Electric Tow Vehicle, the Ultimate Range Assist feature

[SGT ROC]

Everyone,

No one has brought up the issues on which is worse for the environment, gas engine or a electrical vehicle batteries. I work for a major internet provider and carrier and when we are done with batteries, its incredibly expensive to dispose of the battery and horrible for the environment in the chemicals and such that is left over from a used/dead battery. The batteries being used in all of the electrical vehicles are in some form of a VRLA (valve regulated lead-acid) gel-call battery. I know some of the new ones are lithium-Ion and there is newer version of that same thing on the way, but all-in-all, they are all forms of gel-cell batteries. Gel-cell batteries are prowned to thermal runaways, bulging, and basically battery breakdown / failure. This includes Lithium-Ion, and any other new forms of batteries that are Gel-cell. These batteries are only good for 3 to 5 years, maybe 6 years tops, in a stable conditioned environment. When you add extreme hot and cold temperatures, that lessens the life of the battery. This is just simple physics. Electric cars are making the news today due to a major push by our current government regulatory bodies, by forcbly raising gas prices, and shortening supplies on the manufacturing of gas vehicles. Electric vehicles are nice things for mom's, and dad's running to and fro to the grocery store, picking up kids and etc, but as a long term solution we have a looooooooooooooong way to go before that happens.

Now lets talk about diminished returns. In regards to electric vehicles, just can't add more batteries for more drive time. The more batteries you add the more weight you are carrying, which in-turns lessen your overall drive time on one charge. This is the one main reason you may never see a electric vehicle pulling or towing anything. Lets face it, batteries are very heavy thena tank of gas, no matter, what the size or make up. Look at your phone that you carry most of the weight is made up of the battery. That's even using a lithium-Ion battery. Look at your cordless drill, that has a Lithium-Ion battery, take the battery out and feel how light your drill is without the battery, and how heavy it is with it. This is just simple facts.

Thanks
Sean

UMMM, the batteries used in cars, and RV's are, if I am not mistaken, Lithium Iron Phosphate, and last upwards of 10 years or more. Lead acid batteries are on the way out and are not used in EV's that I am aware of. I do believe we are quite a way's away from a total EV environment, but it will come. How soon depends on a lot of factors, not the least of which is the availability of the Lithium which is now pretty much controlled by the Chinese. Battery development is increasing by leaps and bounds, similar to computer tech. The two are bound together anyway with the use of battery monitoring systems and all of the "stuff" needed to keep these systems working efficiently. Fossil fuels will be around for a while yet, but not that much longer.

[Overtaxed]

EV's are a fantastic technology. Electric motors are fantastic for driving, towing, and, actually, just about everything compared to internal combustion. All heavy equipment you see does either one of two things, turns the power into electric (diesel-electric locomotives, for example) or turns the power in hydraulic force (excavators, etc). No question, in my mind, that the electric motor wins this battle, it's just better.

What's not better is batteries vs diesel/gasoline. The energy density between the 2 is laughable, the time to refill more laughable, and the power requirements to refuel something like a semi (or an F450) are absolutely ridiculous. I'd love an EV, I have little use for a BEV because they just make no sense at many of my uses.

However, I think if they worked a bit harder at it they can build a heavy duty truck that can get good range even when towing (300+ miles).

They can if they put a diesel engine in turning a generator. Which is, IMHO, the tech they should be investigating to make semis/pickups less polluting. But with batteries? It takes between 1-2KW/mile towing something like an RV or a semi trailer. Even if they come up with a weightless battery that can be recharged a million times before failing, there's still a massive power delivery problem. The Tesla semi need a MW of power to refuel. That's about how much an average US house consumes in a month, and I'm sure the semi driver would like it be fueled up in <30 mins. A lot of us have been to busy truck stops where you have 20-30 pumps running full tilt. If all those trucks were EV's, you're talking generation scale electricity; a busy exit with 3-4 truck stops that are all pumping full tilt, you're looking a small nuclear reactor.

The vehicle I want is an F450 with a 3L diesel engine, 100KW of battery on board, plug in hybrid. I'd use the diesel engine a LOT less because I'd plug in and use batteries around town. The diesel engine when it is running would be more efficient because it would always only run at 1 specific RPM (to spin a generator). Regenerative braking would help, instead of blowing that power off as noise with my exhaust brake, put it back in the "tank". And, of course, when I run low on fuel, drop by Loves and in 5 minutes, pump 100's of KW of power back into my tank.

Diesel-electric, hydrogen-electric, gasoline-electric. But not battery-electric, that's a non-starter for heavy vehicles that are covering long distances (like many of us do often with an RV).

Just for one more "crazy" in the idea, thinking about plugging your 1MW pickup truck into the 50A outlet at an RV park to fill up? LOL. Do the math on that, hope you got the monthly rate, because 50A 220V is gonna take a long time to move 1,000KW of power. And that'll only get you another ~500-750 miles.

[Malco1]

I watched a guy talk about EVs today on CSPAN. He was from organization that works with the fed gov on EV's and recharging stations. As he was talking qnd taking callers questions, I started thinking about these issues:

1. Non-standard proprietary EV power connections.
2. Battery replacement cost (one caller mentioned his replacemnt cost was $15k!)
3. 30 minutes for every 100 miles to charge.
4. Number of available propreitary power stations.
5. Eventual upgrade for faster charging stations costs. Also, backwards compatibility?
6. Will charge stations be large enough to handle large electric vehicles and/or trailers?
7. Will there be enough charging stations for all at a site to use who need it in that area, and what about the wait time in line on top of the charging time?
8. Some complained about the charging stations not accepting their credit cards.... readers were broke or not functioning. Then what?

I am definetly for reusable energy, but, I just cant get my head around the above issues. The new EV F150 has been advertised as 300 miles fully charged, but what about when towing a trailer behind it. Also Ford mentioned using it as a emergency backup for your house or camper electricity, not sure I want to call a tow truck to charge or tow it once the juice runs out and no pole power too? When seeing how cool they said the new EV F150 was, I started thinking about those TV commercials advertising a new generation tv's picture and showing how crisp and nice the picture would be while your watching it on your own TV!

IMO hybrids make more sense in the short term until some of these issues are resolved.

More fun information about batteries. They are made out of hazardous materials, so when you spend $15000 for a new battery, what do you think happens to the old one. Also these batteries require more energy to produce than they ever give back in their lifetime. They save nothing and are much more polluting than fossil fuel. Oh and buy the way where do you think the electric comes from to charge them up?

[SolarPoweredRV]

More fun information about batteries. They are made out of hazardous materials, so when you spend $15000 for a new battery, what do you think happens to the old one. Also these batteries require more energy to produce than they ever give back in their lifetime. They save nothing and are much more polluting than fossil fuel. Oh and buy the way where do you think the electric comes from to charge them up?

What happens to the old battery?

If a dealer or Tesla service center replaced the battery, then the old battery gets shipped somewhere for recycling. If a wrecked EV gets sent to the junk yard, then it either gets sold for parts (I own two Tesla Model S battery modules purchased from a junk yard) to people with off-grid Solar systems, or it gets shipped out for recycling.

Just yesterday, I read an article describing an interview with JB Strauble, founder of Redwood Materials (Lithium Ion battery recyclers) where he stated that recycling Lithium Ion batteries is already profitable (not the business, but the process of recycling the batteries).

Consequently, with more and more batteries getting recycled, the Minerals used to make the batteries will get reused over and over again, eventually eliminating most of the requirement for mining new materials; much like the Lead Acid battery industry operates in the USA, 95% of all LA batteries are recycled.

As far as where the energy comes from to power the EV goes, the Electrical Grid in the US, and many, many, other countries is getting cleaner and cleaner every year due to more renewables being added to the system every year. As a matter of fact, South Australia just set a record of getting 100% of their energy from renewables for 6 1/2 days in late December 2021. The UK has achieved many days where they have not burned any coal from their one existing Coal fired power plant. In the US, we produced more energy in 2020 from renewables than we did from coal (20% Renewables vs 19% Coal).

Consequently, your EV is is operating on cleaner and cleaner electricity every year it exists.

Your statement about the batteries taking more energy to produce than they ever give back in their lifetime simply makes no sense. Producing batteries is simply a manufacturing process, sure, it takes energy to mine the materials and energy to make the steel that encases them, but at the end of the day they are simply a product. This comment seems to stem from the belief that it takes an inordinate amount of energy to mine the materials and make the minerals into a useful product, this is simply not true it takes a normal amount of mining and processing just like steel or cement would take.

Additionally, how much energy does it take to explore and drill for oil and natural gas?

Final thought: Batteries can be recycled, how do you recycle a gallon of gas or diesel?

[JKellerJr]

UMMM, the batteries used in cars, and RV's are, if I am not mistaken, Lithium Iron Phosphate, and last upwards of 10 years or more.

Small difference, and it may not be universal, but EV batteries are typically Lithium Ion, Batteries like batttleborn are Lithium Iron Phosphate. ION chemistry can hold more power but are not as stable as Iron phosphate. ION has a higher chance of thermal runaway if something goes wrong.


@SolarPoweredRV I'm sure has better details.

[MoonShadow_1911]

Small difference, and it may not be universal, but EV batteries are typically Lithium Ion, Batteries like batttleborn are Lithium Iron Phosphate. ION chemistry can hold more power but are not as stable as Iron phosphate. ION has a higher chance of thermal runaway if something goes wrong.


@SolarPoweredRV I'm sure has better details.

You are correct. One thing to note: the batteries in an EV and your cell phone are the same chemistry. Lithium Ion. Just different configurations. If you remember the fiasco a few years ago with the Samsung Galaxy Note 7, burning up, that was due to the thin Lithium Ion batteries flexing and allowing the electrodes inside the battery to touch. The batteries in EVs are much bigger (wider) and have little more space between the electrodes and are much less prone to flexing. (I don't know about you, but I could flex a type 27 size battery...)

Li-ion batteries can use a number of different materials as electrodes. The most common combination is that of lithium cobalt oxide (cathode) and graphite (anode), which is most commonly found in portable electronic devices such as cellphones and laptops. Other cathode materials include lithium manganese oxide (used in hybrid electric and electric automobiles) and lithium iron phosphate. Li-ion batteries typically use ether (a class of organic compounds) as an electrolyte. (Taken from https://www.cei.washington.edu/educa...%20electrodes.

LiFePO4 batteries are a type of lithium battery built from lithium iron phosphate. The cycle life of a LiFePO4 battery is over 4x that of other lithium ion batteries. It’s also the safest lithium battery type on the market, safer than lithiom ion and other battery types.

Also, LiFePO4 batteries can not only reach 3,000-5,000 cycles or more, they can reach 100% depth of discharge (DOD).

Lithium iron phosphate has better thermal and structural stability over most all other battery types.

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[JKellerJr]

You are correct. One thing to note: the batteries in an EV and your cell phone are the same chemistry. Lithium Ion. Just different configurations. If you remember the fiasco a few years ago with the Samsung Galaxy Note 7, burning up, that was due to the thin Lithium Ion batteries flexing and allowing the electrodes inside the battery to touch. The batteries in EVs are much bigger (wider) and have little more space between the electrodes and are much less prone to flexing. (I don't know about you, but I could flex a type 27 size battery...)

Li-ion batteries can use a number of different materials as electrodes. The most common combination is that of lithium cobalt oxide (cathode) and graphite (anode), which is most commonly found in portable electronic devices such as cellphones and laptops. Other cathode materials include lithium manganese oxide (used in hybrid electric and electric automobiles) and lithium iron phosphate. Li-ion batteries typically use ether (a class of organic compounds) as an electrolyte. (Taken from https://www.cei.washington.edu/educa...%20electrodes.

LiFePO4 batteries are a type of lithium battery built from lithium iron phosphate. The cycle life of a LiFePO4 battery is over 4x that of other lithium ion batteries. It’s also the safest lithium battery type on the market, safer than lithiom ion and other battery types.

Also, LiFePO4 batteries can not only reach 3,000-5,000 cycles or more, they can reach 100% depth of discharge (DOD).

Lithium iron phosphate has better thermal and structural stability over most all other battery types.

Sent from my SM-N986U using Tapatalk

Exactly what I said

Very good information

[SolarPoweredRV]

Small difference, and it may not be universal, but EV batteries are typically Lithium Ion, Batteries like batttleborn are Lithium Iron Phosphate. ION chemistry can hold more power but are not as stable as Iron phosphate. ION has a higher chance of thermal runaway if something goes wrong.


@SolarPoweredRV I'm sure has better details.

All true, however, it is worth noting that Tesla has started using LiFePo4 batteries in their "Standard Range" vehicles. This is due to the increase in energy density that LiFePo4 batteries have achieved in recent years, not to mention the lower cost of LiFePo4 batteries. Tesla also expects the LiFePo4 batteries to out perform the Lithium Ion batteries when it comes to battery degradation and duty cycle/longevity.