I have a question for the more technical folks out there or maybe even an MB rep watching.
With the rapid evolution in battery technology why not move to solid state batteries sooner than later. Does the car really care what type of battery is powering the motor as long as the voltage is comparable?
I know that MB installed a solid state battery in an EQS and drove it some 700 miles, so with testing why are they looking at 2030 to include them in production? Is it a volume issue?
Thanks for your thoughts

 

Not specific to cars....this car or that that car....

All cars run on "Energy". Historically that engergy has been caloric release of fossile fuels. Now in the world of electrics - the ONLY thing any electrical device (car, bulb, VCR or electric chair) cares about is voltage and amperage. My devices do not care what creates that voltage/amperage - could be coal, nuke, hydro-electric. The devices (car) does not care what gives it the voltage, it only cares that it is getting the voltage.

 

People tend to overlook what a battery really is -- a container holding massive energy. A tank filled with fuel needs only oxygen and a source of ignition to be lethal. A battery needs only a construction defect and/or mismanagement. EV spontaneous combustion illustrates this. IMO, manufacturers are already pushing new battery technology prematurely into commercial use. Solid state batteries will create as many problems as they solve.

 

I don't think it is quite as bad as you make it out to be:

1. Gasoline in liquid form is relatively safe. It doesn't burn or explode. It is converted to a vapor which is explosive. So, a full tank isn't that dangerous, but a half empty one is extremely dangerous if there is an ignition source near the vapor.
2. EV batteries don't have as much energy as gasoline because the efficiency of the motors is so high. A gas engine uses less that 25% of the energy in the gas for propulsion, the rest is wasted. Electric motors are extremely efficient. In fact, most EV battery packs hold about the same energy as your hot water heater.
3. Lithium ion battery packs are built with fusible links and other components to prevent catastrophic failure. This is true at all sizes from a car to your cell phone. A number of the issues with earlier batteries combusting have been resolved, resulting in EVs catching fire 1/30 the rate of gas cars. I personally have seen five gas cars that caught fire while driving.
4. Solid state batteries would have significant advantages over current designs, but a lot more work needs to occur before they could be used in cars (or anything else).

 

In the years, I have seen more than five cars burn (none via spontanious ignition). In general, in every example I am aware of there was a forseeable issue or incident prior to ignition. I have seen first hand four EV's burn down with no real (known) reason. From there, they burn so freaking hot that a forensic investigation to idenitfy a source is all but impossibe.

At our condo on at the beach - no EV's are allowed into the underground parking, period. This is a regulation of the insurance company for the properties (over 300 cars worth of parking between the two buildings). Our local bicycle stores and even golf cart stores do no let an ebike or golf car "sold by another shop" into their buildings with the batteries installed. We have all seen the stories (I assume) about the ebike fires and for us - the fires in (off brand) golf carts.



Maybe some day they will be "more safe", for today, while safer than the Hindenburg - they are clearly a potential risk that our insurance vendors are looking harder at (more the homeowners and business insurance than auto policies - to my knowledge).

Further, our city REALLY wants us to put an EV charger into our new parking lot of our new facility - this, I am dead set against, we simply will not be doing it. That said, the potential of an EV charger did come up wtih the insurance policy for contrstuction and also came up with the insurance vendor for the facility once complete. A charger would alter our outlandish electricity costs as well as our liability costs as a "fueling" a vehicle on private property is a whole new world of potential liability for a business owner.

 

All true -- my only point is packing more and more energy into smaller batteries as everyone is expecting will happen has consequences. Whether gasoline or battery chemicals, the objective is controlled energy release.

 

Nobody addressed the OP's question. I think the hold up is manufacturing them at scale.

Relative to the safety concerns solid state batteries are inherently safer from a fire standpoint that Lithium Ion batteries. Current Lithium Ion battery EV cars have a lower probability of catching fire than an ICE powered car.

 

@MBNUT1 I don't know this is going to take a decade to figure out. So many things were going to fix so many other things. We put in LED lamps that were supposed to last 15 years and they don't last two. Up north they put an LED stop lights and then head massive accidents because they would not melt snow and ice from the stoplights. Seems recent human history every time we fix something we break five others.

 

Quality LED bulbs, like quality incandescent bulbs, last a long time. If you buy cheap ones, they won't last, especially if they get hot while operating. The real solution for LED home and industrial lighting is the development of codes and standards for a low Voltage wiring & fixtures so we don't need an AC to DC step down conversion in every bulb or fixture. That is going to take a long time, but should vastly open up opportunities for creative lighting.

The snow/stoplight issue was an easy fix when the issue was identified; and I am old enough to remember incandescent stoplights being blocked by snow despite the heat of the bulbs.

New technologies always bring along new issues that we need to solve. Even with the new issues, the new technology is so much better than the old technology that it is worth the additional work to resolve the new issues. Remember when Alkaline batteries were introduced? Massive problems with leakage and damaged equipment, but the huge increase in energy capacity and stable output voltage over carbon zinc batteries was worth it.

I like not having to deal with the choke to start my car, but having a fully charged and ready to go car every morning that does not require waiting in line at a gas station every week is even better.

 

When ICE powered cars were thankfully required to run on unleaded gas, they sucked. My dad's brand new 1974 Mustang II went through a flywheel because it didn't want to start every morning. Thanks to digital controls, they are now smoother and more powerful and efficient than prior to removal of unleaded gas. The same technology development trends can apply to EV's. It's just physics.

 

It was not just the effects of unleaded gasoline. Cars were designed with ignition timing that purposely prevented aggressive acceleration in order to minimize unburned hydrocarbons in the exhaust. Cars were so dangerously sluggish, that they were hazardous. You could not reliably speed up to avoid a collision. Thankfully, fuel injection, electronic ignition and sophisticated computer management now allows cars to be driven normally while meeting even more restrictive EPA rules.

 

I never really answered these questions:
1. The car does not care what the power source is so long as it provides the correct voltage and current to the drivetrain. Lithium ion, lead acid, Mr. Fusion, all would work as far as the drive train is concerned.
2. There is a significant difference between a battery that works in a lab and one that is in volume production and in service for a decade. We have many battery technologies that are extremely interesting in the lab, but because of materials used, production methods needed, materials needed, or reliability simply cannot be used in a car. It takes time to convert a lab idea into a battery that can be produced in volume and can survive the environment a car faces - large temperature swings, vibration, impacts, etc. So the fact that they have a battery they can test in a one off configuration in an EQS is very good news. However, they may yet find problems that will take time to resolve, if a resolution is possible. Now they would be testing the battery to see how it holds up under the conditions a car faces in normal use (ranging from Finland to the Saudia Arabia, Chile, and Brazil). It needs to handle all of those conditions and more before it could be considered ready for a car. Assuming it does pass all testing, then there is the ramp up of a factory to produce the battery, updating the assembly lines for the new packs, training of the factory workers and service personnel, etc. If they are looking at 2030 for introduction, they are moving very quickly. I have been involved in the global rollout of new products, trust me, it is not a small effort. The final approval call had over two hundred participants that represented vast numbers of people needed to launch the product. That roll call and go/no go represented millions of dollars of investment, and even more costs as the product was rolled out. And sometimes there was a no go call because something was not ready.
My lab once found a what we thought was a small defect in a new product three weeks before that launch call. We reported the issue, and it went back to the developers. In the end, that issue could not be fixed, and the entire product was scrapped - cost millions, but that defect would have cost far more if the product had been launched and we had to recall it.

 

These are all excellent points made by one who has clearly experienced them. Once all the qualification testing has been completed, quality control in manufacturing cannot be under-emphasized. IMO, this remains the greatest challenge in battery manufacturing, and seems to be the biggest problem with product failures in customer vehicles.

 

See, people in Cali making decisions for the rest of us......jerk.

 

Yes, and the fact that the majority of these materials are not mined, refined, collected, treated, manufatured, or processed in the United States due to OSHA and Enviornmental concerns.....

 

I was living and working in Tokyo at the time that happened. So no California involvement for that one.

The funny thing was when we logged the issue we expected the product team would be able to fix it in a couple of days. We had no idea that it would kill the product. My team and I were shocked that we found such a fundamental defect that the engineering team threw in the towel on the entire product. It had been in testing for months all around the world before we got our hands on it.

 

That Korean battery plant in Georgia was shut down due to ICE arresting, detaining, and deporting most of the key engineers doing the tooling installation and calibration. So it isn't OSHA or environmental concerns that is preventing battery manufacturing in the US.

 

@ehildum Good. People should not be in our country working illegally. We actually had a doctor that worked for us whose wife is in the country illegally. We will not let him in our practice because he made light of violations of Federal law.


Edit : MD is Middle Eastern, got a citizenship in Canada and wanted us to sponsor his H1 Visa. We were considering it until he made light of how he snuck his family into the US via Canada....I do not at all empathise with anyone deported or any business that is fined for hiring illegals. For us, we have to background check, drug test, validate education and on and on and on - for a receptionist. It is not hard. To that, any "Scientist" should or could have had a legal H1 sponsor for legal employment. But, folks watch the news and get delusional theories on what is what.

 

No, they had valid visas for the work they were doing despite the public statements by DHS at the time. In the country legally which is why they were released without charges and asked to go back to finish the factory, which they refused and returned to Korea. They were here for a few months to install, calibrate, and train the US staff that was hired to operate the plant. Now that project is shutdown.

 

There you go again with those darn old facts.

 

He has to be referencing this as the story - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_G...migration_raid

Before I replied (with a typical response) I decided to think on it (as this is not the off - topic forum). My answer remains as "good" - on both accounts. It is a GREAT thing that our US law enformcent are protecting citizens by enforcing immigration laws and deporting anyone in our nation illegally. No matter the profession - frankly, I wish there was 1000x MORE enforcement in the healthcare world with so many "MD/DO" in our country wtih questionalble educations, residencies and qualifications.

As for the people who then refused to train US workers? GOOD!!! They NEED and deserve national pride in Korea! They should say "screw you, we make these batteries at home and you can buy them from us!" . To me, this is part of our and Koreas national defence and intelectual propertiy rights. Just as folks I work wtih are frequently asked to train others (around the world) on this procedure or that....(often the answer is no). We need our secrets and trade secrets to be ours, Korea absolutely has that right as well.

 

Well, working in a field where I see H-1B visa holders every day, I can say that this is probably the only area in our economy where the replacement claim holds true. Those visas are intended for people with unique skills not available in the US, but are instead mostly used to bring junior level software engineers into the US to depress wages among US citizens. They are paid so poorly that you frequently see their wives begging on BART and outside grocery stores.

Those Korean engineers coming for the installation and equipment calibration to set up the factory were an example of the proper use of H-1B visas and similar visas. They had unique knowledge for that job, and would be returning to Korea when the factory was set up and the US staff trained.

I have had similar positions in other countries when I had unique knowledge and skills, and stayed overseas for six years as the local staff was trained up/took over. It sounds like fun to most people, but it is a very stressful and demanding work.

 

I would say that H-1B visa's in general have the effect of depressing wages across the applicable fields.

 

Again - WAY WAY off topic. For us, we have requirements to have X level of services available 24x7. For some services (Neurosurgeons, OB and others) we can not find ANYONE who is born/raised/educated in the United States who wants those jobs. In essence, in our case anyone smart enough to do the job is also smart enough to NOT do the job. We are seeing these effects compounding as years go by as graduates are opting to not going into the residency programs that have an unknown risk of litigation - valid or not. Our facilities end up having to use PRN, Temp and Contract staff (things like, that PT/OT/PA as well). Why on earth would a PT take $80k/yr when they can do PRN (with one of the many travel companies) and make $150k + free room and perdiem?

So, while we prefer an MD that is NOT on an H1B (almost specifically due to language barriers and patient trust issues) - we have seen over and again the skill set is simply not at all on par with that we expect from someone with the claimed (but almost un-validateable) qualifications and "work" history. For us, 100% we get to thank Obummer Care for getting this ball of destruction rolling....add in some lawyers like Morgan and Morgan and we get what we get.

 

it mostly comes down to scaling the manufacturing and ensuring long-term stability. while the voltage might match, solid-state tech is still incredibly expensive to produce at a mass-market level compared to current li-ion.

also, the thermal management systems would need a total redesign for a production car to handle different stress levels over several years of daily use. 2030 seems like a safe bet for when the cost finally makes sense for high-volume assembly lines.