Batteries, the next frontier for semis

[Arthur Hanson]

Right now the electric vehicles are of limited use for the difficulties of doing long trips, except for the most expensive models as are many other devices that use battery power. The next revolution in semis is going to be in the battery area which is set to start advancing at the same rate as the rest of the semi market with time between generations starting to shrink at an accelerating rate. Having been studying battery technologies, there are at least twenty technologies on the horizon and if only a few succeed, it will be a game-changer for anything powered by electricity. Already companies like AMAT and other suppliers to the semi sector. are working on this already. This is too broad and deep a pool of opportunities to not take seriously to ignore for it will not only power existing products but create new ones. The better energy storage gets, the larger the market grows.

5 New Battery Technologies That Will Change the Future

We need batteries that store more, last longer, and are safer to use. New battery technologies are coming our way.

www.gray.com

 

[count]

Right now the electric vehicles are of limited use for the difficulties of doing long trips, except for the most expensive models as are many other devices that use battery power. The next revolution in semis is going to be in the battery area which is set to start advancing at the same rate as the rest of the semi market with time between generations starting to shrink at an accelerating rate. Having been studying battery technologies, there are at least twenty technologies on the horizon and if only a few succeed, it will be a game-changer for anything powered by electricity. Already companies like AMAT and other suppliers to the semi sector. are working on this already. This is too broad and deep a pool of opportunities to not take seriously to ignore for it will not only power existing products but create new ones. The better energy storage gets, the larger the market grows.

5 New Battery Technologies That Will Change the Future

We need batteries that store more, last longer, and are safer to use. New battery technologies are coming our way.

www.gray.com

Arthur, I know you are investment minded so have a look at BYD, this company along with CATL are the leaders in battery production and technology. BYD also does in house automotive semiconductor design. Can only be bought as an ADR right now.

 

[Portland]

We'll see if adiomics and evr motors are legit. It is exciting.

 

[Arthur Hanson]

Arthur, I know you are investment minded so have a look at BYD, this company along with CATL are the leaders in battery production and technology. BYD also does in house automotive semiconductor design. Can only be bought as an ADR right now.

Count, there are some battery technologies that look to offer dramatic changes including some on the edge where you would just change the liquid electrolyte with fu]resh electrolyte and are ready to go. This is but one radical possibility of many. Our ability to create in everything has been pushed upward greatly by the numerous options at every step of discovery, development, and production of almost any area we choose to focus on and batteries are the next extremely large frontier from use in space ships to submarines just for starters

 

[Polun]

Ture, other than chips, battery is one of the most strategic component in the next decates.
In many cutting edges tech, Solid state battery is the most feasible next generation techhnology in the area.
This technology will come to commercialization faster than expect.

Several competitive route such as Sulfide (Toyota, SP, CATL), Oxide (Quansumscape, Prologium), Polymer(Solid Energy Solution).
Will be more interesting in 2022.

 

[IanD]

Many companies -- especially small startups looking for investment -- have been touting radical new battery technologies which they promise will transform the world for quite some time now.

So far not a single one has made it to the mass market, instead progress has been by small and steady steps based on known technology, and mostly from the big suppliers.

Of course this might well change in the future, but then we might also get nuclear fusion, flying cars, and all the other things that have been hyped for years but never delivered.

However much Arthur says otherwise, batteries are not like semiconductors, where the advance is and has been rapid (even if it's slowing a bit) because it's purely driven by technology advantages. Batteries are limited by fundamental chemical limits, and ones that are promising in the lab are not always capable of being scaled up due to material availability or cost/complexity of manufacturing -- like solar panels, multilayer wonders using exotic materials might be getting on for 50% efficient but it's the far cheaper scaleable technologies around half this efficiency that are (and will) make it out into the mass market.

So excuse my scepticism (based on history) but I'll believe in a radical new mass-market battery technology when I see it out there, and not before...

 

[tonyget]

Advancement in battery is all about material science，not much relevance with semiconductor

 

[Daniel Nenni]

Batteries will be the next supply chain shortage.

 

[Arthur Hanson]

Many companies -- especially small startups looking for investment -- have been touting radical new battery technologies which they promise will transform the world for quite some time now.

So far not a single one has made it to the mass market, instead progress has been by small and steady steps based on known technology, and mostly from the big suppliers.

Of course this might well change in the future, but then we might also get nuclear fusion, flying cars, and all the other things that have been hyped for years but never delivered.

However much Arthur says otherwise, batteries are not like semiconductors, where the advance is and has been rapid (even if it's slowing a bit) because it's purely driven by technology advantages. Batteries are limited by fundamental chemical limits, and ones that are promising in the lab are not always capable of being scaled up due to material availability or cost/complexity of manufacturing -- like solar panels, multilayer wonders using exotic materials might be getting on for 50% efficient but it's the far cheaper scaleable technologies around half this efficiency that are (and will) make it out into the mass market.

So excuse my scepticism (based on history) but I'll believe in a radical new mass-market battery technology when I see it out there, and not before...

Batteries are limited by physics more than chemistry and charging times could be dramatically lowered in several ways that are on the horizon and this is really more critical than range right now. New battery structures and charging systems are on the horizon. This is where the lessons learned in semis relate to batteries, although on a much larger scale.

 

[IanD]

Batteries are limited by physics more than chemistry and charging times could be dramatically lowered in several ways that are on the horizon and this is really more critical than range right now. New battery structures and charging systems are on the horizon. This is where the lessons learned in semis relate to batteries, although on a much larger scale.

Except that surveys show that range is much more important for most people than super-fast charging -- the vast majority of EV recharging is not done at fast-charging stations, it's done either overnight at home, during the daytime at work, while out shopping and so on, try talking to some EV owners. Charging in 5 minutes is mostly an obsession in the minds of journalists and people who don't drive EVs...

 

[Arthur Hanson]

Several automotive righters recently tried long-range road trips and found them a headache when it came not only to charging times but having to wait to get access to a charger. They came to the conclusion that long road trips are not practical now because of access to charging stations and the 45 plus minute charge time. By using massively parallel structures in the battery for charging with enough power charging time could be reduced dramatically. Using liquid electrolytes if possible would reduce charging time to almost the same as a gas car, except for draining time. Also automated battery exchange could also change this equation if standards across the industry could also change things. Exchange batteries would have chips that would calculate history and needed charge for billing purposes.

 

[IanD]

Several automotive righters recently tried long-range road trips and found them a headache when it came not only to charging times but having to wait to get access to a charger. They came to the conclusion that long road trips are not practical now because of access to charging stations and the 45 plus minute charge time. By using massively parallel structures in the battery for charging with enough power charging time could be reduced dramatically. Using liquid electrolytes if possible would reduce charging time to almost the same as a gas car, except for draining time. Also automated battery exchange could also change this equation if standards across the industry could also change things. Exchange batteries would have chips that would calculate history and needed charge for billing purposes.

Yes, but it's the 45 minutes that is the problem, there's no real perceived need to get all the way down to a few minutes ("the same as a gas car") with the enormous power flows (multi-megawatt) that this implies, something around 15 minutes is fine for most people. What actual EV owners say -- as opposed to a few automotive writers -- is that range matters more to them than ultra-fast charging. Long road trips are a problem today because there aren't enough chargers and too few are high-speed, but this will change in the future.

Battery exchange has been suggested for years but there are a huge number of obstacles to it working in practice -- standardisation, physical problems of swapping with high-current connectors, cost, getting a battery that's not in good shape, battery fraud, integration with car systems including cooling, forcing manufacturers to agree on specification. The other problem is that all the things needed to make the batteries swappable also reduce capacity and increase cost and weight, which reduces range which is the #1 priority.

The only place that has shown any sign of trying to make it work is China, where as a command economy the government can tell car makers "do this" and they have no choice but to obey, whether they like it or not -- because it also reduces their ability to differentiate their cars from the competition. What do you think the chances of this happening are across the West in general and the USA in particular?

 

[count]

I'd pose the following question:

Would fast charging matter if you had a car with 1000 miles of real world range?

At that point you could drive for 16 hours straight at 60mph. The point about taking a 45 minute break to charge on a long road trip becomes moot. I'm in the camp that believes range is more important than fast charging. I also think it's more achievable. 1000 miles could be standard range on EVs 5-10 years from now.

 

[Arthur Hanson]

Heating, loads, and air conditioning are going to be critical. I can't see a truck loaded or pulling a load on a hot day with the air conditioning on max having hardly any range with current batteries. The Ford F 150 is the best-selling vehicle right now so this is key. Current batteries will have a very short range under these circumstances.

 

[IanD]

Heating, loads, and air conditioning are going to be critical. I can't see a truck loaded or pulling a load on a hot day with the air conditioning on max having hardly any range with current batteries. The Ford F 150 is the best-selling vehicle right now so this is key. Current batteries will have a very short range under these circumstances.

Arthur, you really need to go and check actual figures before making assertions like this. Tests have shown that the extra loads from things like aircon/heating/lights are small compared to the power needed to drive the vehicle, and the difference in range between "everything off" and "everything on" is typically about 10%, especially for a big vehicle like an F-150.

Pulling a heavy load can make a much bigger difference, dependoing on the size/weight/drag of the load, and can reduce range by up to half, so you're correct here -- but 150 miles or so is still a long way when towing a heavy load...

 

[Arthur Hanson]

Arthur, you really need to go and check actual figures before making assertions like this. Tests have shown that the extra loads from things like aircon/heating/lights are small compared to the power needed to drive the vehicle, and the difference in range between "everything off" and "everything on" is typically about 10%, especially for a big vehicle like an F-150.

Pulling a heavy load can make a much bigger difference, dependoing on the size/weight/drag of the load, and can reduce range by up to half, so you're correct here -- but 150 miles or so is still a long way when towing a heavy load...

150 miles is nothing if towing a boat, RV trailer, off-road vehicle, or a long distance move and a tradesman/tech doing field work which I did for years. For me I would do that and more in a day all the time.

 

[IanD]

150 miles is nothing if towing a boat, RV trailer, off-road vehicle, or a long distance move and a tradesman/tech doing field work which I did for years. For me I would do that and more in a day all the time.

I didn't say it was enough for everybody, it's still two or three hours nonstop drive depending on what you're towing and how fast you're going, but there will always be some people who want more than this.

Your assertion about heating and aircon is still wrong...

 

[Arthur Hanson]

I didn't say it was enough for everybody, it's still two or three hours nonstop drive depending on what you're towing and how fast you're going, but there will always be some people who want more than this.

Your assertion about heating and aircon is still wrong...

Air and heating can be significant although not major load and must be counted in very cold climates and very hot ones, which is almost irrelevant in many areas. I have been in below zero and above 110 and the drain would not be insignificant. Most vehicles are not well insulated and in the airflow will drain power in such extremes.

 

[IanD]

Air and heating can be significant although not major load and must be counted in very cold climates and very hot ones, which is almost irrelevant in many areas. I have been in below zero and above 110 and the drain would not be insignificant. Most vehicles are not well insulated and in the airflow will drain power in such extremes.

You keep saying that the drain is big, but this has been tested -- including with climate extremes -- and it's just not anything like as big as you claim.

The biggest effects were on the smallest most economical EVs which use the least energy for propulsion, and were still not much above 10% IIRC. For big EVs like an F-150 the effect is smaller, definitely less than 10%.

I suggest you go and find the numbers before repeating your claim again, because they say you're wrong ;-)