The following is a guest post by Marc Geller, who blogs at Plugs and Cars, serves on the board of directors of the Electric Auto Association, cofounded Plug In America and DontCrush.com, and appeared in Who Killed The Electric Car.
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Menahem Anderman, PhD, is Mister Battery Consultant. The California Air Resources Board, DOE, and Congress all seem to turn to him to analyze the state of battery technology. His reports always suggest batteries won't quite cut it for freeway-capable cars.
His report at CARB in 2003 seemed to suggest the electric cars then on the road couldn't be functioning as well as they were. Drivers of electric cars were stunned at his low opinion of the state of battery technology. He's always called upon, contracted with, and his report inevitably finds batteries wanting.
At EVS23, he stopped at the Plug In America booth to challenge what he felt was the overly optimistic tone taken by these advocates in their questioning at various sessions. One of the things he specifically said to Sherry Boschert, author of Plug-in Hybrids, to demonstrate the inadequacy of NiMH in electric cars was that the batteries have been replaced in many of Southern California Edison's fleet of RAV4-EVs. Chelsea Sexton of Plug In America inquired of Ed Kjaer at SCE to find out what the truth is. Here's what Mr. Kjaer wrote in response to the inquiry:
How he [Anderman] arrives at this fanciful assertion is frankly mystifying to us.
Were he to actually ask we would tell him that the majority of our EV fleet has consisted of '98 and '99 MY RAV4 vehicles. Of the almost 14,000 NiMH battery modules powering these EVs only a little less than 0.5% had to be replaced!
A powerful testament to Toyota and Panasonic design, quality, durability and reliability. And what is even more impressive is the fact that these vehicles were from the 1990's.
Hopefully this answers Sherry's question ... for the record!
Getting a government contract to express one's informed opinion about batteries is one thing. That Mr Anderman always find them wanting despite evidence to the contrary is, perhaps, his right. But spreading malicious falsehoods without asking for evidence from those in the know suggests a lack of professionalism that ought raise questions about his analysis and methodology. It's past time for CARB and other agencies to broaden their search for objective consultants to analyze the state of battery technology.
This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
Comments
View as Flat
GreyFlcn Posted 7:50 am
19 Dec 2007
http://greyfalcon.net/quickcharge3.png
If thats not stable enough, I don't know what is.
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GreenEngineer Posted 8:06 am
19 Dec 2007
Consistently pessimistic estimates of the capabilities of batteries in cars could simply be a matter of conservative engineering estimates. Too conservative, perhaps, but that's probably better than the alternative.
However, the bit about the RAV4 batteries suggests that there may be some more nefarious motivation.
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robertogreen Posted 8:30 am
19 Dec 2007
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Biodiversivist Posted 9:27 am
19 Dec 2007
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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GreyFlcn Posted 12:32 pm
19 Dec 2007
Thats why Toyota uses it in their Prius's, and has been reluctant to move to lithium.
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2007/06/report_toyota_w.h ...
The catch being I thought it was Chevron which held a copyright on the ability to make large-format NiMH batteries. (And hence why Toyota was forced to close down their EV-Rav-4 division)
http://www.ev1.org/msg/19.htm
That said, I doubt Nickel is in short supply.
If anything Lithium is probably in shorter supply.
Especially considering there's a lot of competing applications for lithium which might be able to pay a higher price for it.
_
If we were allowed to use NiMH for electric car development legit, then that would lower the cost of the batteries down to only a third the cost.
i.e. It would near instantly make electric cars cost effective.
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Delay And Deny Posted 4:12 am
20 Dec 2007
Here's an article on Nanowires:
New article on nanowires:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/research/4237756. ...
According to Moore's Law, the speed of computer chips grows at an exponential rate. Sadly, there is no such rule regarding battery capacity. So while computer chips trip over themselves getting faster, the batteries that power them--in laptops, cell phones and other chip-driven devices--lag behind, constrained by chemistry. However, thanks to a breakthrough by Stanford researcher Yi Cui, the lithium-ion batteries that power most of these devices may soon be able to hold 10 times as much power as the ones powering today's gadgets. </blockquoute>
My Log
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Biodiversivist Posted 3:24 am
21 Dec 2007
The catch being I thought it was Chevron which held a copyright on the ability to make large-format NiMH batteries. (And hence why Toyota was forced to close down their EV-Rav-4 division)
Toyota says they gave it up because few people would buy them:
"...we only sold about 300 vehicles a year. In addition to overall customer acceptance, technical issues tied to electric vehicles remain a major hurdle." --things like short range, cost, and recharge times. http://www.toyota.com/html/shop/vehicles/ravev/rav4ev_0_h ...
That is part of the EV1 conspiracy theory lore. Chevron has since sold back its 20% share to Cobasys.
Thats because NiMH is actually quite stable. Thats why Toyota uses it in their Prius's, and has been reluctant to move to lithium.
According to that article Toyota was looking into using the same kind of batteries used in laptops that are thermally unstable. Everybody else is looking at A123 (the ones I use) which are totally stable. I know first hand because I have shorted out a few while working with them on my bench. I have not heard of anyone having one light on fire like the laptop ones do if you damage them.
That said, I doubt Nickel is in short supply.
An electric bike site that sells NiMH battery packs, responding to complaints about price increases, claims that the price of the packs have gone up a lot in the past year. They figured it was from the cost of nickel which is hitting record highs because of demand:
http://www.northernlife.ca/News/Columns/Archive/Sudol/01- ...
I have also heard that solar panels are also not dropping in price thanks to shortages.
If anything Lithium is probably in shorter supply. Especially considering there's a lot of competing applications for lithium which might be able to pay a higher price for it.
Not according to this guy:
http://tyler.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2007/1/29/269273 ...
This means that we can build in excess of 1.5 Billion PHEV20 (more than 2 X all the world's current vehicles) & use only 5,799,918 tonnes of Li2CO3. The USGS tells us in a 2000 study that we have 12,000,000 tonnes of Li2CO3 .... HOWEVER, Lithium can be & is being recycled from Li-Ion batteries. See TOXCO @:
http://www.toxco.com/processes.html
As can be seen, lithium is quite recyclable so, in reality we won't even begin to approach using up half the world's reserves by the time we have gotten around to building 1.5 billion PHEV vehicles; if we EVER make that many. It is estimated that the whole world only has 0.6 billion vehicles today.
Wayne Brown --- http://privatenrg.com
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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GreyFlcn Posted 4:31 am
21 Dec 2007
And Chevron owns Cobasys
http://www.cobasys.com/company/partners.shtml
But good to know that I was wrong about a Lithium scarcity.
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Biodiversivist Posted 8:04 am
21 Dec 2007
Protecting patent rights is legal, as Toyota is doing with its hybrid transmission. Obstruction of trade is illegal.
If they really were trying to keep them off the market instead of trying to keep competitors out of the market, then their plan is about to backfire thanks to the new batteries which, due to the high price of NIMh, may soon be cost comptetitve.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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