Auto Industry Working Hard to Make an Electric Vehicle

Battery

Auto Industry Working Hard to Make an

Electric Vehicle Battery
December 27, 2009 in News

Plug-in hybrid batteries are still an unknown for the auto industry

Charles J. Murray, Senior Technical Editor Design News, April 14, 2008

To an engineer, it looks obvious.

Gasoline packs 80 times more energy per kilogram than a lithium-ion electric vehicle battery.
It holds 250 times more energy than a common lead-acid battery. So, its a no-brainer.
Batteries cant possibly deliver the energy needed to power the future of the auto industry,
right?

Wrong. With vehicle exhaust being blamed for global warming and with concerns over foreign
oil availability growing, the auto industry has re-ratcheted up its eorts to develop an electric
car and the battery still sits smack-dab in the middle of Alternative Energy Highway.

The battery is central, says Mark Verbrugge, director of the Materials and Processes Lab. at
GM Research Labs. We know and understand all of the technologies that are needed, other
than the battery.

Indeed, battery technology is still, to some degree, a mystery. But automakers dont want to
wait. General Motors has promised a 2010 delivery date for the Chevy Volt, a plug-in hybrid
vehicle that uses lithium-ion batteries. Meanwhile, Toyota and Ford are working on plug-ins
while Chrysler has placed a handful of Dodge Sprinter plug-ins in a test fleet. All will draw
power from batteries.

Questions remain, however: Can todays battery technology sustain an EV market? Do the
batteries pack enough energy? Is their cost low enough? Is the durability there? Are they
safe?

The answers are complex and varied. Most automotive engineers and electrochemists agree
on one point, however: A big, full-featured, battery-powered car isnt feasible yet. Energy
densities are still too low; range is too short; recharge time, too long. Because no one as yet
can build an electric vehicle with a 300-mile range and 15-min recharge time, batteries arent
about to replace the internal combustion engine.
Wed like to have a direct replacement for what we have today, says David Swan, president
and engineer for DHS Engineering Inc., a consultant to the EV industry. But creating an
electric vehicle that matches our current vehicles performance for performance, price for
price is extraordinarily dicult.

Still, theres a market there, albeit a niche market. Such companies as Global Electric
Motorcars (GEM), Zap! Electric Cars and Zenn Motor Co. are producing tiny, battery-powered
neighborhood vehicles. Daimler is testing a diminutive EV in London.

Moreover, plug-in hybrids are on the rise. Plug-ins, which use internal combustion engines to
extend range, make it easier to build an EV battery because they eliminate concerns over
specific energy.

Even so, makers of plug-in batteries say the task is not a slam dunk. This is a big, big
challenge, says Mohammed Alamgir, director of research for Compact Power, Inc., a battery
maker for the GM Volt project. People in this industry are accustomed to teeny-weeny cell
phone batteries. Now were looking at a battery that has to be forklifted. Its a huge jump in
scale.

The Energy Density Battle

The drive to make an electric vehicle battery is hardly new. Legend has it that Thomas Edison
and Henry Ford collaborated on the challenge a century ago. Given five years, they said, they
could lick the battery problem. But while they developed a product, their batterys energy
density was just a fraction of that of a gallon of gas, and the EV gradually disappeared.

During the 1980s, the auto industry again made a collective eort to beat the battery
problem. Again, it failed, as EVs from Chrysler, Ford, GM, Honda, Nissan and Toyota were
shelved in the late 1990s.

The issues facing EV batteries of a decade ago were the same as those of today: Energy
density, recharge time, cost, durability and safety were the big challenges.

Energy density was prime among those, mainly because it directly translates to vehicle range:
the higher the energy density, the greater the range between recharges. In a full-size sedan,
for example, a specific energy of 100 W-hr/kg translates to approximately 100 miles of range.
To boost range, automakers need to pack more batteries on board, which can dramatically
increase mass.

Mass-related issues were the reason that battery power long failed to capture the fancy of
automotive engineers. Many looked at the numbers and scratched their heads. Todays best
batteries, for example, oer a specific energy of approximately 150 W-hr/kg. In contrast, the
accepted specific energy of gasoline is about 12,722 W-hr/kg. Engineers often argue about
how much of gasolines energy is usable, but even if only 4,000 W-hr/kg is usable, gasoline
still packs 25 times more energy than a lithium-ion battery. That, in turn, means that the mass
of a good EV battery is 25 times that of gasoline.

Worse, batteries recharge slowly. Using a 110V outlet, an EV battery typically hits full
recharge in more than six hours.
You have this great inequity of the density of the energy (source), says Larry Oswald, chief
executive ocer of Global Electric Motorcars, a Chrysler company. A battery is like a heavy
fuel tank with a very small neck in it. During the 1990s, battery makers skirted the energy
density deficiencies by stretching the truth. They talked about ranges of 400 miles and
recharge times of 15 min. Neither, however, came to pass.

We hurt ourselves badly by exaggerating where we were, where we were going, and how
long it would take to get there, says Swan, who owns three electric vehicles. The battery
makers would internally calculate the range based on a car that used very little energy. They
made all kinds of great assumptions and, lo and behold, on paper they were getting 400-mile
ranges and 15-minute recharge times.

Dealing With Cost Issues

Thats why the plug-in hybrid has emerged as such an important alternative. With the plug-in,
range becomes a non-issue. The United States Advanced Battery Consortium (USABC), an
organization formed by American automakers, has set goals for plug-ins with 10- and 40-mile
ranges. With the shorter range requirements, its not necessary for battery makers to achieve
specific energy levels approaching 300-400 W-hr/kg. Rather, the USABC has set a goal for
the 10-mile plug-in to reach 56 W-hr/kg and for the 40-mile vehicle to achieve 96 W-hr/kg.

By backing up the battery with an internal combustion engine and a generator as the plug-
in hybrid does auto executives say they could dramatically improve the driving range of
EVs. GM execs, for example, say the Chevy Volt could have a range of 400 miles. If you lived
30 miles from work and charged your vehicle every night when you came home or during the
day at work, you could get 150 miles per gallon, GM Vice Chairman Robert Lutz told Auto
Show attendees in 2007.

Still, theres an unresolved cost issue. To keep costs reasonable, the USABC has set goals of
$293/kW-hr for a 40-mile plug-in and $500/kW-hr for a 10-mile vehicle. Here, too, shorter
range has its advantages. Because short-range battery packs can be smaller, battery makers
no longer need to shoot for the exceptionally dicult figure of $100/kW-hr, which was the
long term goal of a decade ago.

Nevertheless, all acknowledge it wont be easy. Experts asked by Design News to estimate
the going rate for todays lithium-ion battery said it ranges between $500 and $1,000/kW-hr.
Lithium-ion cells alone, they say, typically cost $300/kW-hr. But EV batteries costs must
necessarily include packaging, protective circuitry, cooling systems and dealer mark-ups,
along with the cell itself.

Its not a simple matter, says Elton Cairns, a professor emeritus of chemical engineering at
the University of California-Berkeley, as well as a former developer of fuel cells for General
Motors cars and a designer of batteries for the Gemini spacecraft. When you put electronic
circuitry and packaging in, youre probably right around a $1,000/kW-hr.

Most experts agree, however, the brunt of the remaining work is engineering, not invention.
The issue now is one of scaling, says David Cole, director of the Center for Automotive
Research. From our perspective, it appears some of the critical inventions have been made.
What remains is some good engineering development.

Safety Solutions

Completing that engineering before the publicly announced start dates, however, is another
matter. General Motors, in particular, has stuck to its original proclamations of a 2010
introduction date for the Chevy Volt. Given vehicle development times, however, battery
makers must have their products ready now, or very soon, to meet that schedule.

The good news is that makers of lithium-ion batteries say theyve licked the safety issue that
has grabbed headlines in the past. Thermal runaway, which has reportedly plagued lithium-
ion in laptops and cell phones, has been eliminated through a change in chemistries. Instead
of using cobalt oxide in the positive electrode, EV battery makers are employing alternatives.
A123 Systems, for example, employs a nano-phosphate material in its cathode while LG
Chem and Compact Power Inc. use a manganese-spinel chemistry. Such chemistries are
said to prevent overheating of the battery during recharge, which can reduce life and possibly
even cause fires.

Battery makers are also dealing with heat issues by adding cooling systems to next-
generation battery packs. Such battery packs typically use liquid coolant that flows in
channels between the cells, thus drawing o heat. Theyre also employing battery
management electronics that help keep voltages in line as the batteries cycle.

Safety is a huge concern, says Donald Hillebrand, director of the Center for Transportation
Research at Argonne National Lab. But there are chemistries out there that will solve the
problems.

Still, the 2010 schedule presents a monumental challenge to solving those problems.
Automotive engineers worry that there wont be sucient time to study and test battery
packs in everyday conditions.

The big risks we have to overcome if we expect to see widespread implementation are
quality, reliability, and durability, says Verbrugge of General Motors. Wed like to get at least
three to four years (of testing) on these batteries.

Battery makers, some of whom have already delivered battery packs to tier-one suppliers,
say they performed accelerated life tests on the batteries with exposure to various ranges of
temperature. Executives at A123, however, say their designs are not locked down, meaning
that changes could still be made.

For automakers, the durability issue is inextricably linked to cost. The auto industry is very
concerned about the cost numbers because, ultimately, they not only have to buy the battery,
they have to warranty it, says Hillebrand of Argonne. If the warranty is 120,000 miles or 10
years, they dont want to have to start swapping out batteries at that point. Thats one of the
reasons theyre so nervous about the cost numbers.

Hard Work Ahead

With such struggles still looming on the horizon, few experts are looking past the plug-in
hybrid. Most say automakers have their hands full now. Theyre not going to start talking
about big, full-featured battery-powered cars just yet.

When you listen to the big automakers talk about their plans for plug-ins, EVs and hybrids,
they all say the same thing, Hillebrand says. They say they are committed to production,
they really intend to do it, but then they pause and add, if the battery technology is
available. Anybody who is seriously involved in this is still staring at that battery issue.

Moreover, experts say battery makers and the auto industry need to work together to keep
battery production in the U.S. Right now, we are concerned about using imported
petroleum, Hillebrand says. We havent accomplished anything if we trade our dependence
on imported oil for a dependence on foreign-made batteries.

Experts also agree on another point: Commonly repeated stories of a magic battery,
suppressed by big oil companies and hidden in a basement in Detroit, are folklore. Battery
improvements will be eked out in tiny increments over time, largely through the sweat and
hard work of electrochemists and automotive engineers. There is no other way.

It would be wonderful if that magic battery in the basement existed, Swan says. But it
doesnt. We just have to keep methodically making improvements.
Gasoline packs 80 times more energy than a lithium-ion battery and 250 times more than a
lead-acid batteryNeighborhood cars from Global Electric Motorcars are the most common
embodiment of the pure, battery-powered EV today.
Neighborhood cars from Global Electric Motorcars are the most common embodiment of the
pure, battery-powered EV today.
The Chevy Volt is still expected to reach the market by 2010, despite the fact little time is left
for battery development.
A small fleet of Dodge Sprinter plug-ins is using lithium-ion and nickel-metal hydride
batteries.
Compact Power Inc. and LG Chem use a stacked plate design for their lithium-ion battery,
instead of the conventional wound configuration.

By replacing cobalt with iron-phosphate in its lithium-ion batteries, A123 Systems says it has
reduced the possibility of thermal runaway.

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