[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.

[hedora]

I’ve often wondered:

It’s -30C and the heat pump doesn’t really work. Is there any advantage to heating the cold side with, say, a resistive heater?

Conservation of energy says no, but what if it’s also being heated by waste heat from charging the batteries?

(Maybe the answer is “if that’s the case, you are actively cooling the batteries with the heat pump!”, but I’d like to think someone more clever than me could make the scheme work.)

[dzhiurgis]

> It’s like the definition of an edge case.

Now imagine there's battery technology that solves that + removes equipment required for battery preheat...

[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.

[dzhiurgis]

> I'm against people who don't know how to change a tire

TBH that's majority of people. And it's a good thing since tyres got so good.

I get it tho. It's obvious. But it's better when things work better.

[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.