> economically speaking you would be better off buying one of the NEV's
> for perhaps £10k, with correspondingly cheaper batteries, than the
> $25-$33k Leaf.
>
> If this is the state of play in batteries, then EV's will have a
> very limited market.

Aug 10 09:53 AM

[Windsun33:]

"...they simply make lemonade from lemons..."

No, actually, they are trying to make lemonade out of old orange peelings. The physical and electrical problems with all those rosy scenarios have been known for decades, but some people with a "vision" just refuse to see it.

Aug 10 11:11 AM

[Windsun33:]

"...they simply make lemonade from lemons..."

No, actually, they are trying to make lemonade out of old orange peelings. The physical and electrical problems with all those rosy scenarios have been known for decades, but some people with a "vision" just refuse to see it.

Aug 10 11:11 AM

[MRTTF:]

"No harmful effects" is a misnomer. Their data for cell- and battery-level testing is impressive, but these are also in controlled settings. Even when undergoing a fast-charging regime, there is cell performance degradation. If one cell in a pack were to degrade significantly, the effects could be catastrophic. It is also not the active materials that I have a concern for. The electrolyte is still the weak link in Li-ion safety. There are ways to mitigate that, but electrochemically speaking, that is more likely the source of problems.


On Aug 10 09:30 AM User 95972 wrote:

> Haven't you heard of Altair Nanotechnologies's Lithium Ion titanate
> battery that can charge at any rate with no harmful effects?

Aug 10 11:26 AM

[nakedjaybird:]

Jack - it is shameful that you even have to write this article - period!!!

Aug 10 12:05 PM

[jerrydd:]

I've talked to the Better Place people and they seem good and know what they are doing and seems to have a good business model right on schedule.
They have the battery changer running and in testing now. The one thing I really like is BP owns the batteries so if they die, it's their problem. The good thing is they are swapable so if one battery isn't good enough it's easy for them to change over to a better one.
Freeway swapping for long distance is a good way to go but for most people, the 100 mile range EV's will easily handle most peoples needs with just 120vac charging at home or work..
Then my solution for unlimited range is a bumper hitch mounted generator. For an eff EV which they should be, it would weigh under 100lbs. Then go at 80-160mpg.

Your rant on fast charging is just wrong. While some batteries can't handle it, they shouldn't be EV batteries in the first place as bad quality. But almost any battery can be safely recharged at whatever power it could put out. Now in most you need to stop fast charging at 80-90% charged, it is very doable under that.

We have with no problem fast charged many Li, NiCad, lead batteries. I've found most of the problem is how they were built. If thick connections, interconnects were, then they would charge/discharge fast, 15 minutes to 80%, Nicads tp 100%.

LAX Airport Limo's used Chrysler EV Minivans 24-7 just charging them when discharging, boarding customers for a yr..

A charge station would likely have a big battery pack and a generator for peak power times but feeding off the grid steadily during off peak rates.

The future will be a mix, town EV's seating 1 -8, 1-2 person commuter EV's. Notice these are light vehicles which need much smaller battery pack, EV drives. A 100 mile range, 80mph, 2 person EV sportwagon could be built in 50k lots for under $10k with a good profit margin.

Others will be plug in hybrids with small fueled motors, under 50hp, and 100-400hp electric drive motors.. And if we switch to composite car, truck body/frames instead of steel, their weight, thus price would drop 1/3.

Why will this happen? because next yr gas will be $4/gal, $5/gal the yr after until it hits $10/gal. Of course that's 3 recessions away but I think late next yr most people will figure out that there is a cheaper way for transport than oil.

And I have news for big auto if they don't go as planned as many smaller EV companies wil make the money instead.

I've built and driven EV's for many yrs and when designed right an ICE can't beat them even now let alone once oil goes to $150-200/bbl. Mine get 250mpg equivalent for my sportwagon and 600mpge on my Harley size trike EV. If EV's are not made soon they can make their own from many designs online at a low cost. One could make a good living building these if skilled.

So big business needs to beware, they are not ir-replaceable. We can do our transport without them as homes, other needs too. Plus we can make our own power to charge it. It's going to be an interesting time these next 5 yrs as everything is changing about Americans. I'd like to thank my republican fellows here for making this change happen though it was rather painful..

Aug 10 12:33 PM

[bpickard:]

Rome wasn't built in a day. Over the next 10-20 years (yup, at least that long) we'll see the grid receive massive investment and upgrades not only to the physical infrastructure but to the control systems infrastructure that is also on its last legs; we'll see more standardization in batteries so that swap outs might actually be possible; and we'll see new battery technologies that will allow fast re-charges without damage to the batteries. In the shorter run, we'll see something that people who live in Alaska and Minnesota are used to already - nearly ubiquitous 115 volt electrical outlets on posts in parking lots and garages. In cold climates people have block heaters. You drive up and plug your car in. Add a robust but cheap card swipe device (like a digital parking meter) and people will be able to plug their conventional plug-in EV's into the grid in parking lots and garages - in addition to at home. The charge will be controlled by the car's controller, and the consumer will have a bill sent to his credit card. No, it won't help on a long trip - but MOST electrics will be used for short trips anyway. All of the technology to enable this exists today. It is only a matter of time before enterprising parking entrepreneurs implement it. The giant investment in battery swap outs will probably not happen for all the reasons noted above. Battery capacities and charging speeds probably will happen - but not in the 'breathless idiot time cycles' required by the current generation of 'investors'.

Aug 10 01:30 PM

[fran:]

YES!!!
if only we developed national strategies for our basic industries[ground and air transportation come to mind, as does energy]. but we have no strategies for these and many others critical to our future. nor do we have effort/plan to achieve such strategies in the future.

limiting carbon in the atmosphere via waxman/markey or creating "green jobs"
appear to be BANDAIDS, not strategic actions.

wake up America, your political[gov't] employees are skewering you[or is another similar word more appropriate].

Aug 10 03:32 PM

[NCS Power:]

Adding super caps as power arbitrage into the system will allow for fast charging without impacting the life of the battery. This is in development for many systems now where regen is utilized and the power surges are much higher than a fast charger could generate. I've worked on one where we were seeing over a megajoule of output from the regen. The super cap mitigates the power output into a safe charging current for the battery.

Now, let's build renewable energy production sources that can supply the power required...

Aug 10 04:02 PM

[Davewmart:]

The problem with charging infrastructure can be overstated. Likely it is often seen as a problem because of the 110volt standard in the US.
Here in the UK we are used to 220V, and for cookers run it at 30amps.
The sockets don't cost a fortune, around $2k, so if you go top the shops you could plug in at your parking lot whiled you shop and in a couple of hours your battery will have picked up a good charge.
The 400V 3 phase are more expensive, running at maybe $50k, but that is not out of line with a gas pump.
The whole infrastructure requirement is fairly trivial compared to rolling out a hydrogen network.
It's the batteries which seem to me to be a bit behind the curve for something like a traditional automobile as they are thought of in the US, but perfectly acceptable for the more modest NEV's which are not too out of place in many European cities.
You don't need two tonnes of vehicle for running around in town.

Aug 10 05:07 PM

[gregory fen...:]

I just hope some of the people behind these innovations, research and are open to as many angles as I read here on seeking alpha, when it comes to this whole idea of alternative motive transport.

Aug 10 06:16 PM

[a. palmer jr.:]

A good idea of changing batteries rather than charging them. In fact I wrote a comment several days ago that stated almost exactly the same thing! What I recommended was to make the car battery accessible and make each battery standard to the other makes of cars also. That way, if you're away from your home charger you could exchange batteries (for a price) from any dealer. If you're at home you could charge your battery overnight. But first we have to actually get some of these battery cars on the road!

Aug 10 07:21 PM

[isaac the t...:]

Project Better Place has demonstrated a battery swap model that they've put a lot of thought into.
Unfortunately, most vehicles on the drawing board don't have a battery swap emphasis as part of their design.

Aug 10 11:50 PM

[Dave K.:]

The problem with the battery swapping is the cost of having the huge inventory of batteries on hand. Alternately a fast recharge station will have its own grid storage so it appears as an average load to a utility. I assume the battery banks will be recharged over the night at the time of lowest cost. It will be able to use the lowest cost energy storage whether lead acid or Sodium Sulfur cells. The cost of the grid storage would be lower than a large stack of more expensive swap out batteries (1/2 to 1/3 the capital outlay). I expect the recharge stations with local storage will often combine renewable power sources such as wind or in some states solar.
The size of the grid tie will depend on the average demand for power not the peak. If you are recharging 50kw-hr cars from 8 am to 8 pm on average then your grid tie requirement is 50/12 or about 4kW per car you intend to charge each day. The grid tie will be about the same as that required by a station swapping out batteries. It is possible to design a fast recharge lead acid battery and expect it to happen to counter other fast recharge battery systems.
The whole area of electric cars and charging stations will be in a bit of a flux for about 8 years before the winners and losers emerge. So expect to change your investments over time.
Personally I wouldn’t consider buying a battery swap car as it would be more expensive and far cheaper to charge it home as the swap out company will have to mark up the electric charge by 50% or more to cover their huge overheads. Cheers

Aug 11 03:24 AM