I think this is an important point. The lithium-ion battery market is _still_ smaller than the lead-acid battery market. This business is still ramping up.
Well, estimates I can google up at the moment put the Pb-acid worldwide market at ~$42bn/year and the Li-ion market at ~$40bn/year. The latter is growing much faster but the former is also growing.
Lead acid batteries are used in pretty much everything ICE vehicle and are used in large quantities as uninterruptible power supplies (data centers use a ton). It's a huge industry.
They're cheap, simple (don't require a complex BMS), predictable/safe, have a long-enough lifetime and are easy to recycle. The biggest drawback really is weight - and thereby shipping cost - but for long term stationary applications that doesn't matter.
Lithium Ion attached to a supercapacitor with a sophisticated BMS is a much more complex setup-- yet even so, it will probably end up being the gold standard in the long run at this point, I would say even in most places lead-acid is still being used. I would not have predicted anything like that even five years ago, but barring some unlikely breakthrough it seems like where we're headed.
Honestly it’s just market inefficiencies at this point. I build battery packs for drones and RC planes and the lead acid stuff is just garbage. They can’t perform to more than 60% of their rated capacity and then start voltage sagging. The energy density is pitiful. A small UPS under your desk with LiFePo4 cells would outperform the lead acid 3-4x for the same space and last longer for the same or less money.
Considering we ship 1.2B Smartphone, 300M Tablet, 150M Laptop, 100sM of IOT Gadget, along with Electric Cars and Buses. I am very much surprised Lead Acid Battery has a higher market revenue. Apart from ICE vehicle ( Which I dont buy every year ) I dont have any Lead Acid Battery around me.
UPS and battery backup for things like Alarms and Phone Systems use Gel Cells or AGM batteries which are in the sealed lead-acid family. You probably have more "lead acid" batteries than you think.
In some ways they are more "forget about it" than lead acid -- lithium battery life is measured in cycles, rather than time. Your lead acid battery will be dead in 5 years, but your lithium batteries can last for 5,000+ cycles, even more if the cells are intelligently discharged.
As for cold temperatures -- less current can be drawn from each cell. In those cases, you can add more cells to still perform adequately in the cold. And this may even fit in the same form factor as the existing lead acid battery, because lithium batteries are physically smaller.
An li ion battery of the same capacity will supply less cranking current, but you can make it slightly larger (still much lighter and smaller than SLA) and make up for that difference. It's only below -30 Celsius (-20 to -40 depending on the chemistry) that lead acid retains better capacity, and they freeze completely at -80.
Li-ion will last far, far longer than any lead acid under any conditions.
Yeah I have an EV that gets 240 miles on a warm summers day but it drops down to like 160 on a day where it’s below freezing climbing a mountain. I’m OK with that. It’s still an absurd amount of range for a technology that would have been unthinkable a decade or two ago. I think once EVs start surpassing ICE cars in range it will be a non issue for most people.
A 33% drop in efficiency sounds reasonable for climbing a mountain vs driving on flat land. Do you know how much your range drops when you're driving in the cold but not climbing a mountain?
Mine drops that much when below freezing on a FLAT surface. On one hand, it's better than prior systems. On the other hand, it's still abysmally worse than conventional systems.
This is just one of the many risks of being an early adopter, I suppose.
I agree that once this major bottleneck is removed, the vehicle will be much more competitive - assuming the fix doesn't increase the cost too much.
Some EVs just heat their battery, which limits the loss of range. The power for heating can be automatically drawn from the charging station in the early morning. Some EVs also start heating the cabin when you schedule it and they are plugged in (eg Ioniq).
EVs can also start and go without any problems in conditions where gas cars give up (-20 celcius).
Lots of motorcyclists replace their lead-acid batteries with lithium-ion batteries that are much lighter. They’re very unreliable but some people will deal with that to save a few pounds.
I imagine you mean ice cars with much more demanding starters, but worldwide motorcycle market is pretty big.
> Deep cycle batteries are designed to be discharged down as much as 80% time after time and have much thicker plates. The major difference between a true deep cycle battery and others is that the plates are SOLID Lead plates - not sponge. This gives less surface area, thus less "instant" power like starting batteries need. Although these can be cycled down to 20% charge, the best lifespan vs cost method is to keep the average cycle at about 50% discharge.
It's not. Even a single complete discharge event is often if not usually enough to kill the performance of a lead-acid battery not intended for deep cycle.
I'd say dozens of times in my adult life I've dealt with and recovered lead acid batteries that were completely discharged due to the headlights left on or similar.
Deep cycling performance depends on the battery chemistry. Most cars in the US use a type of lead-acid battery that can't be deep cycled even a single time without serious risk of damage to the cell. I would assume this is true of any lead-acid battery not intended for deep cycling everywhere else in the world too as it adds significant cost to battery.
Lol you are absolutely wrong. Li-ion cycle life is typically rated at 99% depth of discharge, rarely at 98%. That means .5 to 1% of maximum capacity without damage.
Deep cycle lead acid is damaged permanently at less than 20% capacity. Manufacturer recommendation is to avoid going below 50%. "Deep cycle" means going below 50% won't immediately destroy your battery... Like most car batteries.
Desulfation can help but will never fully recover a lead acid battery. If you discharge a lead acid battery -any kind- to 1%, it is fucked.
I've got dozens of Li-ion batteries in my house and only two lead-acid. One in my truck and one I use as a backup power supply for my radio equipment.