> BYD’s solid-state EV batteries set a record by gaining 1,500 km (932 miles) range in just 12 minutes of charging.
> The test charged the battery to just 80%, meaning total EV range could reach upwards of 1,875 km (1,165 miles). Keep in mind, that is CLTC range. On the EPA scale, it would be closer to 1,300 km (808 miles)
Is this true? How quickly will other companies be making these types of batteries?
Is there some reason why solid state batteries seem to be being deployed in cars sooner than in phones?
For the last part, my guess is that the advantages are much more valuable in an EV than they are in a phone (where batteries are mostly fine. While longer life and faster charging are always nice to have:they are just that: nice to have), so if you are A) production limited and B) they are still more expensive (the article states they expect them to be price-comparable by the end of the decade), then they probably aren't worth it in a phone (yet).
When price comes down and production comes up (assuming those things happen), then I would expect them to start appearing in phones as well.
That logic seems crazy to me. Extra hundreds of miles are also just nice to have, and with the same material that goes into a 500kg car pack you could make 10000 double life phone batteries and sell them for $100 each. There's more per-cell overhead in the phone batteries but is it worth a million dollar drop in revenue?
Consumers seem to disagree with you on the first part. I personally think that current battery tech is fine for EVs (I have an EV with a 260 mile range, and only a 77kW max charge rate, and I think it's fine even for 10+ hour road trips), but a segment of the consumer space wants more than that.
I personally thought that the more interesting part of the article was where they claimed to be able to add 800 miles of range in 12 minutes. At those kinds of charge rates, my ideal EV would probably have a 300ish mile range that I could charge from 10-80 in <10 minutes (although I believe that part of the way they get those charge rates is with large battery packs, so a smaller pack would probably not charge as fast).
Additionally, while the specs for EV sedans are currently fine, batteries are only barely good enough for larger, less efficient vehicles. Maybe the killer app here isn't a sedan that goes 1000 miles, but a truck or SUV that can go 500.
The point is, whatever your and my opinions on the adequacy of current EV charging, the market seems to value improved battery specs more highly in the EV space than it does in the phone space (or maybe it doesn't and BYD is making a mistake by keeping their batteries for their cars instead of selling them to phone manufacturers).
EV batteries degrade more quickly when charged too far above half-way. As a result, your ideal EV might actually have 600 miles of range and you’d just leave it half-charged most of the time.
From everything I've heard/read you can pretty safely go to 80-90% of listed state of charge (manufacturers often also include a hidden buffer for exactly this reason).
My car, which like I said has a 260 mile range, I only charge to 80% unless I'm going on a long road trip. So for 90%+ of the time, it's never charged more than 80% (and I very rarely discharge it to less than 15%). For most people, a 300 mile range like I describe would be plenty to be able to not need 100% charge except on rare occasions. But even if it's not for you, or for some people, I very specifically said "my ideal EV". A 600 mile range that I almost never use is just extra weight that I'm carrying around and decreasing efficiency, and isn't actually providing much real battery protection. I am absolutely not someone who drives 360 miles a day (which is what you could do if you were doing an 80% to 20% discharge on a 600 mile battery every day. I'm pretty confident that stats suggest that very few people drive that much on a regular basis. The 150 miles I get from the the 80% to 20% range on my current battery is already more than enough.
I’m out for 2-3 days. Better take an external battery for the phone. Done.
Doesn’t work with a car.
Really easy to work around Apple’s utterly crap battery life. If it were better that would be nice to have.
Going a certain distance so can’t take an ev at all. It’d be nice if you could, if your usage is mostly very urban, sure that’s just nice. Gotta visit Dad on the farm a dozen times a year or whatever? That’s not your life so you don’t see it as essential even if the rest of the driving is much shorter range.
To fix iPhone battery life, create an automation that turns on battery save mode when battery dips below 80%. Works really well. I figure they don’t build this functionality into the settings because people would use it instead of buying a new phone when the battery degrades.
Want an extra 100 miles of range? That's 600lbs of cargo. A person can't place that in a trunk, and a trailer would probably barely extend range due to the extra drag and efficiency loss.
I think maybe there’s some cross thread confusion.
The comparison I’m making is an external phone battery is $10. Replacing an ev battery is, hell i dunno, $10.000?
Not needing an external phone battery would be nice.
Needing external ev batteries is far more likely to be cost prohibitive. Adjacent to this thread people have raised size and weight issues as well. I didn’t even bother going that far because the straight up price puts it in a different ball park to an external phone battery.
Right, that's the discussion up to a certain spot.
Then the GP had a counterargument to EV batteries being expensive, by suggesting you could rent one for your three day trip for a pretty small amount of money.
And not only would that charge be quite small compared to everything else going on with your car, the further you drive with the extended battery the more you save by electricity being cheaper than gasoline. And that includes having to pay for depreciation.
So in the scale between $10 and $10000, it would be like renting a big piece of road equipment, not buying one.
To be clear the middle paragraph of my post was explaining why I think they said that, and the last paragraph was me adding my own commentary. I wasn't suggesting they were implying the part about gas savings, that was all me.
(Thank you Dylan16807, your interpretation is correct, and I apologize to harry8 because I didn't realize that my comment would read so cryptically when I wrote it).
> I'm struggling to see it being much cheaper than renting an ev for 2-3 days if such a thing were wished into existence.
Even if it was the same price, lots of people don't want to rent a car, and many of the reasons they have for that don't apply to renting a battery pack.
But I'd be surprised if it wasn't a lot cheaper. If I think about a non-towed battery, it costs 1/5 as much as a car, needs 1/10 as much storage space on shelves, and can be kept in service for hundreds of thousands of miles. Towed units would be harder to store and have a bit more wear but should still be a lot smaller and cheaper than cars. A small trailer that could carry a battery is only a thousand bucks retail. You'd probably want some cooling, in the end maybe it's 1/4 the cost of a car and takes up 1/6 of a parking space? Still sounds like a cheap rental.
And as for the price of "fully charged", they can have the same price per kWh as a supercharger and have massive profit margins. So that's an amount you'd have to pay anyway and not a downside to renting.
I don't understand your point. EV batteries won't cost multiple thousands of times more for the exact same battery that would go in a phone. If you pay 1000 times more for 1000 times more battery, I don't see the problem. If anything, they probably want 1000 times more demand so they can gain economies of scale.
> If you pay 1000 times more for 1000 times more battery, I don't see the problem.
We know that "if" isn't true. That's the problem with the argument for only making EV batteries. A car battery is five thousand times as big as a phone battery and it's only hundreds of times as expensive.
I’d take a phone double the thickness to get double the battery life between charges. Options on that front are limited. Had an ulefone for a while which was better than most until the screen started getting constant phantom presses making it unusable.
> Is there some reason why solid state batteries seem to be being deployed in cars sooner than in phones?
Not quite energy density, but the energy density, cost, complexity when combined with the discharge profile generates a very "interesting" phase space.
There's a few promising technologies which have very, very good efficiencies but only like very slow predictable discharge cycles. These are excellent for say building giant GW batteries in the desert, but not so great for even car batteries.
Phones and tech have bursty power needs based on use, the cost of taking other tech down to the size of a phone is extremely high (especially if you're first to market unless you know you will sell millions of units). Not to mention the reliability of batteries typically decreasing as the size drops.
Cars tend to be in the middle with their discharge profiles being relatively smooth compared to say a laptop, but yes you still have economies of scale, complexity, reliability and supply chain and patents to contend with ;)
> isn't a normal cell in an EV battery is like a AA size?
No. Some companies use tons of cylindrical cells that are larger AAs (like 18mmx65mm, 21mmx80mm, or 46mmx80mm). But even then at 46mm in diameter it's a good bit bigger than a AA.
But lots of manufacturers use prismatic or pouch like batteries. They're large and rectangular. Like these batteries on this BYD, they're called "blades". Most other major manufacturers use prismatic cells.
> Is there some reason why solid state batteries seem to be being deployed in cars sooner than in phones?
Oh, that's easy. I already knew the answer, which probably means just about every AI could tell you. Phone batteries use Li Polymer (which is solid state BTW), because they can be any shape, including flat, wide and very thin. Other chemistry's can't be thin.
They already exist in Chinese phones, the new one plus has insane battery life because of its 6000mah battery, while still being as thin as a normal phone.
Other phones targeting the Chinese market have reached 8000.
But companies like Apple and Samsung like to just sit on their laurels and sell the same thing again.
I believe it's been 5 years that some Chinese phones already have Silicon Carbon battery... Samsung/Apple was crazy slow on this, and later this year everyone will get "Shocked" when apple supposedly show up their new phone with the new battery...
Many companies have been trying to make solid state batteries for years but it's hard to make anything that works at scale as opposed to some 2mm sample on a lab bench. I guess the likes of BYD got there first because they have put a lot of investment dollars and engineers in, being the world's second largest battery maker. I think CATL the largest are also working on it. And Toyota. I'm not sure any have been able to manufacture in quantity at an acceptable price though. Soon probably.
> BYD’s solid-state EV batteries set a record by gaining 1,500 km (932 miles) range in just 12 minutes of charging.
> The test charged the battery to just 80%, meaning total EV range could reach upwards of 1,875 km (1,165 miles). Keep in mind, that is CLTC range. On the EPA scale, it would be closer to 1,300 km (808 miles)
Is this true? How quickly will other companies be making these types of batteries?
Is there some reason why solid state batteries seem to be being deployed in cars sooner than in phones?