Editorial: Why the carmakers seem to be dragging their feet on batteries
The big auto-makers, particularly the US-based companies, take a lot of grief over their environmental policies, rightfully so in many respects. But they also get a bad rap. One of the big topics that crops in the comments here at AutoblogGreen is "How come Auto-Maker X isn't using batteries from Company Y instead of messing around with all this other technology?" There has undoubtedly been a lot of progress on battery technology in the last couple of years. With companies like Tesla and Pheonix announcing new battery powered vehicles that are scheduled to go into production later in 2007, everyone wants to know why General Motors, Ford, Chrysler and all the other big manufacturers aren't doing the same thing. There are lots of reasons for this, none of which are simple.
First, let's start with some background. I've worked in the auto industry for over twenty years, and the last five have been particularly difficult. The auto industry has always been a notoriously tough business to be in. The vast majority of all the car companies and suppliers that have ever existed have either gone belly up or been absorbed into another company. For anyone that wants to build more than a few cars, it's also extremely capital intensive. Tooling up to build thousands or hundreds of thousands of cars a year costs tens to hundreds of millions of dollars. And that's before you even hire anyone to actually build the cars. The lead times are long, at least three to four years from concept to production for a totally new car. The increased costs of raw materials, especially metals, as well as energy costs have really put the hurt on everyone recently. Unless a new company is getting government support or market protection, and even if they are, the odds of success are slim.
Continue reading after the jump
Modern cars are enormously complex, and have to be designed to operate in the full gamut of environmental and road conditions. And cost is a huge factor. Unlike aircraft for example, once a customer drives off the lot, the manufacturer has no control over the maintenance and operation of a car. Some are meticulously maintained while others get almost no maintenance. Next time you leave the house, take a look around at the cars around you on the road. Take note of how many cars from the early nineties, eighties and even seventies are still on the road. No matter what you make think of the fit and finish and quality control of American cars (which have admittedly been bad in many cases), you have to admit that in spite of some lemons, the vast majority of cars, from American as well as Asian, and even some European car-makers are remarkably durable, especially when you consider the range of operating conditions. The fact that cars can last more than six months on Michigan roads is truly a testament to the engineering in there.
Car companies have a huge number issues to deal with, including often contradictory government regulations, labor issues and finances. This is a highly competitive industry, and it's important to remember that you typically hear more about things that don't work than things that do. In spite of all the complaints you might hear about cars, the reality is that most of them just work. The percentage that actually have serious issues is usually pretty small. For the past forty years, car-makers have had at least two main required areas of development that in some respects are at odds, safety and efficiency/emissions. Since the mid-sixties companies have had to make huge improvements in both of these and really started to make strides as electronic controls were developed. As new safety equipment and standards have been added, weights have gone up, making it even harder to gain efficiency. Gallery: HySeries Edge
Because of the competitive nature of the auto industry, car-makers generally have to offer much longer warranties than you will find as standard in the consumer electronics world, with three year bumper to bumper warranties as a minimum and some considerably longer. In order for a company to survive financially, they have to make sure that the bulk of their cars can get through the warranty period and beyond without needing major repairs. Cars are generally designed to have a minimum lifespan for major components, of at least 100,000 miles, and this what customers have come to expect. If major components like engines, or transmissions, or batteries wear out at lower mileages than that, customers are very unhappy.
In order to make that happen car-makers spend a lot time and money on durability testing in a wide range of environments from northern Sweden to the deserts of Arizona and the north Africa, to Pikes Peak and beyond. They run vehicles repeatedly through salt baths, cold soaks, heat soaks, maximum speed testing, repeated acceleration, constant speed highway running and urban stop and go. The possibilities of what a driver will do in the real world are almost limitless and the engineers try to anticipate and explore all these limits.
What does any of this have to do with batteries you might ask? Big battery packs that are necessary to propel a full function automobile or truck (not an NEV like the Kurrent or GEM) on a daily basis, need to bee able to withstand the abuse of different driving habits, vibrations from bad roads (or no roads), operating conditions ranging from -40 degrees to 130 degrees, sand, salt, gravel, you name it. Those battery packs are expensive, and nobody is going to want to replace one during the normal lifespan of a car. Electro-chemical batteries don't work well at low temperatures either which means that drivers in cold climates would potentially have much worse range and performance than those in warmer temperatures. Then there is the issue of safety. Everybody saw the videos last year of exploding laptop batteries. Lithium is highly combustible, and if the battery packs are not assembled very carefully, they can easily short out and catch fire. Then there is the issue of what happens in an accident. Emergency response teams have to able to deal with batteries without being exposed to excessive hazards. Many of the existing battery packs today are made up of hundreds or thousands of small standard cells that are wired together to produce sufficient voltage and capacity to drive a car. Those thousands of solder joints are highly prone to failure. When they fail, the pack can lose capacity, short out, or fail completely depending on the nature of the problem.
Lithium batteries have far more energy density and better power delivery than previous types of cells and all the car-makers know it. The real problem is making sure the battery packs last without catastrophic failure. If a company like Phoenix making a few hundred cars a year has a bad battery design that fails, the company is likely to just go bankrupt, and disappear, with the investors losing their money and a few dozen or hundred workers lose their jobs. When a company like General Motors or Toyota, builds several hundred thousand cars, and encounters a problem like that, costing upwards of $10,000 per vehicle to repair, not to mention the inevitable lawsuits it could conceivably bring down the company, costing billions of dollars and tens of thousands of jobs.
I have confidence that the Tesla Roadster will meet the performance claims made for it when it hits the road later this year, the question that only time can answer, is how robust will it be in the environment that real cars have to deal with. The more interesting program to watch will be the Tesla WhiteStar sedan, which is expected to be built in much higher volumes and lower cost. Other companies have made some big claims too, most notably Phoenix and AltairNano. Whether they can deliver on those claims, remains to be seen. Companies like GM have been burned before on what appeared at the time to be breakthrough technologies and before they take the plunge on batteries, they are going to want to want a much higher degree of confidence in the durability and robustness of the batteries. That's not to say it won't happen, for it surely will. It's just going take some time to refine the construction processes to reach the necessary level of reliability and durability and cost. That will happen over next few years, we just have to be patient.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Tony Belding 8:43AM (2/26/2007)
In summary: The car business is really, really tough to be in, and car companies do a fantastic job of making gasoline-powered cars, and lithium-ion battery technology is still unproven, and we should all just cut them some slack. Is that it?
None of that is actually untrue, but I think it misses the point. The real problems with Li-ion cells are that they're too expensive and they don't last long enough. Our car companies have some bright engineers, and I'm sure they could push Li-ion powered cars into service very quickly if those two hurdles could be overcome.
Tesla Motors is out there showing how it's possible to build a safe and reliable battery pack around Li-ion cells. It hasn't been done before, but they'll learn and advance a lot simply from the act of getting their cars out on the highway and into the hands of ordinary drivers.
What Tesla can't do is make Li-ion storage cheap (theirs reputedly cost around $20,000 per car) or give them a long life span. They are good for 500 charge-and-discharge cycles, plus they also degrade over time even if they aren't used. Both of these characteristics are serious roadblocks for a product like a Chevy Volt or a plug-in Prius. (Counter-intuitively, these plug-in hybrids make harder demands on their batteries than a pure BEV. 500 cycles in a Tesla is 125,000 miles. 500 cycles in a Volt would be only 20,000 miles.)
I am guardedly optimistic about battery technology. Electric vehicles were stuck with lead-acid batteries for over 100 years before NiMH and Li-ion chemistries came along. It's a big leap forward: suddenly energy density is no longer the show stopper that it was for so long. Even if there are no more big breakthroughs, gradual refinement should be able to get Li-ion costs down and service life up. It won't happen overnight, and I agree we need some patience.
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Henry 8:47AM (2/26/2007)
Your comments about Lithium battery safety don't make sense. The altairnano has proven its safety in various tests from overheating, bullet puncture, freezing and collisions. They all did better then any ICE car which would explode. As for cheap laptop batteries - thats another story.
Your comments on the fact they cannot do such a venture as easily as small companies also has no basis. GM has built a small company called Saturn completely separate from GM. If something went wrong with Saturn vehicles it would be them who would be affected - not all of GM. Of course now all Saturn parts are interconnected and they are completely integrated in the company.
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Howard Lee Harkness 9:36AM (2/26/2007)
GM is in serious financial trouble.
GM already has a debt burden that has reached a point where it is not possible to pay it off just by selling cars (which GM is having trouble doing profitably), so its stock is in free-fall. There will be a "restructuring" with massive layoffs in a year or so (with a possible temporary respite for GM common stock owners), but unless there is a government bailout, GM will cease to exist as an independent entity in three to four years. A downturn in the economy, or a modest rise in interest rates will just accelerate the inevitable trainwreck.
No need to look for GM to do very much at all, except go to the government with hat in hand.
I don't believe this is all GM's fault. I would assign a goodly portion of the blame to the government, for promoting the idea that healthcare should be something paid for by "somebody else", with its unintended consequences.
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Schmeltz 10:13AM (2/26/2007)
Sam:
Just wanted to say Thanks for a very well written article. It was a wise and well thought out perspective of the EV industry as it pertains to the big automakers. I agree 100%, the automakers all have a lot riding on the products that leave their factories, and can't afford a large mistake. They are wise to look before they leap.
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Jimmy 10:13AM (2/26/2007)
One never finds the latest technology start life in an expensive durable good like an automobile. The Consumer Electronics industry is an existing, established market eager to buy better batteries. I think we will continue to see innovations for those devices trickle-down to automotive technology.
One should note that batteries have been actively researched for many years. Progress does occur, but in general it is much slower than some other tech areas like CPU design or biotechnology. In the early 1990's a Li-Ion 18650 cell was good for just over 1 Ah. Today, the best 18650 is 2.6 Ah.
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jcwinnie 10:44AM (2/26/2007)
First, I appreciate that the editorialist identified any possible conflict of interest by stating it was an insider's perspective. Certainly, if possible, change needs to come from within.
Much of the apologia has to do with economics. Yet the author would seem to ignore the billions of oil dollars that this country hemorrhages.
Very simply, a engineering decision was made about energy density of a particular fuel, which was very dangerous to handle. It was the right decision for the time; and, an immense industry evolved.
Now, from an outsider's perspective, there would seem to be considerable "you scratch my back and scratch yours" with the Big Oil - Big SUV complex, which then spins out as Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt about alternative and this whole global heating thing.
So, while the oil industry would seem to be calling the shots, particularly in the United States, we seem to have forgotten that such dominance resulted from a design decision in the transportation market.
The editorial is reminiscent of what I call the Addict lament: "No one understands how special I am." Meanwhile, I am hoping that Autoblog Readers can help devise an Oil Addiction Index, as proposed by David B. Sandalow in Ending Oil Dependence (PDF) http://www.brookings.edu/views/papers/fellows/sandalow20070122.pdf
Neither fully comprehensive nor analytically perfect, the purpose of The Oil Addiction Index would an indicator, easily understood by the public at large, that would serve as a sensible goal for policymakers. This best I could come up with last evening was:
(Percentage of oil's share of transportation fuels) + (Percent increase in gasoline consumption) - (Percent increase in electric generation from renewable sources)
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kert 11:46AM (2/26/2007)
that is just a lot of apologism.
First, these aforementioned companies have dragged their feet even with regular hybrids, with Japanese being far ahead. Whats the excuse ?
Second, these aforementioned companies have had resources to thinker with pie-in-the-sky stuff like hydrogen fuel cells on relatively extensive scale, yet they havent had a continuous development programs on battery-electrics. They built the EV1, made a series-hybrid version of it, and then simply stopped dead ?? (yes, there was a working series hybrid from GM in 99, meet the Volt 8 years earlier. In contrast to Volt, it actually had a working battery pack in it )
So, what exactly is the excuse not to have lots of different battery-powered prototypes in limited fleet testing in 2007 ?
Also, regarding warranties and what not. Koreans sell their cars with basically no warranty, i.e. its crap build quality and falls apart as soon as the quality is over, never the less, people keep buying them. What i am trying to say, is if you cant give a lifetime warranty on a component then dont. Maybe its time for a paradigm shift there.
Issue long warranties for components that you are comfortable with, and issue shorter warranties for stuff that you are not sure about. 50 years ago all that extensive testing in alaska and sweden did not take place, yet people were still be able to build and purchase cars.
If there is so much at stake there, i.e. our global climate issues, dependence of foreign fossil fuels, maybe its time to make a tradeoff or two in established practices ? Say, sell the cars with just a one year warranty on battery ? Maybe just lease the batteries ?
Its not like this could not be done. Its the matter of will.
In short, all this apologism above is basically saying "we dont do this because we are mired in our traditional thinking and cant think outside the box, we have to churn out gaz guzzling SUVS because we know its a safe bet"
Well, it aint, anymore, and thats why Toyotas and Hondas are eating your lunches.
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Dave 12:08PM (2/26/2007)
And?
So what? Abandon the internal combustion engine and fix the battery problem.
I don't want to hear about how these giant corporations are having trouble building or buying a better battery. I want to them to figure it out, and I don't think I'm alone in this.
I'm not buying a new car until electrically propelled vehicles (like the series hybrid Volt) are available to the general public.
Who's with me?
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Sebastian Blanco 3:31PM (2/26/2007)
Dave,
There are some pure EVs ready now http://www.autobloggreen.com/2007/02/07/the-top-ten-electric-vehicles-you-can-buy-today-for-the-most-pa/
but I think that you're talking about should be ready in 3-5 years, the Tesla WhiteStar,
http://www.autobloggreen.com/search/?q=whitestar
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Dave Schmetterer 7:16PM (2/26/2007)
uh.. Thanks Sebastian.
I was responding to the article which outlines in whiny detail how the big automakers aren't the ones making the EVs.
And when I say I won't buy a new car until EVs are available, I meant from the biggies. I won't be able to afford any of the current offerings for... well, forever if they stay at their current prices. I'm saying I won't be buying a new ICE propelled vehicle, which unfortunately, looks like all I'll be able to afford when and if I'm ever ready for another car.
However, I suppose an NEV might be in my future. For now, its my feet, my bike, and the train for most trips (and I did respond to an ad for an electric scooter on Freecycle!). The car just sits collecting snow 6 days a week.
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UH2L 6:05PM (2/26/2007)
Sam,
Great write-up. I was going to write a similar, more general piece in out blog. As a current auto industry employee, I totally agree with what you say. Many who haven't worked in the business think things are easy to change and that we just don't want to. Those people usually point to the electronics industries where things change fast.
But in those industries, customers' expectations are so much lower. If it breaks, buy a new one.
On the other hand the auto industry has to provide bumper to bumper warranties for a product that is continually abused with temperature extremes, vibration, lack of necessary maintenance. The big difference here is that cars/trucks move people around. You can't fight the laws of physics when safety is involved. Extra weight is needed for crashworthiness and safety features. Electronic devices can advance more quickly because moving electrons around doesn't involve people constraints. And the thoroughness of electronics validation doesn't even compare to that of the vehicle industry. We just live with buggy software in our devices or devices that just die for no reason. If a car has even a rattle, customers complain. If it doesn't start once, people think it sucks.
Forming steel takes a lot more effort and investment in manufacturing than making some chips and injection molded plastic shells.
Sure the auto industry has to continually innovate and think outside the box, but criticism of the U.S. auto industry if often unfounded. GM got no credit for the hybrid buses it offered. These save lots more fuel than Priuses. Customers need to accept some of the blame. If we were truly environmentally-minded, very few of us would buy V6 engines in our mid-size sedans instead of an available 4 cylinder version which would meet the needs of most of us.
Atul
http://www.realitydriven.com
http://www.thingsivenoticed.com
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the_right_turn2004 10:54PM (2/26/2007)
If a large battery powered car is involved in a violent accident and the batteries break open, a whole host of problems arise.
Emergency responders will have to wait for a Haz-Mat team to show up and clean the area, and if the battery acid gets into a stream it will be a catastrophic event for the stream. In a gas powered car, most of the gas (if leaked) would float and be sent downstream. The acid from a battery powered car will immediately sink and kill everything in the stream for quite some distance downstream.
Anyway, large batteries is NOT the answer if your goal is to protect the environment.
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Michael 8:35PM (2/26/2007)
I'm disappointed by the article. It poses the same "chicken versus egg" argument that the "right" batteries don't yet exist, so GM can't afford to risk building a 21st century car.
The EV-1 project from years ago flies in the face of that argument. Its Gen II batteries provided the safety and range required (170 miles/charge, in later versions). GM never widely deployed them, and ultimately dumped the battery development contracts and crushed the EV-1s.
If anything, the EV-1 and now the Toyota hybrid fleet demonstrate that safe battery packs can and have been created in quantities to sustain a growing market.
GM needs to stop making excuses for selling duplicative , warmed over 1970s ICE cars, trim its product line and develop simpler, smarter cars and new powertrains for the 21st century. Toyota isn't making these excuses - they are doing these things now.
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Joseph 8:43PM (2/26/2007)
As far as I see it, GM has two options: make plug-in hybrids or DIE. Period. EV-1, failure. (I love that car...) Ethanol guzzling SUV's, relatively unsuccesful. Toyota and Hoda already have all teh hybrids. They must make one giant leap forward in order to survive: PHEVs!!!!
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Andrew M 6:47AM (2/27/2007)
In reality the reluctance of the US auto makers is down to their protectionist attitude - I cite the example of how they recently sued California for introducing emissions standards that are below those that Chinese auto-makers have had to deal with for over a decade - because 'they are too onerous' US politics allows auto makers to rely on the US market to fund them by lobbying to prevent anything to change the status quo - unfortunately this has lead to them being completely uncompetitive in the world market. What a wasted opportunity.
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Paul 8:47PM (2/26/2007)
I am not in the auto industry, but on first pass I would have to assume that foreign car manufacturers have a similar lead time from planning to production. I'd would also be surprised if those foreign companies didn't have to demonstrate some kind of safety record before being allowed to sell autos in the US. Even after reading this article, I can't help but wonder as to the apparent reason for lack of planning on the part of the US auto makers since the oil embargo of the 1970's to enable electric-based vehicle today, now 30 years later. In other technology circles, 30 years constitues a revolution. I am in general sympathetic to the auto workers' plight, but their masters -- and their masters -- are to blame.
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Joseph 8:54PM (2/26/2007)
(Has anyone thought that turning water into energy, aka hydrogen, was kind of bad. I mean, you waste water.)
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Michael 11:01PM (2/26/2007)
My brother works as a technician for Saturn and was responsible for maintaining the GM EV-1s that were in the Atlanta area. I had to laugh when I read about the "Who Killed the Electric Car?" movie. This car was never intended to be a production car and would have been a huge legal liability for GM if it was. The thing ran on a huge bank of lead acid batteries that put out a whopping 400 VDC. Could you imagine some do-it-yourselfer touching the wrong wire while trying to repair his own EV? He would have gone up in a giant flash and a puff of nasty smelling smoke. My brother did love when he got a warranty job to replace the battery pack, which he did often. Warranty work pays a percentage of the cost of parts and labor to the technician, and I'm sure it was a chunk of change when the battery pack cost $13,000.00 (true!). Do just one of those a week and you are sitting pretty. There was no conspiricy to keep the car off the market because it would have made ICE cars obsolete, it was just a test platform for GM. Besides, the cars were leased, not sold, to the customers. The sale price would have been around $45,000, and not many people are willing to pay that much for a little 2 seater with a 100 mile range.
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UrbanVoyeur 11:04PM (2/26/2007)
While I respect your experience, this article is too much of an apology & justification for timidity, poor planning, and lack of innovation at the major auto manufacturers.
Every industry is tough. Every industry is competitive. Manufacturing is always expensive. Most startups in every industry fail. Every new technology is unproven. Every industry is regulated.
So what.
The US Big 3 have once again failed to recognize a trend until is runs them over, have once again failed to utilize readily available off the shelf technology to solve surmountable hurdles and when faced with a market challenge have once again failed to bring any new ideas to the table and failed to take even the smallest risk.
No news here.
The lack of quality would be acceptable if it was offset by leaps in technology, dramatically lower prices, radically new designs or even modest improvements in fuel efficiency. The American auto manufacturers deliver on NONE of these. Not one.
So tell me again why we should cut them some slack?
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Bill 11:00PM (2/26/2007)
High volume production of hybrids and battery powered vehicles are an inevitibility due to the continuing rise of gasoline prices.
The price of gas will probably hit $3.50 a gallon this summer (I live in Silicon Valley and gas is about $2.80 for a gallon of 87 right now).
At this rate (using a simplistic calculation), a gallon of gas in the US will probably be $6-$7 within 10 years. How much has the price of a gallon of gas risen over the past 10 years ? Now, just project that rate forward 10 years to 2017.
Also...IF Iran is attacked, or if Iran cuts off oil production, a barrel of oil will most likely rise to $100-$120 overnight. This would translate to about $7 for a gallon of gas in the US and approximately $12+ for a gallon of gas in Europe.
Regarding the safety of lithium ion batteries......it looks like Tesla has done a lot of work concerning this matter:
http://www.teslamotors.com/engineering/safety.php
Tesla also claims that it will cost 1 cent per mile to drive their roadster and that Lithium ion batteries are classified by the federal government as non-hazardous waste and are safe for disposal in the normal municipal waste stream."
http://www.teslamotors.com/performance/charging_and_batteries.php
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