So since 4.08kg of pure (elemental) lithium is equivalent to about 21.75kg of LCE (5.33kg of LCE is 1kg of Lithium). This means that the 24kWh battery contains 21.75kg of LCE, or about 0.9kg of LCE per kWh. This is 50% larger than the 0.6kg I had seen others cite as a figure for LCE per kWh, which would diminish the amount of batteries my in my estimates by 33%. But it seems there still will be plenty of LCE to go around since the numbers before were absurdly high.

WLC, in a recent press release, also stated that their target for their stage I lens production is 27,700 metric tonnes per year of Lithium Carbonate (LCE, or chemically Li2CO3). The math to turn that into the number of EVs is easy – 27,700 metric tonnes is 27,700,000 kg of LCE. In 1kWh of a Lithium-Ion battery there is 0.6kg 0.9kg of LCE (figures in this article have been updated). This means that 27.7M kg of LCE per year is about 30.8M kWh of batteries that can be produced. They have an expected 18 years at this rate of supply to mine (approximately 500,000 metric tonnes LCE total).

In a pure EV (like the Nissan Leaf) the battery is 24kWh, so from 27,700 tonnes of LCE comes 1.28M Nissan Leaf battery packs per year. In a EREV like the Chevy Volt, its battery pack is 16kWh, so 1.9M battery packs would be able to be manufactured for the Volt.

To put these numbers in perspective, in 2009 there were a total of 10.4M cars sold in the US, and in 2008 approximately 13M cars sold. So this single lithium mine could power up to 15% of all the US EVs and EREVs sold, if the automakers could build and sell that many (which they wont, at least initially).

So the question is, how many tonnes of LCE would it take to make every car sold in America a plug-in? From a small two-mode system that would allow for 8-12kWh batteries for 10-15 miles at speeds below 60MPH, all the way up to pure EVs with 50kWh batteries. If we assume that 70% of cars sold are two-mode at 10kW, 20% are EREV (18kWh) and the last 10% are pure EVs (35kWh avg), the total kWh for a year of 14M cars is 197.4M kWh, or 177.3M kg of LCE. So in order to produce enough LCE, we would need to produce about 180,000 metric tonnes of LCE, or about 6.5x the amount of stage I.

The stage II lens has approximately 1.365M tonnes of LCE, and at 180,000 metric tonnes per year, it would be exhausted after 7.5 years, assuming the production rate could be sustained.

Seven and a half years might not be a long time, however there are still several other stages to this mine area (stages three and four), plus there are other lithium mines in the Nevada and the US. It appears that Lithium supplies wont be a blockade on the road to electric cars. While Li-Ion batteries can also contain other precious metals that might be scarce, Lithium shouldn’t be an issue.

[Update 5/27 - updated Lithium math based on Leaf's use of 0.9kg/kWh]

The raw numbers are very interesting – a theoretical maximum of over 2,000 Wh/kg, with initial numbers (though not available for many years) around 700Wh/kg. This figure is a huge leap above current technologies. Given “Musk’s Law” of 8% per year, we wouldn’t hit 700Wh/kg until about 2030. As long as they can deliver sometime in the next 5 years it would provide for a new level of energy storage capabilities. Batteries would reduce in volume by 50%. Size and weight would no longer be the issue (how to recharge such batteries quickly would still be).

The batteries also offer superior thermal behavior – down to -60C and up to +160C. This would be beneficial to the automotive applications where cold weather performance can be an issue.

The real question is how fast can they make a product and make it manufacturable. Contour hasn’t even bothered to announce any target dates for product delivery on their website or available documents. They have the talent and are attracting venture capital, so we’ll see how quickly they can turn their lab work into factories putting out large volumes of their unique chemistry.

A Japanese firm called Eamex has announced (Japanese translation via Google) that they have developed a new Li-Ion battery that is capable of withstanding 10,000 cycles and 10,000W/kg power. A huge achivement – considering most laptop batteries today can only hold up for 300 cycles, even the high-end batteries in the Apple MacBooks are only 1,000 cycles. Could this be the technology to finally lay to rest the issues of battery life in cars?

While I’m always skeptical of people touting new battery improvements due to the very high lead time between development, sampling, manufacturability and entrance to the market, these batteries could dramatically change the EV/E-REV world, as well as the power storage/back-up world.

The battery cycle life is a dramatic improvement. At 10,000 cycles, a plug-in vehicle could recharge twice a day for over 13 years. The battery not only eliminates the worry about having to replace it during the 10 year warranty. This also allows people not to worry about taking advantage of Vehicle-to-Grid technologies without excess wear on their battery; V2G during the summer months could take a tiny bit out of the battery at peak times and recharge it later.

The second improvement is the 10,000W/kg specific power. This is far and above what most Li-Ion batteries can provide today. Combined with the increased cycle life, you can build EVs and E-REVs with smaller battery packs; closer to the actual amount of energy that would be needed instead of having a limit on the depth of discharge like the Volt. This effectively reduces the cost of the battery by requiring less kWh of storage – batteries that might be $500/kWh to provide a 16kWh battery can be downsized to 10kWh and still provide the exact same performance in a smaller package (100kg instead of 160kg pack weight) while delivering more power than the engine will need. Hybrids will stand to gain from this as well, since a 2kWh battery could easily power the car entirely (200kW, or 266 HP) for a few miles.

From a grid-backup standpoint, the batteries could finally make practical and affordable to capturing cheap energy and selling it at peak demand times. The high cycle life will keep maintenance and replacement costs down, which is necessary when the difference between daytime and night time prices is only 10-15c/kWh.

There are still many questions left to ask – how does the power output of the battery vary with the depth of discharge, how is the charge and discharge and cycle life affected by temperature. They expect to start producing this battery at the end of the year, but who knows in what quantities and if it will live up to the performance above.

via Electronista

I missed on a lot of the renewable energy stuff – wind is definitely getting going with lots of agreements and more work being done on transmission infrastructure, and solar is hurting and didn’t get any sort of comeback this year. Large deals have been made but there isn’t a whole lot of upwards movement in the market.

Apple

• Apple does, along with a few other companies, releases various 7-10″ tablets. (OK, at the time of publication this is a foregone conclusion, but when I wrote this in the middle of December it wasn’t). Apple’s cost the most, but you get the most (e.g. the App Store). Other tablets don’t have the battery life or applications to match up.
• Apple continues to see growth of 20-30% year over year in computer sales (this number will vary depending on how they categorize the “iSlate” – as a computer or a iPhone-ish device, or its own category).
• The iPhone does go Verizon in July (probably announced earlier), AT&T counter by offering tiered monthly data plans – $20 for 250MB or less, $30 for 1GB or less, $45 for anything over 1GB. They do the rate structure in such a way that there aren’t really overage charges, you just get moved into the next tier (if you use 1.01GB of data, its $45).
• AT&T’s network continues to suck and iPhone users continue to complain. Verizon’s iPhone helps but AT&T doesn’t seem to care too much about network performance.
• The iPhone does not go 4G (LTE or WiMax) in 2010. Its expected to go LTE in 2011 as Verizon gets 50 markets online and AT&T still sucks with HSPA 7.2Mb/s network.
• The iPhone does get bumped to 64GB/32GB/16GB for the same prices ($299/199/99). The 3G iPhone goes away and all phones are 3GS. It doesn’t look like a processor or RAM speed bump is in the cards, but there are some new (risky?) features that get added.

Tech

• LED LCDs dominate 2010. Internet connectivity becomes prominent as TV manufacturers push streaming video on demand services like Netflix and YouTube.
• 3D TVs are introduced but don’t get adopted. Avatar gets released in September as the first true 3D Blu-Ray disk, but since BR hasn’t taken off it doesn’t go anywhere.
• 2010 still isn’t the year of Blu-Ray. Its getting close though! Players are available at $99 by Black Friday and things start to pick up for the holidays. I’m still not sure if broadband speeds will increase fast enough to take Blu-Ray out completely.

Green

• Wind continues to dominate the green generation sector. Transmission projects also start to get under construction in the second half.
• Solar recovers a little. But the problem is that the people wanting to middle-scale solar (between 1MW and 10MW and not utilities) don’t have the money and cant get loans to do it. Where available, PACE (property assessed financing) helps individual home owners defray the cost of putting solar power on their own homes by adding the price into their annual property tax assessment for a low interest rate (4-5%), so even if they move the next owner is paying for it through property tax.
• Geothermal still gets little love. 20MW here and 10MW there. No magic increase that gets geothermal to be some huge part of generation.
• Biofuels and biomass start to transition into more mainstream. You see a lot of coal plants augmenting their coal-fired boilers with wood, trying to reduce net CO2 output.
• EVs (Volt, Leaf, etc.) don’t make that big of a splash in the personal transport market because they cant get out that many units because of battery production issues (producing the number of cells and modules necessary). The tech turns out to be solid, but its the cost and production issues. Its somewhat disappointing that the cars have so much promise and they have trouble making them in volume.

Other

• I figure out some way to get a girlfriend this year. No idea how long I manage to keep her, but I do manage to get one. I had one date in 2009, but 2010 is better.
• I don’t do all that well in the stock market.
• I manage to write an iPhone app for myself. Don’t know whether I publish it – if its the one I think I’m writing it wont get published because it uses private APIs.

And thats it. See you next year!

There are a few interesting points that are made in the presentations..

Well-to-wheel Efficiency: They peg electricity generation at only 30% efficient. If you combine the generation efficiencies, transmission efficiency and the energy spent to get the fuel, electricity generation is surprisingly inefficient. However the highly efficient transfer of that electric energy from the car’s battery to the wheels makes up for it. I’m interested in seeing how renewable energy can make the generation of energy more efficient – wind specifically.

CO2 Output: Depending on generation source, a hybrid electric car (like the Prius) can release less CO2 (~90g/km) than a pure EV when powered by coal generation (170g/km). However a traditional gasoline car is about 160g/km.

Cycle Life: Battery cycle life is largely impacted by depth of discharge (DoD)- limiting pack DoD to 50% more doubles cycle life.

Different Types of Hybrids: Outlines the many types of hybrids available – from weak to plug-in.

Payback Times: A comprehensive list of different types of alternate energy transportation vehicles and their estimated payback time.

The estimated battery capacity would be around 250Wh/kg. This is about double of the current batteries (100-140Wh/kg), and assuming a commensurate increase in Wh/L, the batteries would get lighter and smaller for the same energy storage capacity. If we were to drop this battery in a hypothetical generation two LEAF, we could increase range to 130 miles city, 100 miles highway, and still reduce batter weight (and probably volume) by 25-30%. This would cut a 100-150lbs off the weight of the car (roughly 3-4% of curb weight), and would in turn extend the range of the battery another 3-4%.

The batteries are estimated to get 1000 cycles, presumably at 100% depth of discharge (DoD), which would provide 1500 cycles at an 80% maximum DoD, likely for pure EV applications like the LEAF. This would be suitable to deliver at least 150,000 miles of driving on the battery pack before it degraded to 80%, likely far more due to the relationship between average DoD, cycle life and maximum storage capacity – that is, the lower the average DoD, the more full cycles the battery can withstand before equivalent degradation.

Finally, this advancement pushes ahead the development curve of Lithium Ion batteries. For years, the average increase in capacity was 5-8%, but as more companies throw their hat into the ring of battery research and development, we’re starting to see batteries advance faster. We’ll likely never see batteries advancing as fast as microchips, but it is satisfying to see the rate of innovation ramp up. The electric car future might be here a little bit sooner than expected.

via Green Car Congress

The Tata EV is scheduled for Europe in 2010 or 2011. But the battery performance is what I’m interested in – just like the Panasonic battery from last month, this battery has outstanding energy storage and power delivery characteristics. These are Nickel-Cobalt-Manganese li-ion cells, and the one mentioned is their largest capacity prismatic cell, rated at 3.65V/20Ah (73Wh).

The specification sheet is here (warning: one big image), and the specifications are impressive. 175Wh/kg means that you can put together a 25kWh pack at only 143kg. Adding 20% of that weight for cables, electronics, packaging and safety you’ll get a final pack weight of 171kg, and an approximate volume of 81L. These figures aren’t far off from what is estimated for the Volt, but with a 50% larger gross storage capacity and a much larger net storage capacity. A Volt-spec battery pack, being constrained on volume and power, weights 69kg, produces 130kW at maximum discharge, stores its 8kWh usable in 12kWh (75% DoD), and should last between 1500- 6000 cycles (this range is so large because while the data sheet says 1000 cycles to 80% at 100% D0D, the chart below that shows 1000 cycles to 95%, plus the 50% cycle count boost by using only 75% DoD).

I’ve asked myself if we’re headed towards a leap in technology. Even after factoring packaging weight, the batteries still exceed the rumored pack figures for the upcoming battery packs (Volt, Leaf), factoring in three years for mass manufacturing,is this the leading edge for 2012-2015? The performance aspects about double what is rumored to be in existing EVs in the early part of the decade, and could provide for a new wave of larger, heavier EVs (small SUV or Crossover) that can be driven for 50-100 miles (EREV or BEV) that are more in line with whats popular in terms of car size.

[via Green Car Congress]

The price quoted is $350/kWh. This means the Volt’s battery is $5,600 for the battery cells only. All the electronics, battery casing, cooling/heating, etc, are extra and on top of that figure. The $8,000 estimate for the entire battery pack  seems to be plausible, if not right on the money. At the finished pack level, this is a cost of $1,000 per usable kWh. Its hopeful the usable kWh price for electric vehicles reaches $500 by 2015 and $250 by 2020. These price targets would be achieved through a combination of increased cycle life and depth of discharge, as well as advanced manufacturing technologies that decrease the time it takes to build a cell, module and pack and allow for higher throughput.

This doesn’t immediately impact the Volt’s MSRP however, because there is still the unknown of battery life. I did see a chart in a presentation (pg. 27) from MIT that depicted depth of discharge versus cycle life – while it was for NiMH and not Li-Ion, it is known that Li-Ion exhibits a similar pattern. It showed the number of cycles increasing logarithmically with depth of discharge; to 75% original capacity, it was about 1,000 cycles for 100% DoD, about 1,600 cycles for 80% DoD, and 2,750 cycles for 50% DoD. You can see that the increase is not linear – you get a 60% boost by reducing DoD from 100% to 80%, and a 175% boost from reducing DoD form 100% to 50%. The issue with automotive batteries is how they’ll be affected by temperature and how that impacts their cycle life.

The Volt would need about 3,800 cycles to 75% to meet its targets based on what GM has said up to this point. The goal appears to get to the 10 year/150,000 mile mark with 75% degradation in the battery pack, leaving a 12kWh pack, still enough to source 8.8kWh and leave margins on the edges (though this is a 73% DoD, as DoD rises it will accelerate the reduction of battery capacity). It appears that they’ll probably fall about 1,000 cycles short of what they would need, however that is the worst-case scenario – the 55% DoD is a upper bound and many times drivers may just being going out for a short drive and it would be to their benefit to recharge it when they return, since reducing their average DoD will prolong battery life and performance.

A life of 2,750 cycles at 40 miles per cycle would mean 110,000 miles – 40,000 mile short of the 150,000 mile warranty. This would require someone to drive exactly 40 miles per charge, and then charge it up, then drive 40 miles again, never using the gasoline engine. This isn’t too practical in the real world – either owners will always drive on electricity (reducing the average depth of discharge and increasing the battery cycle life) or they’ll be driving some miles on gasoline and not affecting the battery but still ticking miles off the warranty.

In the worse case scenario, I would expect that even at two charges per weekday (which would be exceedingly rare) and one per weekend day, the amount of time to get to 110,000 miles would be four and a half years (25,000 miles per year). By 2015, batteries should be somewhat cheaper ($500 per usable kWh, rather than $700, with a total pack price of $5,500), and the replacement batteries should last sufficiently long as to not need replacement before the original warranty period is up since the warranty doesn’t reset, rather the batteries will just need to get through the remaining 40,000 miles on the warranty.

If the Volt shell, engine and generator cost $25,000 (the cost of a high end Civic), the battery being another $8,000, the total vehicle cost is only $33,000. These numbers however, don’t include the additional labor since the vehicle isn’t being mass produced initially – only 10,000 units (maybe) for the first year, and battery packs will be assembled mostly by hand (see the 2nd to last paragraph) and more automation will be added to ramp production. It also doesn’t include any warranty, dealer markup, delivery, etc. If GM has to provide a second battery to 20-30% of Volt owners before the warranty is up, that could add another $1,500 to the cost of each car. It also doesn’t include any money to pay off the many years of research and development that have gone into the car, the battery testing lab, etc.

The performance of the batteries and the modular design have attracted attention. The 1.5kWh pack weighs 8kg (17.6lbs) and has a volume of 7L, or about 187Wh/kg and 214Wh/L. These figures are both extremely high considering most other batteries have energy-to-weight and energy-to-volume figures below 140Wh/unit. No information in the press release announced a release window for these battery packs.

The raw figures indicate excellent performance characteristics. Attempting to research the cycle life characteristics of the Lithium Nickel Oxide batteries yielded an paper from 1995 (abstract available) had shown a LiNoO2 cathode to withstand more than 1000 cycles with extremely strong performance characteristics almost 15 years ago. The reason that it had not been used previously is safety problems, which Panasonic indicates they have solved by using a metal oxide layer in the battery that will prevent the anode and cathode from shorting out and causing thermal runaway (heat and possibly fire). If the batteries can be proven to be safe, it would be a significant step in improving battery technology.

As far as applications in cars go, the modules are a perfect fit for EVs and E-REVs because they are significantly ahead of other battery technology to date. This would reduce a 16kWh battery from 160kg (100Wh/kg) to about 90kg, and reducing the volume from approximately 140L (114Wh/L) to 74L (almost half the volume). Specific power is said to be comparable to Lithium Cobalt-based cells, however it is unknown whether or not the values scale up commensurately with the increases in Wh/kg and Wh/L – since the battery pack would have about half of the mass and volume, it would need twice the specific power (W/kg or W/L) to maintain the same power output for a given battery weight or volume. This means it would need about 1,200 W/kg (1,500W/L) to provide 110kW of power with 16kWh (90kg/74L) of batteries. If the batteries aren’t able to produce that kind of power, they’ll be relegated to pure EVs, where you could have a large 25kWh pack (80% DoD)  at 135kg/117L and need only 820W/kg and 940W/L. A research study (PDF, mostly in Japanese, but the abstract and charts are readable) on Panasonic Lithium Nickel Oxide batteries from Japan showed specific power between 4,400W/kg and 1,000W/kg (chart, page 4), however those figures quoted a very low specific energy (94Wh/kg), and assuming that specific power would decrease as specific energy increases, it could be estimated that for a SoC between 85% and 30%, the battery with twice the specific energy would have half the specific power, or roughly between 1,200W/kg and 2,200W/kg. This would be suitable for both E-REVs and EVs, however the restrictions on depth of discharge would remain (no expanding of the Volt’s D0D).

As batteries grow in energy density, they’ll become more practical for larger vehicles. Vehicles like the H3E E-REV demo model produced by Raser Technologies would be able to carry fewer battery packs, reducing the weight of electrification – what was probably 30kWh of batteries weighing 300kg could be reduced to about the size and weight of the current Volt battery pack (160kg/140L), which would be easy to “hide” on an H3 or any full sized truck.

Again, since there is no word on the release date and any numbers for how many cells they would produce per year, its still a bit up in the air – definitely not vaporware, but in that gray area between we’ve made demo models and mass production. Even if these batteries don’t arrive for another 3 years, that’s still far ahead of the 5-7% average annual performance increase we’ve had for Li-Ion batteries the past 10 years or so, batteries with this level of performance would not otherwise be expected until 2017.