Reposted from NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT (and HT/Ted P, BobM, and meab)
By Paul Homewood
h/t Tallbloke
GM recall of Chevy Bolts will cost $1.8bn
The recall and others raise questions about lithium ion batteries, which now are used in nearly all electric vehicles. Ford, BMW and Hyundai all have recalled batteries recently.
President Joe Biden will need electric vehicles to reach a goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions in half 2030 as part of a broader effort to fight climate change.
The GM recall announced Friday adds about 73,000 Bolts from the 2019 through 2022 model years to a previous recall of 69,000 older Bolts.
GM said that in rare cases the batteries have two manufacturing defects that can cause fires.
The Detroit-based automaker said it will replace battery modules in all the vehicles. In older versions, all five modules will be replaced.
The latest recall will cost the company about $1 billion, bringing the total cost of the Bolt battery recalls to $1.8 billion.
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A battery is just a very expensive and complicated and inefficient alternative to a gas/diesel tank. The battery cannot store as much energy as a gas tank. It is not as safe as a gas tank and takes a lot longer to fill. I mean after the third click at the bowser your tank is full and good for hundreds or thousands of miles. Depending on how big/how many tanks you have and how many Jerry cans you want to carry.
A battery seems an expensive and dumb arse replacement for a steel gas tank?
After the laptop that caught fire on board an aircraft a number of years ago, Li battery chemicals’ specifications (Li2 CO3 and LiOH•H2O – the latter now preferred) from manufacturers drastically reduced impurities including Fe2O3 and other transition elements (middle block of metals in the central part of Mendeleev Table of Elements) as well as sulphur, chlorine, sodium, Boron, etc.
I was engaged as a mineral processing and extractive metallurgy consultant by a large Li mining and chemical company and developed a patented process for low-cost ultra-pure Li -chemicals (4-9s, i.e 99.99+ pure – old specs were 95+% pure with limits on specific elemental impurities).
I visited Li- chemical plants in China and wasn’t impressed by the processing, chemical extraction or industrial ‘hygiene’ I saw. I hope they upgraded the process!
I’m not sure that Tesla, and other auto companies analyze to ensure specs are met. I hope so.
yep, and the fuel inlet is a tiny straw
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A standard gas pump is rated 10 gal/min or 600 gal/hr. That is 19800 kW. A standard 100 A/240V household supply is max 24 kW.
So your average gas pump delivers the same amount of energy as about 800 houses at maximum draw. But there is no way the power company could supply everyone at maximum draw.
What that means is we are going to need a whole lot of EV charge points and generating capacity to replace each gas pump.
A standard gas pump is rated 10 gal/min or 600 gal/hr. That is 19800 kW. A standard 100 A/240V household supply is max 24 kW.
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Pls check my math. If correct we don’t have a snowballs chance in hell of replacing fossil fuels with electricity.
Don’t tell Biden! He might get depressed (until he forgets) and go out and buy another ice cream cone.
I wonder if the MSM will ever realize what they have done to the country, and to themselves!
I wonder if the MSM actually cares what they’ve done.
A standard gas pump is rated 10 gal/min or 600 gal/hr
Are you sure? That seems very low. It sounds as if that is the pump in the car, i.e. from the tank to the injectors. I’m sure the pumps into the car are much faster.
My research said the pumps can do more but are rated 10 g/m. Commercial pumps are 4x faster.
Our motor home holds 80 gals and 8 mins is probably a bit long. Hard to tell because the credit card has to be run thru 2x or more due to $$ limits. 500 mile range with 4wd truck in tow. Try that on batteries. the battery would weigh more than the 4wd truck and cost more than the MH..
In any case the gas pump absolutely dwarfs the maximum power you can draw via your 100A main breaker to the house.
Even in 200A rated monster houses.
Would it kill them to go back to building actual CARS, instead of Woke Showboats?
$1.8 billion, eh? In layman terms… oops.
The Bolt is not a great example of an EV by design. The chassis was “re-tooled” to accept a battery and motor. It was not a ground-up design. When I read about it a few of years ago my thoughts were “This will fail!”
Much as I would love to see ICE engines got out of cities, and much as I would like to see the streets returned to people to walk and bike in, I am coming to the conclusion that wholesale conversion to electric probably is not going to work.
You have the obvious aspects, the cost, the difficulty of recycling batteries, even getting enough batteries to start with, the shortage of generating capacity to recharge them.
But a much more serious problem that is only now starting to emerge is the side-effect of having huge numbers of highly charged batteries on the streets and in garages all over the country. Gasoline is intrinsically dangerous and explosive, but we have found procedures to handle it safely. Spontaneous combustion from either parked cars or cars being refuelled is vanishingly rare.
It is turning out that lithium batteries are a whole different story. Either while being charged or when being driven or when simply parked there are disturbingly many instances of combustion. And these are not just fires like any other, they seem to be extremely hot and extremely difficult to put out.
The number of cases in relation to the current tiny installed base is quite alarming. You have to imagine there to be as many electric vehicles as there are now ICE ones, and then extrapolate the number of such serious and unquenchable fires.
This is not going to work the way everyone thinks. Of course its not going to have any effect on global CO2 emissions or on global warming either. But that may be the least of our worried when we really get started on the progam.
Western democracies appear to be gung-ho about using their populations as testers (victims) for each government (and their crony capitalist mates), who wish to foist on their gullible (and often innocent) populous whatever ‘white-heat of technology’ is currently in fashion.
So why have cost-benefit assessments? — they’re unnecessary when there are so many gullibles willing to be testers by uncritically swallowing the government’s & manufacture’s line?
Are the privileged top echelon groups partaking in such dangerous experiments?
I hope this is not a stupid question, but what other uses do we have for lithium apart from EV batteries and other kinds of batteries? Cobalt is used to make a beautiful blue (called cobalt blue) in ceramic glazes. Pretty much every blue patterned plate, cup, or gravy boat in existence owes its pretty colour to cobalt. The cost of cobalt has always been high but the price has gone up considerably recently.
Is lithium useful for anything else? If so, are there any alternatives to lithium that serve as well?
Are we on a path that will take away a lot of useful items and our blue ceramics just to make silly EV cars?
Here are some from this site: https://www.rsc.org/periodic-table/element/3/lithium
Uses
The most important use of lithium is in rechargeable batteries for mobile phones, laptops, digital cameras and electric vehicles. Lithium is also used in some non-rechargeable batteries for things like heart pacemakers, toys and clocks.
Lithium metal is made into alloys with aluminium and magnesium, improving their strength and making them lighter. A magnesium-lithium alloy is used for armour plating. Aluminium-lithium alloys are used in aircraft, bicycle frames and high-speed trains.
Lithium oxide is used in special glasses and glass ceramics. Lithium chloride is one of the most hygroscopic materials known, and is used in air conditioning and industrial drying systems (as is lithium bromide). Lithium stearate is used as an all-purpose and high-temperature lubricant. Lithium carbonate is used in drugs to treat manic depression, although its action on the brain is still not fully understood. Lithium hydride is used as a means of storing hydrogen for use as a fuel.
Thank you! In other words, there are probably a lot better uses for our lithium than wasting it in EV batteries. You can make a lot if tiny batteries for mobiles, laptops, and cameras with the lithium in a single EV battery and a lot less chance of it catching fire.
I stopped letting a car own me a while back and just rent one as my personal servant. Much more satisfying and I get to “test drive” all sorts of wickerbill vehicles this way.
While I’m impressed with the improved MPG I get from these newer vehicles and their “engines”, I’m not impressed by the squidgy, teensy-weensy fuel tank. The trade-off is that at $3.439/gallon for low-level gas (octane 84 or “regular”), it costs about the same to fill the peenchy-weenchy tank as it did 20 years ago when gas at the pump was $0.749/gallon. Means there is no savings at all in this nonsense.
However, I’ll stay away from the electric cars until they ALL stop having fires.
I test drove one of those Bolts. They are really, really quiet. Those would be great if you can drive to work and back on one charge to recharge over night. For me, my job is 5 miles away, 10 mile round trip. With working from home and only needing to go into work once every week or so, my tank of gas is lasting me like 3 months. My 14 year old car is rusting out before wearing out.
You could do 10 miles a day using lead-acid batteries. I think they are good for about 50 to 100 miles of range, depending on how many are used.
Your situation would be perfect for what I considered doing at one time, which was to convert an older pickup truck to an electric vehicle using lead-acid batteries.
I saw a design where the bed of a pickup truck was configured so it could be raised up like a dump truck does, to about a 45 degree angle, which would give access to a battery pack located between the frame rails of the pickup. You lower the bed back down, and noone would ever know you had batteries underneath the pickup truck bed.
Both Ford and Chevrolet are now offering electric motor swaps for internal combustion engine cars.
So swap in an electric motor, and get an array of lead-acid batteries, and you would have a pretty good short-distance commuter vehicle.
If the Bolt burns your house down, you may have to live at the office.
THETFORD; July 2, 2021 — A fire destroyed a 2019 Chevy Bolt, 66 kWh battery, EPA range 238 miles, owned by state Rep. Tim Briglin, D-Thetford, Chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Technology.
He had been driving back and forth from Thetford, VT, to Montpelier, VT, with his EV, about 100 miles via I-89
He had parked his 2019 Chevy Bolt on the driveway, throughout the winter, per GM recall of Chevy Bolts
He had plugged his EV into a 240-volt charger.
The battery was at about 10% charge at start of charging, at 8 PM, and he had charged it to 100% charge at 4 AM; 8 hours of charging. See Note
Li-ions (pos.) would plate out on the cathode (neg) each time when charging from 80 to 100%.
Li-ions would plate out on the anode (pos) each time when charging from 10% to 20%, especially when such charging occurred at battery temperatures of 32F or less.
Fire: Firefighters were called to Briglin’s Tucker Hill Road home around 9 AM Thursday.
Investigators from the Vermont Department of Public Safety Fire and Explosion Investigation Unit determined:
1) The fire started in a compartment in the back of the passenger’s side of the vehicle
2) It was likely due to an “electrical failure”.
https://www.vnews.com/Firefighters-put-out-blaze-in-car-of-Vt-State-Representative-41272606
https://www.engadget.com/gm-chevy-bolt-fire-warning-215322969.html
https://electrek.co/2020/11/13/gm-recall-chevy-bolt-evs-potential-fire-risk/
GM Recall of Chevy Bolts: In 2020, GM issued a worldwide recall of 68,667 Chevy Bolts, all 2017, 2018 and 2019 models, plus, in 2021, a recall for another 70,000 Bolts, all 2020, 2021, and 2022 models.
GM set aside $1.8 BILLION to replace battery modules, or 1.8 BILLION/(68,667 + 70,000) = $12,980/EV.
https://insideevs.com/news/524712/chevrolet-bolt-battery-recall-cost/
https://thehill.com/policy/transportation/568817-gm-expands-bolt-ev-recall-to-include-73000-more-vehicles
Owners were advised not to charge them in a garage, and not to leave them unattended while charging, which may take up to 8 hours; what a nuisance!
Rep. Briglin heeded the GM recall by not charging in his garage.
NOTE:
– Cost of replacing the battery packs of 80,000 Hyundai Konas was estimated at $900 million, about $11,000 per vehicle
https://insideevs.com/news/492167/reports-lg-chem-cost-hyundai-battery-recall/
– EV batteries should be charged from 20 to 80%, to achieve minimal degradation and long life, plus the charging loss is minimal in that range
– Charging EVs from 0 to 20% charge, and from 80 to 100% charge, 1) uses more kWh AC from the wall outlet per kWh DC charged into the battery, and 2) is detrimental to the battery. Also, it requires additional kWh for cooling the battery while charging.
– EV batteries must never be charged, when the battery temperature is less than 32F; if charged anyway, the plating out of Li-ions on the anode would permanently damage the battery.
https://www.energy.gov/eere/articles/how-does-lithium-ion-battery-work
See section Charging Electric Vehicles During Freezing Conditions in URL
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/some-ne-state-governments-play-deceptive-games-with-co2-emissions
Biden’s “..broader effort to fight climate change”
Switching from ICEs to EVs in the US will be as effective in “fighting climate change” as the woke generals were in preventing a Taliban takeover.
At best it is a symbolic gesture and a huge waste of resources.
And now Ford has come out with a DIY EV kit. The hits, they just keep coming.
Does the DIY EV kit come with a container of thermite and a road flare? Or are you expected to wait for it to burn at some random time?
Oh, it will be so much more fun for them to randomly combust, don’t ya know.
It comes with a fire alarm.
Or motorhome holds 80 gals of gas. The same energy as 40 bolt batteries. Allowing for 2x efficiency (doubtful) at 960 lbs per, that is 19,200 lbs of batteries. At $15k per, that is $300 k worth of batteries.
The MH is 22,000 lbs GVW. 16000 pounds empty. 6000 pounds capacity for fuel, water, supplies., spares, etc.
The maximum rated tow for the MH is 5000 lbs. So I can’t carry the battery nor can I tow it. Which is lucky because the MH retails for less than 1/2 the cost of the batteries.
The overall problem is trying to charge batteries at a very high rate, but the customer wants short charge times! Oh dear, what can we do? Well battery efficiency is the key but we have nothing over about 90%. So chatge at 100kW, waste at 10 kW, very difficult to loose this much so battery gets very hot. Life low, and fires likely! All alternatives to ICE vehicles are doomed, but they won’t listen to the Real Engineers!
Will cost who $1.8B?