Problems of Battery Electric Tech
Lion battery tech suffers from multidude of problems that makes it unfit as a basis of a green transition, and as a general storage mechanism.
Low Energy Density
Batteries have low energy density. Plug Power CEO: "Power Density and Range: fuel cell energy density is four times more than batteries, and a tank of hydrogen contains more than double the energy of a battery at the same weight"
Low energy density means heavy-duty transport, or battery based airplanes are out of the question for a green transition.
easyJet: "When we.. looked back a few years ago, we realised clearly that the climate emergency is coming our way and that we needed to address our sustainability issue – and we knew that our passengers care about that as well.. It was about the time when we started to see the first electric cars, the Tesla vehicles.. and there was expectation that everything would go electric. However, once we got into the detail and the physics and the science behind electric, it became clear that battery-powered aeroplanes were not going to have sufficient energy density to power a large commercial aircraft"
Alvera: "A kilogram of gasoline holds 13 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of energy; a kilogram of lithium-ion battery holds less than 0.3 kWh. This means electricity isn’t going to be the best way of powering sectors which need to take lots of energy with them. Just think of long-haul flying: we would need so many heavy batteries that the plane wouldn’t be able to take off. And batteries won’t compete with molecules to propel cargo ships across oceans" [3]
Insufficient Lithium Reserves
Even for motor vehicle road transportation, widespread use of lion batteries is impossible. Existing estimated lithium reserves are at 17.0 millon tons. In 2020, 48.6 percent of all oil consumed in the OECD was related to motor vehicle usage [1]. 2019 crude oil consumption 100.37 million b/d, 1 barrel carries approximately 1700 kwh of energy. Let's try to calculate how much lithium would be needed to store a day's worth of energy for transport in batteries,
reserves = 17.0 # mtones
kwh_day = 100.37*1e6*1700*0.486
req = ((kwh_day / 70.0) * 60.0) / 1e9
print ("%d mil. tons" % req)
print ("Requirement is %d times of reserves" % (req/reserves))
71 mil. tons
Requirement is 4 times of reserves
We cannot even migrate all driving to a lion based system.
For total energy use the picture is more grim. According to EIA, estimated world energy consumption was 157,481 Terrawatt Hours in 2013, meaning 431 TWh/day. If we were to store today's energy consumption one day in batteries,
consumed_one_day = 431 * 1e9 # Kwh
req = ((consumed_one_day / 70.0) * 60.0) / 1e9
print ("%d mil. tons" % req)
print ("Requirement is %d times of reserves" % (req/reserves))
369 mil. tons
Requirement is 21 times of reserves
.. it would require over 20 times the amount of available lithium in the world.
Degradation
Lion batteries have a huge degradation problem, ie with every use the performance of the battery becomes worse. Most know this fact probably from their use of notebook batteries, eventually the battery becomes unusable. Well, since some retarded genius decided to migrate the same tech to a car, now the same problem has migrated to this domain as well, except in a larger scale.
From the owner of a home storage system: "[If I am] cycling through my battery Powerwall every single day, I'm actually degrading the battery, and the sooner that it's going to basically be dead and unusable and you need to go buy another one. My battery pack is only there for an emergency, like if something crazy happens like the power goes out.. And when I say it's not worth the money.. I could have taken that $20,000 that it cost to put these on the wall, and I could have put a bunch more, maybe 20, maybe 30 more solar panels on the house. Every single day that would be generating money for me and money for our house, decreasing the cost"
The 100% Problem
Problems do not end there; just like charging / discharging the battery too many times degrades it, so does charging it UP TO 100%. You read that right, a lion battery should not be charged fully, only partially, almost fully up to a point, otherwise again, the battery goes bad. In fact some EV's have a feature that stops them from being fully charged. Let alone being a bizarre, and comical shortcoming, this "feature" assures a portion of lithium in a battery is by definition a waste, it sits there not to be used.
The Cold Weather Problem
According to American Chemical Society, when temperatures fall below freezing, lion battery's electrical performance declines, and when conditions are cold enough, they can fail to transfer any charge. It’s why some people living in the U.S. Midwest have trouble with their electric cars in the dead of winter, and why it’s risky to use these batteries in space explorations. Tests show that electric cars lose 40% of their estimated range in cold weather conditions, which is probably why such conditions are never advertised in BEV marketing.
Charging
Speed
Another big complaint about batteries is their charging is slow. For lion based vehicles the fastest method, known as direct current charger, can charge a battery up to 80 percent in 20 minutes to an hour which is pretty slow compared to refueling a car. And this "fast charging" has major downsides - it degrades the battery quicker.
The Grid
Safety
Lion batteries routinely blow up. The cause can be from mild collision between an EV and another car, or salt water during a hurricane as was witnessed recently in Florida, or no reason at all as seen in an ebike shop in New York.
Insurance Journal: "A Florida senator is calling for action from the Transportation Department and automakers after a series of electric vehicle fires tied to Hurricane Ian.. Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) raised concerns.. 'This emerging threat has forced local fire departments to divert resources away from hurricane recovery to control and contain these dangerous fires,' Scott said. 'Car fires from electric vehicles have proven to be extremely dangerous and last for a prolonged period, taking in many cases up to six hours to burn out.'"
IMPORTANT NOTE: Once the fires start firefighters find it incredibly hard to put out using traditional methods, this is due to inherent weaknesses of this particular technology. Lithium salts in the battery are self-oxidizing, which means that they can't be 'starved out' like a traditional fire.
Conclusion
All the problems listed above are enough to doom a technology on their own. Combined, they are fatal. Considering adaption, TCO issues and knowing tech migration cycles, even considering a total shift to this tech would be foolish. The issue goes beyond being able to demonstrate a car can move on batteries from point A to point B. There are larger engineering, economic issues involved here. The industry will soon realize if all cars, heavy transport, shipping, air flight cannot be battery electric, it's best not to shift even a portion of energy use to battery electric. The crazed proponents this technology might soon find themselves as the supporters of Betamax found decades ago. Stuck with a degrading tech, going nowhere.
References
[1] Statista
[4] WaPo
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