Sanyo Electric Aims to Slash Lithium-Ion Car-Battery Costs by About Half

How many units does it take to package 5.2 kwh ? Just wondering what the production capacity really is in terms of cars.

I thought $600/kwh is the going rate these days for Li-x -- or at least the price Nissan is paying for the LEAF battery.

 

Weird - you can get Li batteries for $500/kwh now.

 

Yes - that's what GM is paying LG. Electrification Coalition quotes $600 and lower. Only A123 and Altairnano are higher. Consumer grade is $300 and lower.

 

This sounds like really good and big news, especially as competitors line up to match or beat them.
But I'd like to hear more about what's going on with evnow's claim that the price is already here.
Is there something else that might be better about the Sanyo batteries???
What's going on??

 

Which chemistry are you talking about ? The original article doesn't indicate anything ...

 

USB I'm glad your finally on the Lithium band wagon.

The JCI-saft batteries are rated for over 3000 cycles. They are running in many conversions and will be in the new Ford Transit connect, as well as the bmw and mercedes hv, and many chinese lithium cars. The rumored waranty on ford's bev will be 120,000 miles which amounts to about 1500 cycles.

The LG chemistry in the sonata has been reported by Hyundai to last tens of thousands of cycles and 300,000 hybrid miles in their charge cycle. Of course they will only be warranted for 10 years like the rest of the car and likely 10,000 miles.

 

What is hilarious is the NiMH patent prohibition on large capacity cells has advanced development of several LiON battery technologies. This also avoids the rare-earth monopoly. THANKS!

I'm reminded of Polaroid's patent dispute with Kodak who is still in the camera making business.

Bob Wilson

 

By large format, do you mean prismatic ? They aren't talking about formats either. They just say "automtoive" .... who knows what that means to them.

Tesla is actually going to continue to use consumer batteries in the base Model S. Only in models with higher range will they use the newer Aluminum.

I don't know what Plug-in Prius will use - most probably the cheaper consumer grade ones.

BTW, the basic premise of Tesla is that it will be cheaper in the long run to use cheaper multi-sourced consumer batteries and build a complex BMS around them. They think the consumer batteries will evolve faster and the prices will fall faster. Something like Google's idea of generic redundant hardware and reliability using somplex software.

We will have to see which idea is better - Nissan's or Tesla's.

 

If they are prismatic Tesla is not going to use them. Toyota as well. May be they will start competing with LG - who seem to be winning a lot of contracts lately.

 

I think they will use them on another hybrid and then put them in the phv prius later. You can build the plant and still adjust the chemistry.

I hope sanyo catches up, it will be good to have 4 competitors (sanyo/primearth, lg, jci-saft, nissan) in the lithium car battery game. That plus the matrix of consumer cells in the tesla and rav 4 should help quickly develop the technologies. I think the lithium polymer technology shows the most promise but is also likely more expensive. As a note Nissan is using a slightly different chemistry for
it's infiniti M hybrid than the leaf, so perhaps the phv prius will have one hybrid type and one ev type battery. I expect that the weight of the battery pack for the phv prius will drop or capacity will go up by the time it hits the market.

 

Yes, I know it is an old article, August 2010:

Auto Industry Headed For EV Battery Glut - 2010-08-16 16:21:00 | Design News

An embarrassment of riches.

Bob Wilson