EV Batteries Are Dangerous to Repair. Here's Why Mechanics Are Doing So Anyway
www.scientificamerican.com
Fixing car and e-bike batteries saves money and resources, but challenges are holding back the industry

Fixing car and e-bike batteries saves money and resources, but challenges are holding back the industry

    • circuscritic@lemmy.caEnglish
      176·
      11 months ago

      Eh. That’s not really comparable to lithium-ion batteries. Lithium-ion batteries are similar to bombs in that they’re highly dense stores of energy. If something goes wrong and that energy storage medium gets exposed to air, or there’s a failure in a charging safety mechanisms, that’s a chemical fire at best, explosion at worse, but no matter what, it’s extremely toxic.

      • NAK@lemmy.worldEnglish
        82·
        11 months ago

        Lol. A single gallon of gasoline contains approximately 34khw of energy. An EV with ~300 miles of range, will have a battery with between 80 and 100 khw. Or the same potential energy as about 3 gallons of gas.

        People are familiar with gas, so it seems safe. But every gas tank is a literal bomb, and that’s just for a car. I have no idea how big the storage tanks at gas stations are, but I’m assuming there’s enough explosive in there to level a couple hundred square feet if one of those goes.

      • CmdrShepard42@lemm.eeEnglish
        21·
        11 months ago

        A car sitting 6 feet in the air is also a highly dense storage of energy that could be released at any moment. I do get your point, but there are ways to mitigate the dangers associated with working on a pack, and they’re not as volatile as you think. Being exposed to air isn’t going to cause a cell to explode as the lithium is mixed with other chemicals inside the cell to make it fairly inert. The danger comes from short circuits, whether it be a puncture or bridging contacts with something conductive.

  • Lophostemon@aussie.zoneEnglish
    1202·
    11 months ago

    The whole repair thing should made super easy if we want EVs to succeed.

    1. Make all batteries use an easily swappable set of standard cell sizes.
    2. Make battery controllers standardised and swappable.
    3. …. Er… that’s it.
    • cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      574·
      11 months ago

      But that will never happen because the EV manufacturers couldn’t charge ridiculous amounts of money for proprietary batteries.

      • jabjoe@feddit.ukEnglish
        231·
        11 months ago

        That why we need regulators. The market doesn’t magically deal with “Tragedy of the Commons”.

          • jabjoe@feddit.ukEnglish
            4·
            11 months ago

            No one lives in completely unregulated capitalism. Well, not willingly anyway. That kind of anarchy happens when countries collapse. But normally you quickly get a drug/war lord taking over setting their own (unfair) laws & regulation.

            It’s a constant battle of over/under regulation, regulatory capture, etc. But that’s how it should be in a dynamic world.

            • Otter@lemmy.caEnglish
              2·
              11 months ago

              I think they’re being sarcastic, but it’s annoying in its own way to repeat the lines that barely anyone actually believes

              • jabjoe@feddit.ukEnglish
                2·
                11 months ago

                There are no shortage of those who really believe that nonsense. In the UK, we literally had a pair of these loonatics running the country and economy for a few months. They tanked the pound in their short time before their own party pulled the plug under pressure of markets and donors losing money.

    • LazaroFilm@lemmy.worldEnglish
      434·
      11 months ago

      Make all cars rechargeable with a single charging port. And that port should be USB-C

        • TonyTonyChopper@mander.xyzEnglish
          3·
          11 months ago

          The highest available now is 240 W, so with 50 in parallel you get 12 kW. Fast chargers go up to like 300 kW but at home 12 is good enough actually.

        • theblueredditrefugee@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          56·
          11 months ago

          I’ve been surprised by USB-C. I recently bought a Xiaomi phone and it takes like 10 minutes to charge with the charger that comes with the phone (and it still works with the other ones). It’s 120 watts

          At that rate it’d still take 12 hours to charge a 1440 watt hour battery, which isn’t the hour or two that people are used to with superchargers these days, but actually surprisingly servicable.

          • vithigar@lemmy.caEnglish
            10·
            11 months ago

            Where did you pull that 1440Wh number from? The battery in my plug-in hybrid is 20kWh, and that’s still small compared to a full EV.

            • theblueredditrefugee@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
              51·
              11 months ago

              Ah shit, I googled the number but it looks like I got the number for a battery in an internal combustion engine car, apologies. I’m an electronics person, not a car person

              • vithigar@lemmy.caEnglish
                1·
                11 months ago

                Understandable. Just for the sake of comparison to a smartphone 120W fast charger, level 1 EV chargers (which can still take days to fully charge a completely drained EV) will generally deliver between 1000 and 1500W. Level 2 (the fastest you’ll typically see installed in people’s homes) range from about 7kW to 19kW. Level 3 fast chargers typically operate from about 60 to 250kW and unlike level 1 and 2 which deliver AC to the car to be handled by the vehicles internal rectifier/charger, level 3 delivers DC.

          • DreadPotato@sopuli.xyzEnglish
            2·
            11 months ago

            1.44kWh Is roughly 7-10km of driving, depending on the car and weather. In 12h that’s an absolutely useless amount of power for anything other than small e-scooters and short-range e-bikes.

      • jol@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        71·
        11 months ago

        Can’t wait for all power cables to just be USB-C. I dream for the day where I can charge my phone with the same plug my induction stove uses.

      • cogman@lemmy.worldEnglish
        13·
        11 months ago

        Every EV has this already. What they don’t have is a standard. Not shockingly, every EV manufacturer will argue why theirs should be the standard.

        • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          31·
          11 months ago

          Honestly if the department of defense adopts any EVs for troop transport it should come with a forced standardization. Just hand wave it as being for national security and the fact a lot of countries will probably adopt the standard, that should do the trick.

          • atrielienz@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            11 months ago

            They probably won’t. Unless it will cut costs and allow for speed of refilling/recharging. Maybe in another 50 years. And only if one of the big firms tries to sell them something. Lockheed or Boeing or so on. The problem is troop transport needs to be fixable by a shop of people ranging in age from 17 or so to around 25. Inexperienced people. In a fair few cases with hand tools. To even remove a battery from an EV right now you need a lift of some kind and something stable to drop it onto. You can’t carry that into the desert. Certainly not onto an aircraft carrier. And we’re awhile away from building it into war ships, even smaller ones. The output and range would have to be reliable. A pilot can’t rely on a bingo that doesn’t accurately tell him if he has enough fuel to get to the target and back.

        • CmdrShepard42@lemm.eeEnglish
          2·
          11 months ago

          The problem with this is that every vehicle would need to be built around the same battery pack dimensions, have the same amp-hour rating, same voltage, same cooling system, etc. I seriously doubt that would ever happen as nothing like that has ever existed in the 120+ years of automotive history.

          • cogman@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            10 months ago

            The problem with this is that every vehicle would need to be built around the same battery pack dimensions

            There’s a lot of ways to tackle this issue. You could have a couple of standards (think AA vs AAA batteries). Or you could make the packs smaller and more modular so different applications can have more or less of them.

            have the same amp-hour rating

            No, they’d not need that. In fact, I’d say it’s desirable for them to not have that.

            same voltage, same cooling system

            Same voltage, yes, same cooling system? Not exactly. They’d just need to have cooling system hookups in the same place.

            I seriously doubt that would ever happen as nothing like that has ever existed in the 120+ years of automotive history.

            Loads of things like that have existed in the automotive industry. In fact, that’s one of the biggest features of the big 3 automotive manufacturers is having standardized parts shared between one another.

        • dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          43·
          11 months ago

          I’m not so sure.

          Are we talking about the same thing, there was a recent Tom Scott video on it.

          Basically you drive your NIO into this machine and it removes your battery and replaces it. Then it charges your old one and next time someone drives in they may get your last battery. Since and repeat.

          • cogman@lemmy.worldEnglish
            41·
            11 months ago

            Standard and swappable battery packs? Yes. All the skateboard style vehicles or ebikes have battery packs that can be removed and replaced.

            Making that automated could be nice but isn’t necessary to get the benefits of a standard. A standard forces pack producers to compete with one another in terms of quality and price. It makes it cheaper to install new batteries. And it makes it possible to upgrade your cars range with newer packs. With an EV, you won’t need to get a new vehicle hardly ever if getting new packs is relatively affordable and easy. Further, the worn packs still have value so swap locations will be incentivized to pay you for the pack they remove.

            The notion this needs to be part of a giant battery swapping network to reduce charge times is silly. 10 to 15 minute charge stops are already very short and all you need on most cars for the next leg of a journey. It also introduces a lot of complexity. Like, what if I want or need a 100kWh pack but the standard is 80kWh packs? What about pack wear? Who’s in charge of pulling the degraded packs? And what do we do about someone putting in a pack with fake capabilities? You have a situation where you are cycling parts worth well north of $10k. That’s a mighty tempting target for theft.

            A standardized battery is still a really good thing. I just don’t think it needs to be a part of road trips.

          • sir_reginald@lemmy.worldEnglish
            31·
            11 months ago

            that’s not what the top comment was talking about. this is replacing the whole battery, not cells within the battery. it doesn’t help with reparability at all.

    • reallyNaughty@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
      20·
      11 months ago

      Mostly it’s money for the consumer. I have a Prius so it might be a little different. But when the hybrid battery goes out costs something like $7,000 to have it replaced. A mechanic in town will repair it for $1000.

      Now my car isn’t worth $7000 so if I had to replace the battery then I would just get a new car and this one might end up in the scrap heap. In getting it repaired I have gotten something like 6 more years out of it, at least, and that’s a pretty significant environmental savings.

      And that’s essentially what the article is saying.

    • FrostyTrichs@lemmy.worldEnglish
      44·
      11 months ago

      A Subscription Is Required to Continue Reading

      Interesting.

      First of all apparently ublock, no script, or some combination of my add-ons kept me from seeing the message and I’m able to view the entire article.

      Even more interesting is this text at the end of the article-

      This story was originally published by Grist, a nonprofit media organization covering climate, justice, and solutions.

      So this source basically spun an article from Grist and put it behind their paywall.

      Following the link from Scientific American, the first line of the Grist article is-

      This story was co-published with WIRED.

      It’s clowns the whole way down, yaaaaar.

      • chepox@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        1·
        11 months ago

        We should all strive for this level of rigor when understanding sources of articles online.

        The world would be so much better.

  • BlackSkinnedJew@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
    373·
    11 months ago

    Manufacturers will keep making their cars hard to repair cos they want all the money of the customers in original replacement parts. Their cars are specially designed to only be repaired by their own technicians, they want the whole business you know.

  • Hyperreality@kbin.social
    173·
    11 months ago

    I loved how Renault solved this for the Twizzy (and other cars). You bought the car. You leased the battery for something like 50 euros a month. (Probably more now).

    Sure, that sounds expensive, but I suspect it worked out less than replacing the battery after a decade.

    Suspect it also helped resale value. The most expensive repair to worry about for a second hand buyer, is the battery. Making that a lease removes that worry entirely. You know exactly how much it’s going to cost.

    Of course, having to pay that monthly lease fee for the battery, does make it more obvious that electric cars aren’t necessarily that much cheaper to run than an ICE.

    • spongebue@lemmy.worldEnglish
      15·
      11 months ago

      I’ve got enough subscriptions in my life. 50 euros a month would be 6000 euros after 10 years (figure a couple years more than the 8-year warranty in the US) that could be put towards a refurbished battery if the car needed one at that point. The reality is, on a 10-year-old car, a little range degradation isn’t a huge deal, especially if that car is being driven around town and can be charged nightly. I’d rather own the things I buy, and not pay to be tied into yet another monthly bill.

        • spongebue@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          10 months ago

          Somehow I only now got a notification about this. That brings up an interesting point: would you be financially liable for a battery damaged in a crash? I would imagine insurance would cover it, but you’re paying your premium based on that value, only to have to give a big portion of any claim payment back to whoever you’re leasing the battery from

    • metaStatic@kbin.social
      51·
      11 months ago

      whatever happened to Teslas distributed powergrid? Now that was a game changer, offloading the cost of the battery entirely could have made EVs actually affordable.

      • abhibeckert@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        11 months ago

        It’s up and running for the Powerwall, on some grids anyway (it works in my state - but depends on having an agreement with the grid).

        The thing is there needs to be coordination between your battery and the grid - you don’t to drain your battery every night, they only last about 4,000 cycles.

        If every home in the state had a Powerwall, then maybe it could help provide baseload power but the reality right now is all it can do is help with temporary disruptions, for example keeping the grid up when a cloud passes over a major solar farm.

        They’re in the planning stages of doing Vehicle to Grid or V2G power. Right now though, it’s just for standalone batteries. This isn’t just Tesla by the way - when it comes it’ll likely be for most EVs.

  • TWeaK@lemm.eeEnglish
    4·
    11 months ago

    Danger, Danger, High Voltage!

    Although it annoys me that mechanics consider even 400V “high” voltage. HV is supposed to be 1,000V, minimum.

      • TWeaK@lemm.eeEnglish
        2·
        11 months ago

        Absolutely, but 400V isn’t as dangerous as 1,000V. IEC standards have already established all of this, above 1,000V is HV, below 50V is ELV and generally safe. Automotives have come in and labelled anything above like 24V as “HV”, which is just silly.

  • Rin@lemm.eeEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    Support right to repair. You wouldn’t have to deal with this shit.

    • NAK@lemmy.worldEnglish
      74·
      11 months ago

      I swear, everyone on Lemmy have their heads shoved so far up their asses about how everyone should go full internal combustion and that they’re great and have lower maintenance costs just down vote me to hell when I bring anything like this up. I know the tech and work on vehicles and combustion engines. It’s dumb to buy a $40,000 vehicle with a 300 pound engine, 200 pound transmission, mechanically complex 4 wheel drive system with upwards of 3 independently locking differentials. The resale value when the head gaskets is blown is next to nothing, and the great 5 year 60,000 mile power train warranty doesn’t even cover the average mileage people drive in 8 years. It only requires you mosty pay off the average loan length for a new vehicle. My Tesla costs 13 cents to drive about 4 miles, where the equivalent combustion car, with 400 horsepower and 400 foot pounds of torque, costs upwards of a dollar to drive the same. The high strung powerplants in performance cars require regular, expensive, maintenance, and if you actually push them will blow up in under 10,000 miles. An LS3 crate motor costs more than the car is worth and that doesn’t even include the transmission or any of the other drivetrain components. No one should buy and keep a combustion engine for more than 10 years or you risk “being the bag holder” and stuck with a cancer emitting 4,000 pound paperweight.

      • southsamurai@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        21·
        11 months ago

        I mean, I’m all for EV, but my car is over fifteen years old and still cranks every single time. Gets almost 40 to the gallon. Yeah, the resale is shit, but if I drive it until the wheels fall off, I don’t have to worry about that.

        Their argument was valid other than their martyr complex

        • NAK@lemmy.worldEnglish
          41·
          11 months ago

          It really isn’t.

          The whole point of the crate motor vs battery pack was it’s ridiculous to compare the cost of a new battery vs a used engine. If you blow an engine in a regular car it’s replaced with s used one, even if it’s covered by warranty. Used battery packs will get cheaper with time, especially 8 years from now when the warranty on a new EV is done.

          Good for you that your car hasn’t broken yet. I have a friend who got a bad transmission in her Subaru, it was replaced after something like 500 miles. Are you claiming that every new ICE vehicle that had ever been sold have had 100% working drive trains for the entirety of the restraint period?

          Or are you comparing your anecdotal experience with a FUD news story about one person who had a lemon of a vehicle that happened to be electric

    • mriguy@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      11 months ago

      What I seem to see most on Lemmy is split 50/50 between “EVs are way worse than cars because they are heavy and have tires and tire particulates are FAR worse than tailpipe emissions, and ICE vehicles weigh nothing and don’t have tires anyway” and “EVs are cars and cars are the devil - if you don’t live in a city center and use a bike exclusively you might as well be slaughtering children by the hundreds, because there is literally no moral difference.”