Claim: 25,000 Mile Battery For Plug-In Hybrid

The lithium ion batteries being used for plug-in hybrids such as the Chevy Volt are easily the single most expensive part of the car and now, AFS Trinity is claiming that they will only last 25,000 miles before needing to be replaced. The company has its own plug-in hybrid technology and claims their batteries can last 150,000 miles and avoids this rapid deterioration because of ultracapacitors they employ that act as an energy buffer. They will be showing off their "Extreme Hybrid" prototypes and making further details available across the street from the LAConvention Center, since the LA Auto Show will kick off this week without them. AFS Trinity stakes its claim on an independent study conducted by Mobile Power Solutions.

Read the whole story here.

Comments

[TimmySlagle]

I thought GM "Killed the electric car?"

[ajm8127]

Unless something changed without me knowing, Lithium-Ion packs do not last much longer than two years. So if you drive around 12,000 miles a year, the 25,000 mile figure could be accurate. It seems like that AFS vehicle also uses Li-ion technology, meaning that the batteries have a finite shelf life as well. Li-ion batteries start to use capacity the moment they are produced, and even if they are not used, they still lose life.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery#Disadvantages_of_traditional_Li-ion_technology

[KillTheMessenger]

A lot of things that you don't seem to know have changed. The kinds of LiIon cells you are talking about are only used in notebooks and other low cycle applications. The failure mechanism of those cells are well understood and have nothing to do with the basic cell chemistry but are caused by irreversible changes in the electrode materials that are used. There are several lines of research which have made new materials possible that have much higher lifetimes and allow for many more cycles.

The claims of the company that the wrong batteries don't last long enough are not very impressive, since they would have gotten very different results had they used the right batteries to begin with.

[research]

A123 NanoPhosphate cells are safer, more powerful and last a lot longer:

http://www.a123systems.com/applications/plug-in-hybrid

[jsarets]

Chevy Volt's battery pack uses a manganese spinel cathode, not the cobalt oxide used in laptops and cell phones. This chemistry has about one tenth the internal resistance, which means more power, more life, and less heat at the cost of some energy density. A123's LiFePO4 is a different chemistry that provides many of the same advantages over cobalt.

The shelf-aging claim is dubious, pushed by company (Cadex) that sells high-end charger/analyzers for NiCd and NiMH batteries, and even they admit that manganese cells last longer than cobalt cells and have been improving rapidly since the paper was published in 2002.

The history of advanced automotive battery development is littered with misinformation campaigns conducted by battery makers against their competitors, tearing each other down in their quest to be the one that finally breaks through. Never trust anything a battery maker says about competing products. Surely AFS Trinity, a company specializing in aftermarket electrification, has an incentive to bad-mouth factory production EVs like the Volt.

[KillTheMessenger]

Thanks for the nice insight into the "business practices" of the industry. I suspected something like this but it's nice to get confirmation.