![]() According to the technology giant, a typical Li-air battery cell has a theoretical energy density more than 1,000 times greater than today's industry-standard Li-ion battery cell. According to an article in the New Scientist : IBM thinks it has a solution with a promising new lithium-air (Li-air) battery. In my previous analysis of the future of Chevy Volt battery options, I used the IBM announcements around a new Lithium-air battery. The bottom line of scenario one is 69 miles per charge for $5,984 and 40 miles per charge for $3,520. If you select a battery with the Volt's 40 miles per charge, the battery pack will cost you $3,520. With these calculations, if you buy a 16 kWh battery pack, it will cost you $5,984 in 2020 (16 kWh x $374/kWh). I'm being less aggressive and assuming that the battery pack cost goes down 5% per year, which will get to an energy density of $374 per kWh in 2020. The article above states GM "hopes" to hit a cost of $300 per kWh by 2015. I'm going to use $9,000 for a good round number. An article in AutoBlogGreen has GM stating the pack costs between $8000 and $9,500. How much will the pack cost? Again, there are so many predictions out there. With a Volt you can drive 40 miles (I usually get around 40 in real-world driving) with 81.2 wH/kg so, with all else being equal, you should be able to go about 69 miles in 2020. Taking the 81.2 wH/kg figure and improving it 7% per year, you get 140 wH/kg in 2020. So the pack-level energy density is currently: According to Wikipedia, today's Volt has a 16 KW-hr battery that weighs 435 lbs (197 kg). The Nissan Leaf Lithium-Ion battery also had a similar growth in range. We've seen this play out with small improvements in the 2013 Chevy Volt battery (going from EPA range ratings from 35 miles 38 miles). That pace is about a 7% improvement per year in energy density. Many industry experts estimate that Lithium-Ion battery improvements will continue at the current pace. The central question is: how much improvement will we see? Let's get to the scenarios. The cost of the replacement battery pack.īy 2020, we will definitely see improvement. The range of the battery, based on its energy density.Ģ. I picked them because they have 3rd party tests demonstrating their claims.įor each scenario, I focus on 2 key factors:ġ. The four scenario is based on a what the startup Envia Systems claims it will produce soon. We'll call this scenario: Steven Chu's Prediction. We will use his predictions from a speech at the Detroit Economic Club. The third scenario is based on what Steven Chu, the former US Secretary of Energy, predicted. We'll call this scenario: Aluminum-air Breakthrough. But that would be much cheaper than gas! Without the pollution too! As more evidence of this scenario, Tesla submitted a patent to use a similar battery. It should be noted the battery does require refills of distilled water every 200 miles. A company named Phinergy mounted such a battery in a subcompact demonstration car that provided 1,000 miles of range. The second scenario is all this investment results in a true battery breakthrough, like the Aluminum-air battery. We'll call this scenario: Linear Lithium-Ion. The technology is essentially the same, but improved on a linear scale from now until 2020. The first scenario is, in 2020, I purchase some type of improved Lithium-Ion based battery. I can come up with many more, but four is a nice number. What will the range, cost, size, and charge time be in 2020? To simply, I limited myself to four scenarios. What will batteries be like in 2020? Globally, there are billions of investment dollars racing to invent the best car battery. Since I purchased my Volt in 2012, that means it will be 2020 when I'm in the market for a replacement battery pack. Additionally, I imagine GM may "unlock" more of the battery capacity with a future software update, enabling the Volt to keep the same driving range over time by using more of the battery.įor this exercise, lets assume I want to replace the Chevy Volt battery in 8 years (the length of the warranty). Given the Toyota experience, the Volt battery should last for many years. We know from the Toyota Prius design, which only uses 50% of its battery's capacity, that using only part of the battery's capacity allows it to last a lot longer. Given the Volt only uses about 10 kWh of the battery's 16 kWh capacity, it is conservatively designed to last a long time.
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