Comment by happosai
14 hours ago
> Unless you want to charge in negative temperatures
LFP charging in cold has pretty much been solved by adding a heater to battery pack.
> (Sodium-ion) prices won't reach LFPs for another 10-15 years (unless you believe hype, not actual analysts).
Given CATL is scaling sodium-ion production to to GWh scale next year, it sounds like they are betting for a much shorter timeframe.
> LFP charging in cold has pretty much been solved by adding a heater to battery pack.
That's a hack, not a solution.
> Given CATL is scaling sodium-ion production to to GWh scale next year, it sounds like they are betting for a much shorter timeframe.
Wanna bet? LFP is ~1,000 GWh scale right now. GWh scale is 0.1%.
I pulled into a Supercharger with my LFP-battery EV last winter. The temperature outside was -15C and I had not set the navigator so there was no pre-warming activated.
By the time I had finished my coffe, SoC had gone from 30-ish to 90-ish percent.
LFP tech anno 2023 is perfectly good enough for road tripping in large cars in severe winter conditions. For almost everyone.
So your battery was preheated. I once did the same with approx 0C battery temperature and whole ordeal took at least 2x longer. Yes there was farmers market in front of charge station so I had a good time with kiddo. That’s not the point.
Let’s not pretend better batteries shouldn’t exist.
1 reply →
>That's a hack, not a solution.
Why do you say that? It sounds like a simple solution to me.
Leave your car with 5% SOC overnight and then try to find energy in morning to preheat battery. People have painted into corner themselves before. It’s perfectly adequate for my very mild climate and even then I get limited regen about 6 morning months per year.
1 reply →
It takes hours to heat a cold large pack til it's warm enough to charge. That's a drawback.
2 replies →
After market electric engine heaters and remote starters are typical for ICE vehicles in cold climates (e.g. Alaska). Not sure why you consider this to be a hack for EVs if its builtin to the battery pack design.
Isn't starting a fire under your engine to get it to start a hack too? I mean they could add a heater to the engine. Wait.
Does the heater handle real winters, like they have in Alaska, Mongolia, and parts of Russia north of it? Or just European and American "winters" where -20°C is considered hardcore? Gasoline powered engines handle this well, and you can warm them up with a gasoline torch if they stay outside for too long and refuse to start. The cold does not destroy them.
> Does the heater handle real winters, like they have in Alaska, Mongolia, and parts of Russia north of it? Or just European and American "winters" where -20°C is considered hardcore?
It handles "real winters" [1] where large portions of the human population live. [2][3][4]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
[2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/staticarchive/e4ff248622e19fa303d72e25...
[3] https://engaging-data.com/population-latitude-longitude/
[4] https://luminocity3d.org/WorldPopDen/
I don't see why a built-in heater is worse than aiming a torch at a car to get it to start. Seems like a major oversight for gasoline cars.
Also, a tiny fraction of the population will ever need to start their cars in Alaska, Mongolia, and Northern Russia. The small city worth of people living in these insane environments can stick to their wood-fueled diesel cars while the rest of the world just uses normal vehicles.
Alaska, Mongolia and Russia are extreme edge cases that I don’t believe hold much weight in an argument. It’s like those arguments where folks try to attack solar or wind, “solar won’t work on northern Alaskan winter”. Ok great that’s such a small slice of the population that it’s ok.
Are you a car ad where you're selling the most extreme off-road experience for the person who just wants to go to the grocery store?
Come on man. If you're in an extreme environment, get the tool appropriate for that environment. People in mountain environments tend to have 4WD or AWD cars because it's appropriate. Doesn't mean a non-AWD car is useless.
If you live in the extreme 5%, get something that works there. If you're in the rest of the 95%, other solutions work fine.
Those are quite niche environments. The success of LFP won't hinge on whether it works below -20C, obviously.
Most of the US Midwest sees -20 C for at least a brief period each winter. Having reduced functionality at those temps would be pretty inconvenient for the many car dependent people that live in the region.
6 replies →
You can discharge the battery to power the heaters, at significant cost in energy. The temperature becomes a serious problem when charging (will physically destroy the battery through dentrite formation!), and under very high power draws (battery can’t keep up chemically).
It can be solved, but at a cost, and makes the tech much more dangerous - you could end up in a situation where you freeze to death somewhere more easily in the climates it is a problem.
It’s similar reasons why diesel isn’t a great idea in Alaska and the like too, and people tend towards gasoline even in situations where it is more costly and less efficient (like industrial trucks). It can be mitigated with chemical additives (‘heat’), tank and block heaters, etc. but has similar risks.