Is it really just the battery?
 

in our mutual long wait for the Taycan production version we have had many many discussions regarding EV's - Pro's and con's - we all have our biases, but on par I feel we've all learned a lot and we are all in fact passionate about cars and in particular Porsche cars. At the end of the day we all want to see Porsche lead if this is in fact the direction the industry is going.

It's the con's that I'd like to discuss in this thread and in particular the battery - in that for the most part we seem to be focusing the negative aspects of current generation battery technology - in summary they seem to be:

1. energy density as measured by volume/weight
2. charging times and the trade offs for current LiON based technology
3. sourcing of materials for a mineral that has not yet had the pressures applied for sustainable harvesting that we have engaged in for other commodities
4. limiting performance due to the need to terminally manage LiON components for longevity
5. some legitimate fear about battery capacity over time due to charge/discharge cycles
6. cost of the battery vs. traditional drive trains

So my question to you this community is let's envision a future battery technology (cause this isn't going to be any more static than any other tech) and would you be more positive if say…

1. a battery capacity of 150-200 kWh (which would enable at least 450-600 mile range charge to charge)
2. full charging times of less than 15 minutes at commercial charging stations
3. linear and predictable charging times as opposed to the non-linear charging rates of current LiON in terms of kWh delivered per unit of time
4. weight less than 500 lbs - which on par would make these cars equal or lighter than their ICE counter parts?
5. no meaningful limit on discharge performance in terms of battery management or longevity removing the stamina issue from the table
6. capacity longevity on par with ICE motors and minimal capacity loss over time
7. cost factor that are equal to or better than ICE components no longer present (porsche engines and transmissions are not cheap)

I mean if we had a 200 kWh battery that only weight 500 lbs and could be charged in 15 minutes would you be more excited and accepting of the EV?

assuming the battery technology gets better, cheaper, and lighter and better behaved - what is it about the EV you still feel makes it less desirable than and ICE? Because the battery is very very modular - so what else do we need to do to make EV's more acceptable?

if not please discuss I'd love to hear your thoughts.

NOTE: I'm not advocating there _IS_ such a battery tech and I'm not going for what it would take for such a battery - I'm just saying _IF_ such a battery existed would the EV be more acceptable to the less enthusiastic members of this community?

is it really just the current limits of LiON batteries that you feel are the major limitations of EV's? Because let's be honest LiON batteries are only barely acceptable for this transportation application - it is a bit of square peg solution for a round hole - but if the battery weren't the issue are EV's suddenly much more acceptable? Because for the most part the rest of the car is pretty much the same as an ICE…

so is it just the battery and all it's implications that gets everyone all hot and bothered?

Dave,

I'm a fan of the future of EV's and a bit concerned about the range issues and charge times of present vehicles. But that is because I like road trips and think nothing of getting in the car at 4 am and driving straight through to Florida at 1 am. I have done it in as little as 17:02 in a 72 911 S... Most trips take 21 hours now days with traffic densities being what they are.

Your hypothetical 150-200 kWh battery with a range of 450-600 miles... that charged in 15 minutes would certainly change the paradigm for me.

As for the sustainable materials: lithium does not seem to be a problem but cobalt is in amazingly short supply.

I feel strongly that there will be battery technology breakthroughs very soon and they will be the game changers that will make the cars of 2025 perfectly practical and fast.

Thank you again for sharing so much information on this topic and I look forward to reading this thread as it develops.

Enjoy!

Not me personally, but the biggest complaint against EV is the sound. Or lack thereof.

so ipse you'd avoid an EV that had similar weight and performance and cost to the equivalent ICE just due to lack of sound? Exhaust Note is "required" for your business?

The practical context may be less about lighter & faster charging, than charging network.

Am I off base, or will it matter to the person going down I95 to Florida, at 1AM, whether his battery can charge in 15 minutes, or that he will have to triangulate over to the Atlanta dealer's 800V charger to achieve it?

First things, first. Within about a year of expected deliveries, network changes need to start happening quickly, or the battery won't matter. This is good news. It's all becoming real. What you see, is what you get.

Honestly, I think Porsche knows it's aiming Taycan for 3+ car households, who won't go long. I expect a suitable charging network, to fit this strategy. Awesome, if we find a few tracks get 800v (350KW) chargers, but then I'd be dreaming.

What's your "business"? I love it for family hauling and commuting and errands.. so a Cayenne EV or equivalent is my goal there and no exhaust note required. In a sports car? Sure I guess.. but Formula E lacks the soul of any ICE-powered race car so will all the EV-powered street cars. Look at ID R Pike's peak.. record setting run with a totally creepy soundtrack. It might just be a matter of time (next gen of enthusiasts?) before that sound becomes normal and performance-y. Until then there's just too much emotion in a great ICE motor.

Did you even bother to read what I wrote?

WHEN is the critical word here because it isn't likely to be anytime soon. I think that battery technology is viewed by the EV optimist as a bunch of scientists working feverishly is a lab until one of them shouts " eureka I developed a battery that weights 30 lbs and produces 1000kWh ! Right now, in the real world, it would take roughly 100 lbs of battery to equal the energy in 1 lb of gasoline, I wouldn't be holding my breath on battery technology and see Porsche along with all these other so called " leading edge" manufactures taking a huge gamble right now.

Let's not even talk about durability, my I phones barely last a year before the battery life becomes a comedy.

The bottom line is that ICE has endured for 160 years because it was and still is by far the best way to convert fuel with extremely high energy density into motion for automotive use.

I'm going to bet you can't produce any evidence there is an actual problem with automobile batteries in PHEV/Hybrid/pure-EV scenarios - because they aren't designed like your phone to be replaced in a year or so. In fact quite to the contrary there is overwhelming evidence when properly designed these batteries last quite a long time and there are a lot more of them than we realize in hybrids (Prius and Volt) and BEV's - we have years of LiON battery experience in the auto industry at this point in time and so far I haven't heard about any major durability problems - and I think we'd all would've heard about battery issues - cause there are a lot of cars with high capacity batteries in hybrids…

battery durability in your phone is a joke because the battery is _NOT_ thermally managed like it is in a well designed EV and most people are always topping them off and the chargers aren't smart enough to shut down when the battery is at 100% - no thermal management and chargers that push the battery to 100% and keep pushing it to 100% once it gets there is the perfect storm to degrade a LiON battery. But phone batteries are less than $30 and the average lifecycle of a phone is 2-3 years (if not shorter). Replacing the battery will restore full capacity and is cheap.

Battery durability for EV cars on the road is _NOT_ a problem based on 100's of thousands of miles driven with degradation shown/demonstrated to be in the single digits. And if it is a problem you can switch it out just like you can for the battery in your phone.

The Nissan Leaf is the only mass market EV that has had serious LiON battery problem (class action lawsuit anyone?) and that was due to Nissan's design decision to passively managed the battery thermals, this did not work out well for them, and they replaced those batteries free for the owners with a new chemistry and then made thermal adjustments to their design. LiON batteries have a narrow temperature range in which you can charge/discharge them - high capacity LiON batteries that you wish to last for a long time require active thermal management to keep the battery's temperature in acceptable ranges. EV manufactures that have done this have seen no significant durability problems.

To date there is no evidence that battery durability is significantly less than the 100-200k mile durability of the average car - which actual data from a 400,000 mile Tesla Taxi showing 6% battery loss over those 400,000 miles. And if you were to replace the battery you would:

a) get a 90/100 kWh battery bigger than the 70/85 kWh battery it's replacing
b) be back to full capacity for the cost of a battery replacement
c) for about the same cost as a transmission job

having driven EV's for nearly 6 years now I'm unconcerned about battery durability if the battery system is properly designed - there are 100,000 of thousand of battery in PHEV/Hybrids/EV's that show no significant durability problems - and we now have years of data to back that up.

and EV's don't need to match the density of fossil fuels (given that fossil fuels are the most energy dense non-radioactive substances known to man they are a hard act to follow). You just need to get the capacity and weight manageable vs. the range, which since the EV drive train is 3-4 times more efficient that gas drive trains means you only need 1/4 of the energy to go the same distance - we are already at 100 kWh batteries in mass production, the Taycan is likely to be in the 70-90 kWh range and be able to drive 310 miles…so what we need is about:

150 kWh which would equal about 450 miles range (same as a gas car)
and need to drop the weight a big so that the battery doesn't make the car heavier overall than an equivalent gas car

given the incremental 6-8% annual density improvements we've seen in the past 7 years we should be there in about 8 years - or about one full model design cycle of the average auto manufacturer - 8-12 years from now we should have 400-450 mile EV's with weights approaching the equivalent gas car. But we already have 310 mile EV's with weights that are manageable for daily driving applications. The battery density, cost, and design of the Tesla Model 3 battery is already significantly better than what Elon's putting in the S and X - if you carry that forward into future cars we're are already seeing progress on this front. No eureka moment requires, just steady improvements like you see in all industry once scale starts to pick up - however _IF_ there is a eureka moment the progress could be very rapid as the battery being so modular could easily be swapped out while keeping the rest of the car's design unchanged.

So there are really only two ways this is going to go:

1) steady incremental progress will get us there faster than most people realize
2) there will be a break through and it will be easy to incorporate since the design of EV's allow the battery to be very very modular.

if porsche made a 911 sized sports car EV with 250 mile range i'd buy it today. I don't want a family hauler.
We rebuilt our house and wired garage for EV connections.
Its inevitable and the advantages of an EV for canyon driving are enticing. TONS of torque!
For track... not so much.

But if you look at the technology, the battery is the weakest link in the chain right now. It will get there, eventually.

You just cited a great example , the Nissan Leaf is a perfect testament to the fact that without very careful thermal management, current battery technology has the shelf life of a banana. I would also wager that as these "advancements" increase so will the likelihood of efficiency loss in the batteries. The more energy density they contain the more likely that even a small drop in charge capacity will be noticed in loss of range.

What is the current cost of a battery replacement in a Tesla ? More importantly where will that used battery go and how will it be recycled?

There is a possible third way this will go :

3. The ICE will be completely phased out due to absurd over regulation and we will be left with under performing EV's imprisoned by limited range and a laughable charging infrastructure that will take more than our lifetime to get up to acceptable levels ( at least for those of us that live outside of LA and Seattle). This will result in a massive shift in the way people live, work and transport themselves effectively killing the freedom and passion of the automotive experience.

Because we are supposed to be talking about Porsche's let's not even get into the aviation industry and what a disaster that will be to electrify.

I'm glad there is some optimism out there , but it sure isn't shared by me.





I don't want to get too far off topic here because fundamental EV skepticism aside they have little no appeal to me on the basis that they just aren't that interesting or exciting.

An ICE brings with it the mechanical soul, beauty, feel, sound and smell. I bet everyone of us can recall the excitement of the first time we sat in a car with a idling engine lightly vibrating the steering wheel, feeling every bit as alive as our beating hearts.

Every ICE whether it be power equipment, 4 cylinder, inline 6 , flat 6 , V8 ,V12 ,W16 etc has it's own unique personality , look feel and sound that is unmistakable.

The emptiness and soullessness of the EV is something I don't see Porsche overcoming without producing synthetic sounds and sensations which actually will just push me further away.

Nissan provided an example for the industry - and no one with any brains is shipping batteries with out thermal management - the fact is since they have now learned that lesson - battery reliability/durability is in line with expected life span of the typical car - Nissan is refreshing batteries and restoring full functionality in Japan for $2800 US - new Nissan batteries are about $5000 - I don’t know the price of Tesla batteries because so far no one has exceed the 8 year/unlimited mile warranty - I would expect a new 85 kWh battery to cost somewhere around $8000 if you wanted to recover the 6% range lost - but keep in mind you don't really need to replace them - other than outright failure all they do is lose capacity - and quite frankly they have more capacity than you typically need for a daily use - so it's not like they out and out fail, just just can't hold as many kWh - but as long as they hold enough kWh for your daily usage then they are still functional - so it becomes a question of at what point have you lost enough kWh that it's worth paying to recover the lost capacity - but unless the battery outright fails (very few do even the Nissan batteries didn't fail) they are still useful and do not need to be replaced.

I own a used Leaf ($4000) for the kids - it's lost 40% of it's capacity - but still goes 60 miles on a charge - more than enough for the kids to use around the neighborhood on a daily basis - would I like a new battery - sure, do I need a new battery no - it actually exceeds the kids daily needs and we charge it every night at home - perfectly functional and in the morning they kids have another 60 miles of range for them to do what they want…cheap, affordable, and yes the battery is now "crap" by new standards, but it's not broken and still functions. And the kids love it - small easy to drive, and cheap to operate. I'm also told by Nissan it won't get much worse - so it's a 24 kWh battery that is now a 17 kWh battery - but it will probably be that way until it outright fails - at which point I'll pay $2500 for a refurbished battery and drive the car for another 100,000 miles but get back to a full 90 mile range in the process and a better battery chemistry that isn't subject to degrade as much.

I see the Nissan example along with the evolution of the ICE industry - people learned things about gas motors and stopped doing them once they learned what was bad - early engine reliability was a joke and the industry learned and evolved - this will not be perfect, but ICE industry has learned a lot of lessons along the way to today’s version of it’s product.

Batteries are recycled and reused into new and refurbished batteries, and there is quite a market to repurpose them to stationary storage markets for storing kWh’s for later user. Wrecked Teslas/Leaf’s are snapped up at junk auctions by people salvaging the high density batteries for home storage usage - it’s quite the issue, but honestly it’s the cheapest 85 kWh battery you’ll ever find that you can mount on the inside of your garage wall to have offline kWh storages

Over regulation of a device that produces toxic emissions is not absurd (you can’t stay in a closed garage with an ICE engine running - it is toxic to most forms of life) - and we’re are now smart enough to manage. Limited range is only for certain low percentage use cases, the existing 200+ mile range of most EV’s on the market exceed the daily requirements of 98% for daily usage.

There are existing charging networks in more than LA and Seattle - and they grow quite quickly, because you can install them where ever you have electricity and we have electricity in a LOT of places - if we need it charging infrastructure it can happen quite quickly. And today as a simple matter of fact if you are near a major population center you already have extensive charging infrastructure. Also given that a lot of EV owners can charge at home you DO NOT NEED charging infrastructure to drive your car on a daily basis. 5 years ago there were 6 Tesla Supercharger stations world wide, there are now over 10,000 -and will be 20,000 by end of 2019 - if we need it it can be built and it can go quickly - it’s easier to install than a gas station I’ll tell you that.

Aviation will be fossil fuel based for a while - the battery characteristics are toxic to flight - weight - but that’s OK - we don’t to need to eradicate fossil fuels, we just need to focus their use on applications where all their characteristics are necessary. Moving to a personal transportation fleet of EV’s for daily driving will reduce emissions, and free up fossil fuels for the continues application in aviation and other industries where their power is required. But idle ICE V8’s spitting CO2 and other toxic emissions every morning at 15 mph is not the best use of this resource, and an EV is a perfectly acceptable alternative for that application.

my apologies - you are right - so we have concluded it's not JUST the battery - I'll update my comments - please accept my sincere apologies.