[happosai]

> Unless you want to charge in negative temperatures

LFP charging in cold has pretty much been solved by adding a heater to battery pack.

> (Sodium-ion) prices won't reach LFPs for another 10-15 years (unless you believe hype, not actual analysts).

Given CATL is scaling sodium-ion production to to GWh scale next year, it sounds like they are betting for a much shorter timeframe.

[homebrewer]

Does the heater handle real winters, like they have in Alaska, Mongolia, and parts of Russia north of it? Or just European and American "winters" where -20°C is considered hardcore? Gasoline powered engines handle this well, and you can warm them up with a gasoline torch if they stay outside for too long and refuse to start. The cold does not destroy them.

[throw0101a]

> Does the heater handle real winters, like they have in Alaska, Mongolia, and parts of Russia north of it? Or just European and American "winters" where -20°C is considered hardcore?

It handles "real winters" [1] where large portions of the human population live. [2][3][4]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

[2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/staticarchive/e4ff248622e19fa303d72e25...

[3] https://engaging-data.com/population-latitude-longitude/

[4] https://luminocity3d.org/WorldPopDen/

[jeroenhd]

I don't see why a built-in heater is worse than aiming a torch at a car to get it to start. Seems like a major oversight for gasoline cars.

Also, a tiny fraction of the population will ever need to start their cars in Alaska, Mongolia, and Northern Russia. The small city worth of people living in these insane environments can stick to their wood-fueled diesel cars while the rest of the world just uses normal vehicles.

[infecto]

Alaska, Mongolia and Russia are extreme edge cases that I don’t believe hold much weight in an argument. It’s like those arguments where folks try to attack solar or wind, “solar won’t work on northern Alaskan winter”. Ok great that’s such a small slice of the population that it’s ok.

[lazide]

You can discharge the battery to power the heaters, at significant cost in energy. The temperature becomes a serious problem when charging (will physically destroy the battery through dentrite formation!), and under very high power draws (battery can’t keep up chemically).

It can be solved, but at a cost, and makes the tech much more dangerous - you could end up in a situation where you freeze to death somewhere more easily in the climates it is a problem.

It’s similar reasons why diesel isn’t a great idea in Alaska and the like too, and people tend towards gasoline even in situations where it is more costly and less efficient (like industrial trucks). It can be mitigated with chemical additives (‘heat’), tank and block heaters, etc. but has similar risks.

[IshKebab]

Those are quite niche environments. The success of LFP won't hinge on whether it works below -20C, obviously.

[maxerickson]

Most of the US Midwest sees -20 C for at least a brief period each winter. Having reduced functionality at those temps would be pretty inconvenient for the many car dependent people that live in the region.

[jeroenhd]

-20C is feasible. Charging will take a bit longer because the heater will need to work a bit longer, but as long as the batteries can reach about freezing temperature, you're good.

Charging being a couple minutes slower a few weeks a year is a minor convenience. If you have a house with a garage, like many people in the US Midwest, I doubt it even poses a problem even on the worst days. It's more in the winter-long -35C areas that (purpose-built) combustion engines have obvious benefits.

Cold climates suffer more from cold batteries having reduced range, but with modern battery ranges the problem isn't even that extreme anymore.

[dlisboa]

Inconvenient for those people. About 8 billion other people don’t live in that type of weather.

[maxerickson]

They also mostly can't afford $25,000 cars.

[ben_w]

About half of the world is within 3,300 km of a village in Burma, close to the Chinese border and not too far from Laos and Thailand.

China and India both have EVs much cheaper than we get in the EU. Like, "<€10k new" cheap.

What I do wonder about is how much of Africa can get EVs; I've only been once, to Nairobi over a decade ago, so take it with a pinch of anecdote-flavoured salt when I say that what I saw there was a lot of 20-30 year old vehicles.

[IshKebab]

Most of the people that can afford $25k cars do not live in places that go below -20C.

[cogman10]

It entirely depends on the original range of the car.

Realistically you are looking at trimming 20->30% of the range. If you drive 20 miles a day but have a total range of 200 miles, then it's really not inconvenient. It only becomes inconvenient if you need to travel long distances.

[1970-01-01]

Most of the Midwest also has snow and cannot farm the land for 7 months. What are you actually talking about here? That they cannot adapt or that they will refuse to work?

[floatrock]

Are you a car ad where you're selling the most extreme off-road experience for the person who just wants to go to the grocery store?

Come on man. If you're in an extreme environment, get the tool appropriate for that environment. People in mountain environments tend to have 4WD or AWD cars because it's appropriate. Doesn't mean a non-AWD car is useless.

If you live in the extreme 5%, get something that works there. If you're in the rest of the 95%, other solutions work fine.

[dzhiurgis]

So largest battery manufacturer should drop their project, because “come on man”?

Negative temperatures or low temperatures are everywhere. Sodium will displace LFP pretty much everywhere (20 yrs), not just in extreme cold. I get slight coldgating 6months a year in warmest parts of New Zealand. It’s not even a minor issue, but if manufacturers can remove complexity - they will.

[dzhiurgis]

> LFP charging in cold has pretty much been solved by adding a heater to battery pack.

That's a hack, not a solution.

> Given CATL is scaling sodium-ion production to to GWh scale next year, it sounds like they are betting for a much shorter timeframe.

Wanna bet? LFP is ~1,000 GWh scale right now. GWh scale is 0.1%.

[apelapan]

I pulled into a Supercharger with my LFP-battery EV last winter. The temperature outside was -15C and I had not set the navigator so there was no pre-warming activated.

By the time I had finished my coffe, SoC had gone from 30-ish to 90-ish percent.

LFP tech anno 2023 is perfectly good enough for road tripping in large cars in severe winter conditions. For almost everyone.

[dzhiurgis]

So your battery was preheated. I once did the same with approx 0C battery temperature and whole ordeal took at least 2x longer. Yes there was farmers market in front of charge station so I had a good time with kiddo. That’s not the point.

Let’s not pretend better batteries shouldn’t exist.

[ViewTrick1002]

Or just press the button to manually preheat the battery?

[dzhiurgis]

Heat pump barely works below -30C

[ViewTrick1002]

Which doesn’t matter if your about to charge either way and just want to optimize time spent?

This can’t be more than single digit days per year? This is the case where people in for example Sweden have 230V engine block and passenger compartment heaters for their car.

It’s like the definition of an edge case.

[thecopy]

>That's a hack, not a solution.

Why do you say that? It sounds like a simple solution to me.

[ninkendo]

Because it doesn’t solve the problem, it merely works around it. Solving the problem would mean coming up with a battery chemistry that doesn’t suffer in the cold. Instead the answer is “just don’t have it get cold”.

It’s not to say a hack/workaround isn’t useful, and I would say that it’s perfectly acceptable to simply use a battery heater in the winter. But calling it “solved” confuses solutions and workarounds, and that’s an intellectually dishonest thing to do.

[thecopy]

From the perspective of the user, battery being cold does not matter. How it does not matter i dont care about, for user it is solved.

Now, we can go into the weeds as to what constitutes solved and we might agree or disagree.

[throwaway81523]

It takes hours to heat a cold large pack til it's warm enough to charge. That's a drawback.

[wood_spirit]

All the EV owners in Scandinavia don’t have practical problems charging in winter at will.

[ponector]

Also Scandinavia is not that cold. Their winters are quite warm, actually.

[dzhiurgis]

Old article at this point, but it's trivial to prove false - https://insideevs.com/news/550021/cold-lfp-battery-tesla-mod...

[dzhiurgis]

Leave your car with 5% SOC overnight and then try to find energy in morning to preheat battery. People have painted into corner themselves before. It’s perfectly adequate for my very mild climate and even then I get limited regen about 6 morning months per year.

[nullstyle]

This is the EV equivalent of riding your old motorcycle with the reserve valve open the entire time.

You are driving a giant killing machine around... it isn't too much to ask that you have some foresight to avoid the situation you describe.

[dzhiurgis]

Yet life happens and weather isn’t always exactly predictable. Why you against better batteries?

[nullstyle]

I'm not against better batteries. I'm against people who choose to operate with such a small safety factor for something as serious as operating a giant rolling 2 ton piece of metal and volatile chemistry. Just like I'm against people who don't know how to change a tire or properly drive with etiquette on the interstate; If you can't do it, you kind of deserve some teasing.

In my friend group, if you run out of gas you get made fun of. You forget to flip your kill switch and can't crank your motorcycle, we all laugh and call you a dipshit.

Getting stranded isn't always harmless, and proper adults don't get stranded. Proper adults manage their vehicle safely. That's my point. Yes, exceptions are allowed, but we need to make sure everyone knows they are exceptions. Don't leave 5% on your battery when in the freezing seasons, it's improper.

[Cthulhu_]

Isn't starting a fire under your engine to get it to start a hack too? I mean they could add a heater to the engine. Wait.

[bickfordb]

After market electric engine heaters and remote starters are typical for ICE vehicles in cold climates (e.g. Alaska). Not sure why you consider this to be a hack for EVs if its builtin to the battery pack design.