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this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2024
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The sentiment is nice, but you can replace all the issues with oil you stated with lithium and cobalt as well. The replacement is like once every 10 or 15 years, but it costs 20k for a battery.
If we can invent new, scalable chemistries that don't rely on a scarce mineral that lives deep down in specific parts of the earth it wouldn't be as easily translatable. But alas...not yet.
I'm a big phev proponent, and battery production is still better than oil production when comparing pollution, but there would be a lithium cartel just like OPEC if oil didn't exist and it had been batteries powering cars since WWII.
Note that if doing a LFP battery, then you don't have the Cobalt issue. Also, as I could most recently find, prices on LFP are such that currently it could be about $7,000 for a pack that can get over 200 miles in a typical EV. CATL claims they'll have it under $4500 for that capacity battery pack by the end of this year. Analysts are suggesting that 2025 might see that battery pack go under $2800 or so. If that comes to pass, then it's a slam dunk that an EV will incur less cost over a decade than the ICE maintenance and repairs, even ignoring gas vs. electricity costs.
The price has been coming rapidly down, after the shortages have subsided. Of course, whether the supply chain and pricing of the big automakers reflect this... well we have to see. However, Ford at least proclaimed they "managed" to save $8,000 cost per unit of mach-e, and most of that is likely just the battery pack getting thousands of dollars cheaper (they also redid the rear motor and other touches, but the bulk of that number is probably just battery cost reduction).
Gonna sneak in here and mention that the real trick to EVs is to make them smaller. It's fucked up that we're building EVs to make more efficient SUVs. It's not hard to improve on the fuel economy of an SUV, and it really just kicks the can down the road. EV SUVs get like 93MPGe, and we really need smaller, more efficient cars that get in the 150-200 range.
Though many of those "SUVS" we would have used to call "wagons", before SUV was 'cool'. The battery weight (sadly worse with LFP) is the enemy, being most of the weight to carry.
So you can have yourself a Mini Cooper SE, with "only" 400 pounds more weight than the gas counterpart, but you only have 115 miles of range, and your MPGe is only 10 more than the typical 'SUV' electric.
The most problematic facets of traditional SUVs are (so far), not common in EVs:
If hoping that smaller cars will pave the way to reduced kWh for good range, unfortunately the battery packs themselves are the biggest problem with weight. So you'd be really looking toward a breakthrough in energy density before you could have, say, a little Miata to toss around cheaply and lightly wear a cheaper battery with lower capacity and still get at least 100 miles of range.
Yeah the problem with lfp is weight and density. I'm excited to see what the big battery company's innovations are. Í believe it once it's happening.
Too much vaporware and false promises