JAC Motors, a Volkswagen-backed Chinese automaker, unveiled the first mass-produced EV with a sodium-ion battery through its new Yiwei brand. Although sodium-ion battery tech has a lower density than lithium-ion, its lower costs, simpler and more abundant supplies and superior cold-weather performance could help accelerate mass EV adoption.
  • partial_accumen@lemmy.worldEnglish
    412·
    11 months ago

    I’m expecting to see dual battery EVs in the not too distant future. A Sodium battery for the primary that gets the most charges and discharges which can be easy and cheaper to replace. Beside that a Lithium battery which would only be drawn from after the Sodium battery was exhausted. This way if you’re doing shallow discharges for your “around town” driving then charging at night, and deep discharges for longer road trips where the energy density of Lithium shines.

      • Nomecks@lemmy.caEnglish
        9·
        11 months ago

        This is a solved problem. Most EVs won’t let you charge it to the actual 100% level or discharge it to 0.

        • Patch@feddit.ukEnglish
          2·
          11 months ago

          Exactly. Really, “fully charged” should just be conceptualised as being at a sensible safe point, with the acknowledgement that it’s possible to “overcharge” the batteries to an even higher level, chemically speaking, but that all sensible devices don’t let you do this.

      • LrdThndr@lemmy.worldEnglish
        7·
        11 months ago

        So only charge it to 80% and pretend 80% is 100%, like iPhones do. Why is that a concern?

        • woefkardoes@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          11 months ago

          Or you could just use all of the space for a sodium battery and fully charge it as it won’t need long term storage in that state.

    • zergtoshi@lemmy.worldEnglish
      143·
      11 months ago

      I’m still dreaming of seeing EVs with flexible battery space, which users can fill according to their needs.
      Like a car comes with space for 10x 10 kWh slots.
      If 20 kWh serve your usual needs, the other spaces remain empty.
      And if you plan longer trips and don’t want to recharge each 100 miles, you put in additional batteries. Those batteries don’t need to be owned, but can be rented.
      Ideally there are lots of battery rental stations, where you can get charged batteries and instead of recharging the batteries in the EV, the rent’n’swap stations recharge them.
      During (EV) wise low use times, these stations can provide a buffer to the energy grid.
      …one can dream…

        • zergtoshi@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          11 months ago

          Then buy it. No need to rent it then.
          The main focus was on flexible energy packs not on the renting, although I’d find it convenient if done right.

          • Forbo@lemmy.mlEnglish
            1·
            11 months ago

            You have far more faith in capitalists to do the right thing than I. They’ll put this shit behind user hostile DRM the same that Disney does for drink refills.

        • zergtoshi@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          11 months ago

          Wpuld you rather purchase an 80 kWh battery, alrhough you need most of the time only 20 kWh or purchase only 20 kWh and rent/swap some batteries when needed?
          I’m no talking about renting all battery capacity the whole year, just the extra capacity for the 2-4 weeks in the year when long-distance rides are in the mix.

      • unrelatedkeg@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
        4·
        11 months ago

        I’ve seen a video with some electric mopeds that had very easily removable batteries. Like you just pop it out and exchange it at a gas-station equivalent.

        It’d be ideal if we could settle on a few sizes - kind of like how we have AA, AAA, C, D, etc. batteries. One can be for such mopeds, one larger for cars and some smaller ones to fill various otherwise empty spaces in a car.

        So if your battery goes bad or just want to change its tech you can do that.

        For normal city driving you carge the car at home. If you go on a trip make a few stops for charging. If you’re really in a rush, you can always pay a premium for swapping your drained battery for a prefilled one at a gas station equivalent.

        To me this seems like the ideal solution for EVs and I wonder what facts make it unrealistic.

        • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          11 months ago

          It’d be ideal if we could settle on a few sizes - kind of like how we have AA, AAA, C, D, etc. batteries. One can be for such mopeds, one larger for cars and some smaller ones to fill various otherwise empty spaces in a car.

          This is precisely where we’re going to get fucked, though, because the modern pathological mindset of every tech company now is to try to build their own proprietary walled fiefdom to try to lock in suckers recurring revenue sources customers and they won’t make their stuff compatible with anyone else’s unless the government forces them to. Maybe if we’re lucky there will be a decade or two of highly public bitching (see also: the Tesla charging connector) until someone eventually capitulates.

        • Bridger@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          1·
          11 months ago

          Different battery chemistries have different charging requirements. So you’d have to have more complex charger/battery interaction requirements. Not insurmountable but another layer of standardization

        • xspurnx@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          1·
          11 months ago

          Yup, I’ve been thinking along those lines as well. I can’t believe that every manufacturer is doing their own standards again…

      • filister@lemmy.worldEnglish
        22·
        11 months ago

        You know, putting and removing batteries would be a very tedious task and I really doubt that many owners will bother with it.

        • zergtoshi@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          11 months ago

          It wouldn’t be necessary very often unless you’d want to take advantage of swapping instead of reloading.

        • fiah@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          2·
          11 months ago

          also it’s not a trivial task to engineer for swapable EV batteries, doing so comes with a whole host of disadvantages / compromises that don’t make sense for most (I guess) consumers right now. It’s not very different from the phone battery issue, except on a huge scale and with much more severe consequences if things go wrong

          • filister@lemmy.worldEnglish
            3·
            11 months ago

            Yes, you need to make the puncture proof, they are a fire hazard if stored at home, they degrade over time and if left empty long enough might not even work, etc.

            • zergtoshi@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              11 months ago

              The enginnering part is for sure one of the reasons we don’t see that idea in the wild (yet?).
              The fire hazard at home and degradation when stored full or empty (speaking of lithion ion based batteries here) go away if you lean on the rental approach.
              Wouldn’t it be nice to save investment and weight by using the required amount of battery capacity while still being able to extend the range of your car easily when needed?

          • LrdThndr@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            11 months ago

            I mean, US Cellular had a free battery swap program for a while. If you were a subscriber and your phone battery was low, you could go into any store and they’d swap you out for a fully charged battery for free. I presume they just ate the cost of damaged or degraded batteries as part of it. I only used it a couple times, but it was kinda nice.