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Mitsubishi’s Trial EV Indicates Challenge for the Lithium Ion Solution
According to the report below from the L.A. Times the electric version of Mitsubishi’s small vehicle, using a lithium-ion battery, apparently costs more than twice its gasoline-powered equivalent, takes up to 7 hours to re-charge and has a range of only 75 miles.
A hybrid version with an NiMH battery might be $20,000 cheaper based on existing hybrid prices. A lithium-ion hybrid might be $10,000 cheaper since it would use a much smaller battery than the EV, with the battery cost savings being partly offset by its need to have a standard gas engine as well. Of course the hybrids do not have range restrictions or the need for virtually daily recharging.
So the Mitsubishi indicates the challenge for the li-on battery and demonstrates the essential trade off between an all electric city car and a hybrid. With the EV you get infinite miles per gallon of gas compared with maybe 50 or 70 on a next generation hybrid. But it is only for short trips.
There seems to be two conclusions to be drawn. First, the lithium ion battery is currently an expensive technology compared with the NiMH. It probably needs to be decosted before it can compete with the NiMH battery as was discussed here.
Secondly, a city car may not have a vast consumer market until the gasoline savings are in the range of $4,000 a year to justify an additional $20,000 cost. At 15,000 miles/yr and, say, 50 mpg for a hybrid, the cost of gas would need to be north of $13 a gallon. Or else the battery cost needs to come down a lot.
Mitsubishi electric car to get U.S. market test by PG & E, Edison
A handful of i-MiEV cars will be sent to the utilities, which will evaluate whether there’s a mass market for them here.
By Ken Bensinger
August 8, 2008
Mitsubishi Motors Corp. will bring electric cars to the U.S. starting this fall in test programs announced today with Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and Southern California Edison.
The Japanese automaker will deliver fewer than a dozen of its tiny i-MiEV electric cars to the utilities, but the company said it plans to use the programs to determine whether the U.S. is a viable mass market for such vehicles. We want to evaluate if electric cars are feasible as a commercial technology,” said David Patterson, Mitsubishi’s senior manager for regulatory affairs and certification.
Currently, only one company sells highway-legal electric cars in the U.S., San Carlos, Calif.-based Tesla, which began delivering its $100,000 Roadster in April. Electric cars made by General Motors, Toyota and other major carmakers were available on limited lease terms in California in the late 1990s, but most of those cars were recalled and the lease programs were discontinued.
Now, with gasoline prices roughly triple their 1990s prices, interest in electric cars has risen significantly and a number of automakers are considering the technology, including Nissan and General Motors, which plans to release its electric Volt in late 2010.
Mitsubishi will begin selling the i-MiEV in Japan starting in August 2009 for between $45,000 and $50,000, not including government incentives of more than $15,000. A non-electric version of the car retails in Japan for around $20,000.
The largest component in the price, said Patterson, is the car’s advanced lithium ion battery, produced by Lithium Energy Japan. Battery technology is considered the main obstacle to widespread adoption of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles.
The battery, which can be charged in five to seven hours using 220-volt current, gives the i-MiEV a 75-mile range and a top speed of 81 mph. It can hold three passengers and the driver.
Tags: peak oil energy investments
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12 responses so far ↓
1 jimb // Aug 8, 2008 at 10:55 am
I think the emerging fiscal-delineation line will be nimh for parallel-hybrids and li-ion for series-hybrids. So the question becomes will serial-hybrids ever be cost effective over parallel ones?
2 jkingsdale // Aug 8, 2008 at 3:44 pm
Here is a discussion of parallel, series, and parallel/series systems: http://www.hybridcenter.org/hybrid-center-how-hybrid-cars-work-under-the-hood-2.html. It would be useful, jimb, if you could explain why you say that NiMH is more appropriate for parallel and li-on for series. And what about the combo?
3 Paul // Aug 9, 2008 at 4:52 am
jimb’s assumptions appears reasonable. In series hybrids only the electric motor drives the car and therefore needs the most powerful/efficient battery (in Wh/kg).
This article is a welcome change in that cost is mentioned.
Cost is the reason why the next five years will not see a significant transition from the petro-car to the electric car. (Unless you call a car with idle-off capability and partial regenerative breaking capacity an electric car)
In “lithium-ion: not so fast” it is mentioned that Toyota has revised its 2011 hybrid production estimates from 2-3 million to 1 million. Mercedes is about to shelf its ML 450 hybrid, because Cobasys can’t produce the NiMH batteries. Bosch estimates a worldwide total of 2.5 million hybrids being produced in 2015.
Therefore, the effect of hybrids on gasoline consumption within the next five years will be minimal. The only affordable fuel saving technology is diesel and the only affordable near term non-oil technology, is natural gas. With the price differential between gasoline and natural gas it is difficult to understand why this transiton does not happen faster.
4 Robert Essian // Aug 9, 2008 at 8:26 am
Jim, I agree that electrical transportation is in fact our future. All the arguments stated above is “the bugs factor” relating to automobiles.
Living in the State of Michigan and having watched the auto business my entire life makes me believe they will get it wrong more times that not.
Here’s a suggestion, while we wait for the next generation of electrically powered cars and trucks why not convert the new trucks and transport fleet to natural gas. Why… because they can’t sell any of the new trucks and commercial vehecles now. I believe if the auto companies would pay to retro fit the engines to natural gas (which is cheap for now) and save on fuel bills for these commercial forms of transports going forward beggining now would be a plus because natural gas is cheap now and abundant. If this could happen soon the auto companies would then ad to their balance sheet.
Helping to transform the current fleet to all electric in our future and importantly ad some breathing room for the developement of the all electric vehicle. Seems to me a workable plan. Better than doing nothing…
I looked at a company (FSYS) after doing some research and played a hunch. I bought the stock. Seems to me that my line of thinking may be valid. T.Boone’s Picken’s might be the best salesmen for this stock going forward. That’s my take for what it’s worth.
5 Paul // Aug 9, 2008 at 8:06 pm
There is hope that electrical transportation is the future, but it is not a sure thing. You need a technological breakthrough, which cannot be predicted. The last major one happened some 35 years ago with the invention of the lithium battery (or 17 years ago if count from the time of its first commercial availability). Apart from unproven breakthrough announcements from start-up companies nothing happend since. The normal learning curve and mass production will not make batteries good and cheap enough. (Actually the opposite may happen - if demand for lithium, lanthanum, cobalt and copper goes up, electric cars may beome more expensive the more are being produced)
And what exactly is the crime of US car manufacturers ?
That they sold what their customers wanted when gas was $1.50/gallon ?
That they don’t have immediately in stock what customers want now with gas at $4/gallon? They only could have fuel efficent cars available now if they had anticipated $140 oil 5-7 years ago and started multibillion investment initiatives back then. Shareholders would have declared such management as insane.
Foreign car manufacturers just have been lucky because petrol in their home countries was always heavily taxed.
6 jkingsdale // Aug 9, 2008 at 8:39 pm
Paul - to a large extent all that is correct - and it is interesting to note that increased commodities prices will offset to some degree and possibly overpower new technological developments that always tend to decost complex products.
But the question at hand has nothing to do with blaming the car companies. It’s just about whether and how new battery or other technologies can offset the coming advent of peak oil.
7 jimb // Aug 10, 2008 at 4:34 pm
No way I could cover it all in this little comment box, but a couple highlevel points:
- Wh/kg is about twice as high for li-ion as nimh. Weight is crucial in series-hybrids as they’re basically EVs for 30+ miles. This has a recursive effect as the more batteries weight the more power you need to move the car the more batteries you need the more battery weight the more…
A 16kWh li-ion pack like the Volts should weight around 350 pounds. A NiMH one would be around 780 pounds. It takes a 10+ kwh pack to really be in the series-hybrid range, assuming SOC windows widen.
- W/kg is 2-3x higher for li-ion. This is necessary because in a series-hybrid the battery and electric motor are on their own for acceleration. In a parallel one they are assisted by the ICE so you don’t need the greater peaking capacity. This has the same recursive effect as acceleration gets harder as vehicle weight grows.
- cycle-capacity/lifetime for *new* (a123, enerdel, altair) chemistries is much better. Series hybrids run a “charge depletion” usage model that cycles the battery much more. This will be necessary to get the 100,000+ mile lifetimes consumers will demand, otherwise you have to have a battery swap program at which point the cost advantage of nihm over li-ion rapidly evaporates.
So its really from an engineering perspective that nimh just won’t work for series hybrids almost regardless of cost.
8 Paul // Aug 11, 2008 at 2:12 pm
jimb - this is the best explanation of batteries and hybrids I’ve ever seen. And it shows the huge challenge to move towards “electric transportation”
Suppose it’s possible (with tweaks to current technology and economy of scale) to produce an affordable 4-person city EV with a 500kg lithium battery and a 100mile range (50 in winter). To go from there to a “real car” you need a) to increase battery performance by 200% (without increasing weight) and b) find a way to recharge it within five minutes (like filling the tank). For b) you need a miracle, not just a breakthrough. In theory you can indirectly solve b) by exchanging batteries. But practically and logistically that’s a very messy solution. It would be easier to exchange the EV with an empty battery for a fully charged one at the “gas station” of the future.
Fuel cells are they only currently at least conceivable solution to the “all electric car” with full range and fast refueling.
Conclusion: EV’s will remain city niche cars. Full hybrids with marginal benefits over diesel could also find their niche - but competing against natural gas cars will be tough.
All IC cars, including CNG cars, will be soon be mild hybrids (i.e. regenerative braking capacity to allow idle-off and a smooth restart).
As to CNG investment opportunities, FSYS looks like being in the right space, but with a PE > 70 they can’t have any missteps and it’s difficult to assess the competitive landscape with regard to entry barriers
9 jimb // Aug 11, 2008 at 6:35 pm
Thanks Paul.
One thing to note, the “recharge problem” is within striking distance of solvable.
The battery side is a done deal. EnerDel/Altair li-ion chemistries are capable of sustaining charge currents that will easily charge a 20kwh pack in under 10 minutes (and thats a conservative estimate). This is absolutely key, because the ability for the battery to sustain large currents without overheating is the very same thing that lets it last so many cycles without breaking down. When you solve resistance, you solve thermal runaway. When you solve thermal runaway you solve both saftey and cycle-damage. The best part is this is completely proven technology thanks to the AES grid-battery demo Altair did. The only hypothetical part about it is can they make it cheap enough.
So the problem isn’t can they take it, the problem is can you provide it. There’s two ways to tackle this (or three if you combine them). One is you provide a second battery and integrate it into the home. This would “trickle” charge throughout the day and then provide a burst charge when you connect it battery-to-battery with the vehicle. Realistically this is cost prohibitive for now, and will at first probably be only a fraction of the capacity of the vehicles battery. For instance if you have a 10kwh series-phev, and you blew 8kwh getting to work and back, you might just want a 3kwh “top off” to go schlep your kids around or go out for dinner.
Second is you use industrial 480v charging stations, either at gas stations or really just anywhere. Its a lot of current but its nothing power companies haven’t provided to small businesses every day. Combine the two options and the gas station could have its own batteries or capacitor banks so that its a more stable demand on the grid. This is one place where you don’t care about the poorer weight density of capacitors.
Lastly, remember, we’re talking series hybrids here. Or to use GM’s term, ER-EVs. If the battery runs out its no problem, you just burn gas until you get home for your nightly recharge. So rapid-recharging is a problem we have plenty of time to solve.
10 jkingsdale // Aug 11, 2008 at 9:02 pm
jimb: re the recharge problem for a series HEV, can’t the IC engine operate as needed to recharge the battery as it is being used so that the “standstill” battery recharge requirement is far less than the rated distance capacity of the battery by itself? Long trips would still exhaust the battery and require IC only capability. But shorter trips might require much less “standstill” recharge time. No?
11 jimb // Aug 12, 2008 at 12:34 pm
jkingsdale: Mechanically that could work but is slightly at cross-purposes to the goal of the series hybrid (avoid burning gas). If you’d rather have the shorter charge time and use the ICE more, then just buy a PHEV with shorter EV range (smaller battery).
For instance, the Volt is going to be a PHEV40, but once they prove a working system you’ll see lots of PHEV20 - 30 vehicles come out with cheaper/smaller batteries. 30 miles still gets you something like 66% of all U.S. drivers daily average, and even a 20 mile EV range will make a huge dent in your gas consumption even if you drive 30 miles every day.
12 iroberts // Aug 25, 2008 at 2:43 pm
I thought California had solved all of these issues and installed charging stations but GM wouldn’t sell a car just lease them. What I saw was 60 mpc and a nice looking all electric but everybody helped to kill it. All electric cars will have the same cold weather problems so mabe we should put our real effort into Hydrogen fuel or for the short time Nat Gas.
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