[Siraff]

I doubt you'll get a 1000 mile EV... for the simple reason it isn't needed. 300 mile real world range, charging network as big as the petrol network is now, very fast chargers that can recharge 80% of your capacity in 15 minutes. Most carparks have charging points at all bays. Thats a far more likely scenario than 1000 mile range, and it addresses most peoples concerns / issues. Plus driving for more than 4 hours without a 15 minute break is just dangerous.

I'm not so sure. At the moment it's a balancing act between range and weight. As battery tech improves it may end up as ice is now - they just fit a larger than needed fuel tank because there's little point in not having it and it can be useful from time to time.
If you had a 500 mile ev and an extra 500 mile range was only going to add 50kg why would you not have it? Considering ice's can refuel far faster, refuel and availability would need to outstrip what's already available for ice just to make it even. Why bother if a massive battery doesn't take up much size/weight?

With the ice storage was always a minor issue - the development was in getting more efficiency from burning it. With the EV it already has the efficiency in use but needs development on storage.

 

[Trikkitt]

If you had a 500 mile ev and an extra 500 mile range was only going to add 50kg why would you not have it? Considering ice's can refuel far faster, refuel and availability would need to outstrip what's already available for ice just to make it even. Why bother if a massive battery doesn't take up much size/weight?

I agree - if 500 miles of range is 50kg of batteries and small then sure why not. I'm talking about likely scenarios, and that is highly unlikely. 300 mile real range with a great recharging infrastructure and very quick recharging is the most likely situation we will find outselves in. 1000 mile range, or 50kg 500 mile batteries are highly unlikely be developed before that, if at all.

It seems far more likely that ways to very quickly refill batteries will be discovered over ultra high density batteries. For the simple reason that the latter without the former is almost pointless. If your 1000 mile battery takes many hours to fill up using a Tesla Supercharger, and home charging takes many days, then its pretty pointless.

Of course who knows - there might be some new totally different battery technology that can accept a really high charge rate with massive capacity. I'd love that to happen!

 

[Ready to charge]

I know that batteries weigh a lot more than a full tank of petrol, but how much does a petrol engine, gearbox, radiator and exhaust system weigh? And anyway, who says electric cars have to weigh the same as petrol cars? If the current battery weight and size give a car like the Tesla Model S acceptable performance (which obviously it does have), then better energy density = more range without adding any weight. I'm not talking about adding weight. I'm talking about improvements in battery chemistry that would make a Tesla go 550 miles or a Leaf go 250 miles without changing the size or weight of the battery.

 

[Kage]

I've said before that at home, it'd make sense that you'd have a battery storage facility, that charges as it empties (you don't really have to worry about it), so when you want to charge your car, it can then rapidly do so using the charge available it has stored (like a quick capacitor), and then whilst you are driving around, charge the main box again, so many days isn't a problem for a full charge.

 

[Siraff]

I agree - if 500 miles of range is 50kg of batteries and small then sure why not. I'm talking about likely scenarios, and that is highly unlikely. 300 mile real range with a great recharging infrastructure and very quick recharging is the most likely situation we will find outselves in. 1000 mile range, or 50kg 500 mile batteries are highly unlikely be developed before that, if at all.

It seems far more likely that ways to very quickly refill batteries will be discovered over ultra high density batteries. For the simple reason that the latter without the former is almost pointless. If your 1000 mile battery takes many hours to fill up using a Tesla Supercharger, and home charging takes many days, then its pretty pointless.

Of course who knows - there might be some new totally different battery technology that can accept a really high charge rate with massive capacity. I'd love that to happen!

The 300mi with decent charging is already close with Tesla. It's hardly a quantum leap to get to it and I don't think that's aiming very high.
What I do think it current battery tech is chipping away at a very outdated idea. Currently the power is kept attached to whatever the battery happens to be full of which means the battery is always full (so heavy) and has a very limited capacity since most of it's capacity is taken up by the means to store rather than what it's actually storing.

Imagine if a petrol tank was full of heavy, high density foam. It would take ages to fill, would hold next to nothing and weigh way more than necessary. I think the big breakthrough will be when someone works out how to contain electricity with no medium. Energy stored as pure electricity atoms would have a far greater density that petrol or diesel and weigh almost nothing. It would also make the ultimate in resistance free batteries so no heat/cold issues.

Until then current tech will keep improving each year and there's no reason to think far greater ranges are out of the question. At the moment it's only manufacturing tolerances stopping much greater ah ratings but as tooling develops it will get better. Unfortunately with current tech any increase usually leads to an increase in weight too.
Graphene will probably be a big stepping stone once Lithium is toward the end of it's development but we're nowhere near exploiting electricity to it's fullest.

 

[Trikkitt]

The 300mi with decent charging is already close with Tesla. It's hardly a quantum leap to get to it and I don't think that's aiming very high.
What I do think it current battery tech is chipping away at a very outdated idea. Currently the power is kept attached to whatever the battery happens to be full of which means the battery is always full (so heavy) and has a very limited capacity since most of it's capacity is taken up by the means to store rather than what it's actually storing.

Until then current tech will keep improving each year and there's no reason to think far greater ranges are out of the question. At the moment it's only manufacturing tolerances stopping much greater ah ratings but as tooling develops it will get better. Unfortunately with current tech any increase usually leads to an increase in weight too.
Graphene will probably be a big stepping stone once Lithium is toward the end of it's development but we're nowhere near exploiting electricity to it's fullest.

Tesla manage 240 miles / 180 miles in adverse conditions, on a single charge with their biggest pack. The Tesla pack size is pretty much at the upper end of the physical size limits for a car battery. To achieve 300+ real world miles is going to require a HUGE increase in energy density. That aim is actually quite high given 5% estimated increase each year..... The real pivital moment will be when charging is everywhere and rapid charging unbiquitus as petrol stations, and fast chargers are in every car park. No more plotting your routes to hit the chargers. You just pull over whenever is convenient if you actually need to. That is whats needed to remove the pain of EV driving.

Huge ranges might one day be possible - I really hope it does! What we have right now is squeezing the last water out of the sponge..... until someone can invent a new super sponge!

 

[Siraff]

Tesla manage 240 miles / 180 miles in adverse conditions, on a single charge with their biggest pack. The Tesla pack size is pretty much at the upper end of the physical size limits for a car battery. To achieve 300+ real world miles is going to require a HUGE increase in energy density. That aim is actually quite high given 5% estimated increase each year..... The real pivital moment will be when charging is everywhere and rapid charging unbiquitus as petrol stations, and fast chargers are in every car park. No more plotting your routes to hit the chargers. You just pull over whenever is convenient if you actually need to. That is whats needed to remove the pain of EV driving.

Huge ranges might one day be possible - I really hope it does! What we have right now is squeezing the last water out of the sponge..... until someone can invent a new super sponge!

240mi to 300mi is only 1/4 increase. Even setting that 5% only against this years density that means it's possible within 5 years - just over three if it's rolling.
I agree massive charging rollout is a big necessary too but with current charge times we would need around 60 rapids to replace 10 fuel pumps to match refill times (usual ice = 5 mins, usual rapid stay = 30mins) but even that doesn't add up since in that time the ice will take on somewhere between 300 and 1200 miles while the ev will take on between 40 and 150 miles.
What would be great is a realistic 500 mile range so 600-700 epa and a 5 min charge time. Infact a 5 min charge time with chargers everywhere would make almost all ev's very useable - I would say anything that could realistically do over 100 miles come rain, wind or snow would be fine at that.

 

[donald]

I doubt you'll get a 1000 mile EV... for the simple reason it isn't needed.

Agreed.

And the laws of physics also apply.

People;- don't forget that liquid fuels are 'all charge'. Each and every single atom in fuel contains electrons that participate in a chemical interaction that releases energy that goes towards making your ICE go forward.

OK, so 1/3 is lost. But how many atoms in a battery contain the electrons that participate in the reactions that goes to making your car go forward?

.. a quick calculation and estimate, for a 2 Faraday battery with a mass of 200kg and an average atomic mass of, say, 50, that'd amount to a staggeringly minuscule 0.03%. Whilst liquid fuel uses the electrons from 100% of its mass.

Summary;-
Number of atoms in a battery carrying the electrons that go towards motive power;- 0.03%
Number of atoms in fuel carrying the electrons that go towards motive power;- 100%

Now, OK, so the electrons in the battery have a higher valency energy than in the chemical fuel, about 10 times as much. And turning that valency energy into power in fuel is only 30% efficient. Call it ~x20 factor difference. So we get 1.2%-'efficiency-equivalent' battery mass used for propulsion versus 100%. That's a big gap.

The laws of physics here dictate that to change that huge ratio difference you will have to;-
a) make more of the atoms of the battery carry usable charge, or have less of the atoms of the battery to NOT carry charge (how can this be? You have to make the electrodes bigger, and everything else smaller - no magic leaps here!! Just chip away at cutting a little there, adding a little here.....) - possibly new electrode materials, but stuff gets very dangerous and highly reactive if you're not very careful!
b) use charge carriers which are multi-valency (lithium is one electron, sulphur is 2, aluminium is 3, but as you increase the valency, you are now fighting against the increasing molar mass too - new chemistry possible, but a trade-off of mass versus valency number).
c) increase the electro-potential of the stored electrons (and it doesn't get better than 4V from lithium - nothing to be found here).

I simply can't see any opportunities to get 2 orders of magnitude improvement to get anywhere near matching the energy density of fuel.

Bear in mind it's taken us over 100 years of pretty amazing quantum jumps to arrive at an optimised lithium chemistry. This isn't 'early days' for electro-chemistry'. It's a mature well-understood science. What is being done now is better engineering to maximise what the existing cell chemistries can do. There's no magic going to happen here.

So the only solution to range is the 'Tesla' solution - install a ton battery into a barge of a car.

 

[Disgusted]

I agree that few people would need a car that does more than 200 miles on one charge (as long as you can rapid charge en route), but longer range EVs would open ownership up to those who cannot charge at home and need to go out to fill up.

 

[Ready to charge]

Elon Musk: Tesla could make a 400-mile range car today

In this article Elon Musk says they could make a 400 mile car today but it would be too expensive. They could even do 500 miles now but that would require reducing the boot space to put in extra batteries. But in ten years, he thinks they will be able to provide 500 miles without changing the form of the car.

 

[People's Front of Judea]

A car that can cover 250 miles is half real world expectations. The only reason 250 mile EVs currently grab headlines is because they also do 0-60 in 3 seconds.

I mean, who's kidding whom here.

Range has become this horrible, entirely negative term associated exclusively with EVs, and until the numbers are a match for any equivalent ICE you will continue to read road tests and news articles that dwell upon it.

500 miles. It's not necessary, but it's necessary.

 

[Lee Dalton]

Range is all pointless to a degree. It's the speed with which you can recharge that is most important.
I did over 630 miles in one day last week, the only stop I made to fill up with fuel took less than 5 minutes from getting off the motorway to getting back on again. That gave me more than enough fuel to run the next 4+ hours without stopping.

 

[People's Front of Judea]

The whole concept will of course disappear over time, given not just advances in the speed of charging but given you'll also be able to charge on the move, but if you want to sell EVs in a manner that makes inroads into ICE sales then their current range won't be enough to give them more than 2% market share before 2020.

Of course, there's always PHEVs which we all know will extend the life of forecourts until 2030 and beyond

 

[Dodge]

Agreed.

And the laws of physics also apply.

People;- don't forget that liquid fuels are 'all charge'. Each and every single atom in fuel contains electrons that participate in a chemical interaction that releases energy that goes towards making your ICE go forward.

OK, so 1/3 is lost. But how many atoms in a battery contain the electrons that participate in the reactions that goes to making your car go forward?

.. a quick calculation and estimate, for a 2 Faraday battery with a mass of 200kg and an average atomic mass of, say, 50, that'd amount to a staggeringly minuscule 0.03%. Whilst liquid fuel uses the electrons from 100% of its mass.

Summary;-
Number of atoms in a battery carrying the electrons that go towards motive power;- 0.03%
Number of atoms in fuel carrying the electrons that go towards motive power;- 100%

Now, OK, so the electrons in the battery have a higher valency energy than in the chemical fuel, about 10 times as much. And turning that valency energy into power in fuel is only 30% efficient. Call it ~x20 factor difference. So we get 1.2%-'efficiency-equivalent' battery mass used for propulsion versus 100%. That's a big gap.

The laws of physics here dictate that to change that huge ratio difference you will have to;-
a) make more of the atoms of the battery carry usable charge, or have less of the atoms of the battery to NOT carry charge (how can this be? You have to make the electrodes bigger, and everything else smaller - no magic leaps here!! Just chip away at cutting a little there, adding a little here.....) - possibly new electrode materials, but stuff gets very dangerous and highly reactive if you're not very careful!
b) use charge carriers which are multi-valency (lithium is one electron, sulphur is 2, aluminium is 3, but as you increase the valency, you are now fighting against the increasing molar mass too - new chemistry possible, but a trade-off of mass versus valency number).
c) increase the electro-potential of the stored electrons (and it doesn't get better than 4V from lithium - nothing to be found here).

I simply can't see any opportunities to get 2 orders of magnitude improvement to get anywhere near matching the energy density of fuel.

Bear in mind it's taken us over 100 years of pretty amazing quantum jumps to arrive at an optimised lithium chemistry. This isn't 'early days' for electro-chemistry'. It's a mature well-understood science. What is being done now is better engineering to maximise what the existing cell chemistries can do. There's no magic going to happen here.

So the only solution to range is the 'Tesla' solution - install a ton battery into a barge of a car.

Humans have a history of making rapid advances in a thing when there is money to be made in it. I haven't verified the source of the attachment, but it looks like Nokia might have made an order of magnitude improvement in battery density fairly quickly. Imagine what Panasonic, Mitsubishi, Samsung and the others could do in an attempt to grab EV market share...

 

[Trikkitt]

Range is all pointless to a degree. It's the speed with which you can recharge that is most important.
I did over 630 miles in one day last week, the only stop I made to fill up with fuel took less than 5 minutes from getting off the motorway to getting back on again. That gave me more than enough fuel to run the next 4+ hours without stopping.

Did you only stop for 5 minutes on the entire route though? Because that would be around 10.5 hours driving with a 5 minute break.... something that is pretty dangerous, given it's recommend to take a break every 2 hours of driving. I certainly like to take a break and stretch my legs for a few minutes on long trips every 2-3 hours.

Cut down that recharge speed so 2-3 hours of driving is recharged in 5 minutes, with recharge points at every petrol station and you're sorted!

When you reach that point - where you have 300 miles real world driving, quick recharging and the supporting infrastructure... thats the point when EVs will hopefully have dropped in price to match ICE cars and true mass adoption can take hold. Edge cases will alway be there.... but those edges get smaller all the time....

 

[Siraff]

Agreed.

And the laws of physics also apply.

People;- don't forget that liquid fuels are 'all charge'. Each and every single atom in fuel contains electrons that participate in a chemical interaction that releases energy that goes towards making your ICE go forward.

OK, so 1/3 is lost. But how many atoms in a battery contain the electrons that participate in the reactions that goes to making your car go forward?

.. a quick calculation and estimate, for a 2 Faraday battery with a mass of 200kg and an average atomic mass of, say, 50, that'd amount to a staggeringly minuscule 0.03%. Whilst liquid fuel uses the electrons from 100% of its mass.

Summary;-
Number of atoms in a battery carrying the electrons that go towards motive power;- 0.03%
Number of atoms in fuel carrying the electrons that go towards motive power;- 100%

Now, OK, so the electrons in the battery have a higher valency energy than in the chemical fuel, about 10 times as much. And turning that valency energy into power in fuel is only 30% efficient. Call it ~x20 factor difference. So we get 1.2%-'efficiency-equivalent' battery mass used for propulsion versus 100%. That's a big gap.

The laws of physics here dictate that to change that huge ratio difference you will have to;-
a) make more of the atoms of the battery carry usable charge, or have less of the atoms of the battery to NOT carry charge (how can this be? You have to make the electrodes bigger, and everything else smaller - no magic leaps here!! Just chip away at cutting a little there, adding a little here.....) - possibly new electrode materials, but stuff gets very dangerous and highly reactive if you're not very careful!
b) use charge carriers which are multi-valency (lithium is one electron, sulphur is 2, aluminium is 3, but as you increase the valency, you are now fighting against the increasing molar mass too - new chemistry possible, but a trade-off of mass versus valency number).
c) increase the electro-potential of the stored electrons (and it doesn't get better than 4V from lithium - nothing to be found here).

I simply can't see any opportunities to get 2 orders of magnitude improvement to get anywhere near matching the energy density of fuel.

Bear in mind it's taken us over 100 years of pretty amazing quantum jumps to arrive at an optimised lithium chemistry. This isn't 'early days' for electro-chemistry'. It's a mature well-understood science. What is being done now is better engineering to maximise what the existing cell chemistries can do. There's no magic going to happen here.

So the only solution to range is the 'Tesla' solution - install a ton battery into a barge of a car.

I completely agree with you but the whole electro-chemistry thing is thinking inside the box from my POV. Every way to make batteries at the moment relies on taking different tacks on the same thing - attach the atoms to some carrier then make more.
I think there could be some way of having one without the other even though that isn't on the spectrum at the moment.
Also I wouldn't say we've had 100 years of quantum leaps. I would say we had a leap at the beginning then 80 years of dragging feet until Lithium came along. I make that two decent overhauls in 100 years. Graphene may lead to another jump but again it's just a new way of making tech that's been around since the 1800 volta.

 

[satronev]

I doubt you'll get a 1000 mile EV... for the simple reason it isn't needed. 300 mile real world range, charging network as big as the petrol network is now, very fast chargers that can recharge 80% of your capacity in 15 minutes. Most carparks have charging points at all bays. Thats a far more likely scenario than 1000 mile range, and it addresses most peoples concerns / issues. Plus driving for more than 4 hours without a 15 minute break is just dangerous.

I agree that 300 miles is enough. The bigger the battery, the longer it takes to charge it and the more it would cost. A stop every 240 miles for 15 to 20 minuets might not be bad. More frequent stops to charge and a wireless charging lane on the highway would be even better to prevent long lines from forming at a charging bay. You can pump gas in only 5 min but, we can't pump gas while driving on the highway. Suddenly, there might be a significant advantage to driving an electric vehicle.

 

[Lee Dalton]

Did you only stop for 5 minutes on the entire route though? Because that would be around 10.5 hours driving with a 5 minute break.... something that is pretty dangerous, given it's recommend to take a break every 2 hours of driving. I certainly like to take a break and stretch my legs for a few minutes on long trips every 2-3 hours.

Cut down that recharge speed so 2-3 hours of driving is recharged in 5 minutes, with recharge points at every petrol station and you're sorted!

When you reach that point - where you have 300 miles real world driving, quick recharging and the supporting infrastructure... thats the point when EVs will hopefully have dropped in price to match ICE cars and true mass adoption can take hold. Edge cases will alway be there.... but those edges get smaller all the time....

No, I stopped for longer for a couple of meetings, but there wasn't anywhere nearby to charge for the 3 hours of meetings. And even if there was, that wouldn't have gotten me home again.
4-5 hours in a single stint is alright. That's pretty much 300-350 miles tops

Oh and I know I'm at the edge, so when I can live with a BEV, I know the masses could !

 

[Ready to charge]

On the opposite end of the spectrum, I was reading something about buses (in Umea, Sweden and in China) that charge a little bit at every stop they make as well as at each end of the route for 5 minutes, which means they don't need to have big batteries which would make them much more expensive. I don't think you could really apply that to cars though, unless they find some way of making the roads supply power to cars as they move.

 

[Siraff]

unless they find some way of making the roads supply power to cars as they move.

Already available in more civilized countries such as South Korea.