Battery Life Cycle

[ID_ENG]

Sorry if this already a thread somewhere. (Didn't see one).

But what does the battery life cycle look like. Eventually all batteries will need to be replaced, is there a recycling program in the works? Thought into future upgrades as solid state becomes commercially viable? Realistic warranty or incentive pricing for sticking with your Scout and not selling it because the cost of a battery replacement is more than the vehicle is worth at that point?

 

[Serialnerd]

Current research is that batteries built in cars today will outlast the life of the car. Granted you will have some battery degradation of course but that will depend on the battery technology used.

 

[ID_ENG]

Wonder if that'll hold true with vehicles that have bidirectional charging like these. I know I'll be using it to power my camping trailer when I take it out and there's no electrical. And many people I'm sure will use it to power some demanding tools like welders. So I can see these kind of vehicles going through more power depletion cycles than your typical EV.

If that is the case then more environmental than consumer cost concern. What can we do with the batteries when the vehicle isn't salvagable.

I feel that (and I could be totally wrong) at a high level, people make statements about swapping out batteries or recycling. But there really is no defined process because it's too expensive so the details keep getting kicked down the road for someone to figure out the magic process.

 

[Serialnerd]

Wonder if that'll hold true with vehicles that have bidirectional charging like these. I know I'll be using it to power my camping trailer when I take it out and there's no electrical. And many people I'm sure will use it to power some demanding tools like welders. So I can see these kind of vehicles going through more power depletion cycles than your typical EV.

If that is the case then more environmental than consumer cost concern. What can we do with the batteries when the vehicle isn't salvagable.

I feel that (and I could be totally wrong) at a high level, people make statements about swapping out batteries or recycling. But there really is no defined process because it's too expensive so the details keep getting kicked down the road for someone to figure out the magic process.

That is a very good question. Battery drainage, regardless of the direction or use would count towards overall life cycle of the battery. But does bidirectional drainage have more wear or less battery wear than powering the vehicle itself I'm not sure.
I seems to think that there will be more wear on a battery powering the vehicle itself then would be running a coffee pot. But I have no idea how running an arc welder would compare to powering the vehicle.

 

[ID_ENG]

Yeah or a whole trailer using the 240V connection for several days on end.
Maybe the Harvester can be configured into like stationary generator mode. And kick in automatically when the battery gets below a certain percentage.

 

[J Alynn]

Honda is now using used vehicle batteries for other types of small charging support efforts. I read a great article but completely forget the uses they listed. It made me feel much better knowing we weren’t going to just bury them in the ground. There is also a lot of growth in battery recycling so there should be after life for many of the used car battery packs

 

[Mousehunter]

different chemistries have different expected life cycles. Most life cycles are measure through 80% of initial capacity. I read numbers like 1000, 3000 and 5000 cycles - but I would argue that it depends on the cycles and there will be aging outside of that. But if you consider a cycle to be say 300 miles - then 3000 cycles would be 900,000 miles. How long an ice vehicle last depends on a bunch of things - but... Some people want to upgrade well before the vehicles end of life. Right now I have one vehicle running well at about 350k miles. 1m miles though is probably not really common. I did see an article that had stories of 22 individual passenger vehicles that pulled off that trick.
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the real issue is probably not wearing out modern batteries. But weight and range. I think 200watts per kg is pretty common in EV's today. Most promising tech currently in limited production is probably at 450w/kg. When you are looking at larger EV's with 150kw batteries (or larger)-that would be 1650lb today, maybe 745lbs tomorrow (or more likely 5 years). Some hope to hit 800 w/kg - that would shave drop it down to closer to 400lbs. Loosing 1250lbs would be a big deal - or likewise, 3x the range would also be a big deal (abet some mix would probably be optimal).

 

[Rampy]

Yeah or a whole trailer using the 240V connection for several days on end.
Maybe the Harvester can be configured into like stationary generator mode. And kick in automatically when the battery gets below a certain percentage.

Like how Ford does with the F150

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

As stated, the number of cycles that a battery will remain useful is very large. The calendar age of the batteries is the strongest variable in the useful lifetime of the batteries. Even so, the evidence is that ~500,000 to 1M miles and 20 years is a realistic lifetime for the most well-engineered EV batteries.

For number of cycles: Assume most of your diving is similar to the average and that's 30 miles a day with occasional longer trips. For the 30 miles a day on a 360 mile range, you get 12 days before your battery has seen a full charge/discharge cycle. But many people aren't working on two of the seven days of a week, so let's roll this into a 2-week total period per charge cycle. Now let's add in peak shaving every night during the week as well, so cut the total period in half--you get one week per charge cycle. The lower end of charge cycles before bringing the battery to 80% of health is 2,000. So you get 2,000 weeks of use before the battery health is at 80%. That's 38 years.

Unfortunately, the charge cycles won't be the biggest determinant--it'll just be calendar age. I plan on 20 years of battery health before our Mustang or Lightning batteries are down to 80% state of health. At 80% state of health, it's still not a slouch--it'll still get ~250-260 miles on a full charge.

 

[MountainDad]

Sorry if this already a thread somewhere. (Didn't see one).

But what does the battery life cycle look like. Eventually all batteries will need to be replaced, is there a recycling program in the works? Thought into future upgrades as solid state becomes commercially viable? Realistic warranty or incentive pricing for sticking with your Scout and not selling it because the cost of a battery replacement is more than the vehicle is worth at that point?

Recycling auto batteries is not a widespread thing yet for a number of engineering and chemistry reasons. It actually costs way more energy and money at the moment than is returned by recycling the contents, mostly because they literally have to be dumped into the equivalent of a wood chipper and then the various elemental bits separated by chemical and mechanical processes.

https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a44022888/electric-car-battery-recycling/

 

[MountainDad]

Current research is that batteries built in cars today will outlast the life of the car. Granted you will have some battery degradation of course but that will depend on the battery technology used.

Outlast the EPA-defined standard service life of the car, maybe. The EPA defines the Intermediate Useful Life of a vehicle to be 5 years or 50,000 miles. The Full Useful Life is defined as 10 years or 100,000 miles.

 

[pleasant tree]

That is a very good question. Battery drainage, regardless of the direction or use would count towards overall life cycle of the battery. But does bidirectional drainage have more wear or less battery wear than powering the vehicle itself I'm not sure.
I seems to think that there will be more wear on a battery powering the vehicle itself then would be running a coffee pot. But I have no idea how running an arc welder would compare to powering the vehicle.

Good point, the new Solid state batteries coming into production have 2,000 to 3,000 life cycles ending with only 5% degradation. bi-directional charging will be counted as normal charging cycles. each cycle is going from completely empty to completely full, so if you only go from 100% to 80% and back to 100 that would count as 20% of one cycle.