Electric Vehicles

A new study from the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory offers the most comprehensive results yet of the costs of owning and operating different types of vehicles and how costs vary by powertrain.

The study is titled “Comprehensive Total Cost of Ownership Quantification for Vehicles with Different Size Classes and Powertrains.”

Argonne, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratories collaborated on the study. 

Factors considered

The researchers considered the following in order to calculate the total cost of ownership:

• Vehicle purchase cost
• Depreciation
• Financing and fuel costs
• Costs related to insurance (new)
• Maintenance and repair (new)
• Taxes and fees (new)

The report covers the following vehicles:

• Light-duty passenger vehicles: compact and midsize sedans, small and large sport utility vehicles, and pickup trucks
• Medium- and heavy-duty commercial vehicles: semi-tractors; medium-duty vans and pickups; transit buses; box, utility aerial, and dump trucks; garbage trucks. 

It also looked at the following powertrains:

• Internal combustion engine
• Hybrid electric vehicle
• Plug-in hybrid electric vehicle
• Fuel cell electric vehicle
• Battery electric vehicle

Study findings (electric vehicles in bold)

The study found that the maintenance costs of battery electric vehicles are 40% lower than ICE vehicles.

Overall, hybrid electric vehicles currently tend to be the lowest-cost powertrain. However, battery electric vehicles will reach cost parity as battery prices drop, and hydrogen-powered fuel-cell electric vehicles will reach cost parity with conventional vehicles as the price of hydrogen drops.

David Gohlke, an energy and environmental analyst at Argonne and coauthor of the study, said:

There is uncertainty with how quickly these costs will drop, but the technology is trending in the right direction.

Other findings of note include the following, according to the Argonne National Laboratory (and electric vehicle findings are in bold):

Other findings of note include that cars depreciate faster than light trucks, and that older electric vehicles have a greater depreciation rate than newer electric vehicles.

Light-duty vehicle insurance costs are comparable for different powertrains, and vehicle size and vocation both affect incurred costs for medium/heavy-duty commercial vehicle insurance.

Light-duty vehicle taxes and fees are comparable across powertrain types and size classes, though marginally higher registration fees exist for alternative fuel vehicles in many states.

Many electric tractor trailers would be affected by additional battery weight, reducing the available payload capacity, and this cost can be substantial.

Electric vehicle charging for commercial vehicles can be time-consuming; if this charging is paid at an hourly rate, labor can cause this cost to dominate total cost of ownership.

Long-haul battery electric vehicle semi-tractors, which are the most expensive today due to their large batteries, will become the least expensive powertrain in 2035 as battery prices continue to drop.

For local delivery vehicles such as the Class 4 truck, the battery electric vehicle is the lowest cost option in 2025, the baseline year for the study’s modeling. 

Read more: Longest-range electric vehicles (EVs) you can buy in 2021

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It’s happened only in rare instances but some carmakers have been trying to figure out what’s causing their electric vehicles to catch fire — sometimes when the cars are getting their batteries recharged.

The most dramatic example happened eight months ago in San Ramon, where a blaze erupted in the garage of the home owned by Jorgen and Carolyn Vindum, where their two Teslas were parked. Their 2013 Model S 85 was charging overnight, next to their 2017 Model S 75, when alarms jolted the couple out of bed.

“I saw flames coming from the garage, going all the way up to the roof of the house,” Jorgen Vindum recalled. Once he and his wife were safely outside, Vindum called 911 at 5:39 a.m. Then, barefoot and in his pajamas, he recorded the fire on his smartphone.

“You can hear explosions from the cars and you can actually hear the horn go off on the second car,” he said. “The cars kept re-igniting.”

Vindum said the blasts blew the metal rollup doors off of the garage.

As first reported by the Washington Post, a fire inspection report lists problems in the thermal management system and a fault in the electrical system of the car getting charged as possible causes for the Dec. 30 blaze.

In a telephone interview with the Union-Tribune, Vindum said fire crews arrived in eight minutes and it took them about 20 to 30 minutes to douse the flames. Much of the home was gutted, and both Teslas were burned to a crisp. Vindum believes if anyone had been sleeping directly above the garage, they would have died.

The San Ramon fire is one of a number of instances involving electric vehicles, or EVs, equipped with lithium-ion batteries.

Last month, General Motors issued a second recall for nearly 69,000 Chevy Bolts after two cars that had been previously repaired caught fire. The carmaker said the root cause of the fires were “two rare manufacturing defects” in the battery cell of some Bolt EVs made between 2017 and 2019, Dan Flores of GM Corporate News Relations said in an email.

“Out of an abundance of caution,” Flores said, owners should park their Bolts outdoors immediately after they are charged and drivers should not leave their vehicles charging overnight. GM has also called for drivers to limit the charge on the car to 90 percent and, when possible, avoid depleting battery range below 70 miles.

Hyundai, Ford and BMW have also issued recalls in the past year over risks that batteries could ignite when charging or overheating.

Six weeks ago, fire officials in suburban Philadelphia said a Tesla Model S Plaid, a new high-performance EV produced by the Elon Musk-owned carmaker, caught fire while the owner was at the wheel. The driver, through his attorneys, told CNBC he saw smoke coming from the back of the car and got out before the fire started.

Similar stories have been reported — one by a Tesla owner driving a 2015 Model S in November 2020 in Frisco, Texas and another in Los Angeles in 2018, whose wife said he “was barely moving in traffic” in his Model S along Santa Monica Boulevard.

Tesla did not respond to emails from the Union-Tribune asking the carmaker if it has determined what caused the incidents in San Ramon and suburban Philadelphia.

Tesla’s website includes a Vehicle Safety Report in which the carmaker says its EVs “are engineered to be the safest cars in the world.” The report also said between 2012 and 2020, “there has been approximately one Tesla vehicle fire for every 205 million miles traveled. By comparison, data from the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) and U.S. Department of Transportation shows that in the United States there is a vehicle fire for every 19 million miles traveled.”

The NFPA itself was less declarative, saying there’s no clear answer whether EVs have more, less or the same propensity for fire than internal combustion engine vehicles.

“The problem right now is that when we track vehicle fires, there’s no way for fire departments or any reporting agency to specify whether it was a hybrid or electric vehicle versus an internal combustion engine vehicle,” said Michael Gorin, program manager for NFPA’s emerging issues team.

“There’s a traditional internal combustion engine vehicle fire on U.S. roadways just about every three minutes,” Gorin said. “And as of right now, there’s nothing to say that any electric vehicle is any more unsafe than a traditional vehicle.”

But firefighters have a different set of challenges when dealing with EV fires and that is largely due to the lithium-ion batteries that power them. The banks of energy cells in an EV or hybrid vehicle are much larger than those in your cellphone or laptop.

When a short circuit in an EV battery occurs — whether in a crash or overheating while it is getting charged — the cell case can burst. When one cell ignites, it can cascade to other cells, leading to what is called thermal runaway, and cause a fire.

That can result in intense blazes that can take a long time and lots of water to put out.

For example, NBC News reported on an crash outside Houston in April that killed two people in a Tesla Model S that caught fire. It took firefighters seven hours and 28,000 gallons of water — an amount the department normally uses in one month — to douse the blaze because the car kept reigniting. The NBC report said it takes about 300 gallons of water to put out a typical fire involving an internal combustion car.

Tesla’s own Emergency Response Guide says it can take between 3,000 to 8,000 gallons of water to fully extinguish and cool down a battery fire.

Gorin said the amount of water largely depends on whether firefighters can get right to the source of the fire.

“One of the challenges is you have this large battery system in the vehicle that’s encased in steel to protect it and that’s an engineering design that’s been done for obvious reasons to protect the undercarriage of the vehicle,” Gorin said. “With these batteries, (firefighters) can’t get that water to the battery itself, so they’re just cooling the casing that’s around the battery. That’s why you might hear stories where there’s varying degrees of water being put on a fire because … they’re not getting water directly into it.”

Vindum said when crews arrived at the fire at his house in San Ramon the heat was so severe they could not walk up the driveway. “Both my wife and I got sunburned to the point where our noses peeled the next day from the heat,” he said.

The San Diego area has one of the highest rates of EV adoption in the country and in June, the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department’s Training and Education Division sent out an online training drill about the “challenges associated with fires” in hybrid and electric vehicles. All personnel are required to log in and read the document. A Fire-Rescue spokeswoman said station captains also routinely discuss training drills with their crews.

“Although fires not involving the batteries can be fought like any other vehicle fire, rescuers should not make contact with any high voltage components during overhaul,” the two-page memo said. “If the battery does catch fire, is exposed to high heat, or damaged, be prepared to use much more water than you would use for other vehicle fires.”

The drill also mentioned that towing services need to be advised to store the vehicles at least 50 feet from other vehicles or structures in their yards due to the possibility of reignition.

Bill Lamb, a 76-year-old San Diego retiree with experience fighting fires on ships and helicopters in the Navy and implementing mitigation measures at correctional facilities in Maryland, says he is “a thousand percent” in favor of transitioning away from internal combustion engines but worries about EVs catching fire in underground parking garages.

“There’s a high degree of probability that it’s going to continually re-ignite,” Lamb said. “So the concern is if you have an EV fire in an underground garage where there are multiple cars sitting, that fire is very difficult and dangerous to put out” as first responders battle flames, smoke and potentially toxic fumes in enclosed quarters while also trying to keep other cars from igniting.

Lamb said as EV adoption continues, he thinks safety standards will advance. In the meantime, “fortunately, EVs don’t catch on fire that often,” he said. “It’s just that if you have one that catches on fire in the wrong place, then I think you have a potential for disastrous results and in an enclosed garage under a medium-rise or high-rise residential building is not where you want to be.”

Coronado resident Jon Sinton received a recall notice on his 2017 Chevy Bolt. As GM recommends, he and his wife no longer charge the car overnight while they sleep. But that means they have to pay a higher electricity rate of 31 cents per kilowatt-hour instead of the cheaper, overnight rate of 9 cents per kilowatt-hour on their San Diego Gas & Electric Time of Use program.

Sinton said while it’s “really disheartening” that he has a Bolt “whose resale value is now zero and a car whose functionality has been greatly reduced by the fact that you can’t charge it up full and you can’t drive it to empty,” he has some sympathy for the carmaker.

“They’re pioneers in electric vehicles and obviously they don’t have a 100 percent success rate here,” Sinton said. “Like pioneering anything, you’re going to have issues.”

Eight months after the fire in his garage, Vindum said Tesla has not contacted him for information to help them figure out precisely what happened.

“That has been disappointing,” he said. “Who knows what is causing this but if they don’t know, they should certainly examine it and if they do know, I think they should tell us. Either recall them or fix them.”

With a payout from their car insurance, Vindum and his wife and have purchased a new vehicle — a gasoline-powered Audi A4.

Despite it all, Vindum said he would still consider buying another electric vehicle, although he would not charge it in his garage.

“I think (EVs are) the future,” the retired mechanical engineer said. “I believe in renewable energy. I spent seven years designing some of the biggest solar systems in the country back in the ‘80s and ‘90s.”

Sinton feels the same way.

“It’s where we’re headed,” he said. “We’re environmentally concerned. We’re obviously living in a state with tremendous fire problems and we’re equally concerned about climate change. Also, I think that because these events are rare in the population of electric vehicles, you don’t have to be completely frightened by it.”

Electric vehicle charging stations are now included in the city of Ridgeland’s zoning ordinance.

“This was not addressed in the ordinance before,” said Alan Hart, director of community development for Ridgeland. 

With auto manufacturers moving away from vehicles with internal combustion engines and toward battery electric vehicles, the city saw the need for regulations about electric vehicle charging stations, Ridgeland Mayor Gene McGee said.

“From time to time, we see industries change and new uses evolve,” he said. 

Level 1 electric vehicle charging facilities may be installed in garages and carports and are limited to residential use only, according to the ordinance.

Charging stations at residential structures should not have utility connections separate from the principle dwelling.

Level 1 and 2 electric vehicle charging stations would be installed at a commercial structure such as a hotel. “We have some charging stations at hotels in the Township,” Hart said.

Level 3 electric vehicle charging stations would be located at existing service stations, Hart said. A Level 3 station can charge an electric vehicle to 80 percent capacity in about 15 minutes, he said.

Ridgeland currently has no Level 3 charging facilities at service stations, Hart said.

Most drivers would recharge their vehicles at home, Hart said, although travelers would find charging stations useful at hotels or service stations.

Earlier this month, President Biden signed an executive order that calls for the government to try to ensure that half of all vehicles sold in the United States be electric by 2030.

In 2018, Brian Sexton decided to ditch his diesel vehicle for an electric one. His motivation: saving money.

“In our case, it was really driven by financial — the economics of it,” the Lethbridge, Alta., resident explained. “Going from a super-efficient diesel vehicle or gas vehicle to this one, we cut our fuel costs in half.”

Sexton said there are some misconceptions surrounding the expenses associated with electric vehicles. He purchased his used 2015 Nissan Leaf for around $17,500.

“When we thought ‘electric vehicles’ we thought Tesla, and we thought expensive,” he said. “Once we looked into it a little bit more, we discovered there was a used market out there, and the prices were reasonable.”

Along with saving him money on gas, Sexton said his car needs very little maintenance and is quite reliable in the wintertime.

He says driving an electric vehicle in a city the size of Lethbridge is very doable just by charging at home.

“It takes a few hours to charge, but like your cell phone you just plug it in at night and you go about your evening or go to bed.”

Lethbridge has a handful of charging stations, at locations such as the ATB Centre and the Health Unit downtown.

“The Peaks to Prairies project has really made a significant effort to expand the number of charging stations around southern Alberta, not just in Lethbridge,” said Kathleen Sheppard. “So the infrastructure is there.”

Sheppard, executive director of Environment Lethbridge, is pleased to see an increase in interest in electric cars in Canada. She said they go hand-in-hand with lowering emissions.

“For individuals, it can sometimes be a struggle to know where the right thing to do is,” she explained, “and we all drive perhaps a lot more than we should, so this is a way people can reduce their emissions.”

In May of 2019, the federal government introduced the Incentives for Zero-Emission Vehicles Program (iZEV), which provides up to $5,000 to incentivize the purchase of zero-emission vehicles, including plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.

“The growth is sort of occurring naturally just because electric vehicles are now available and they’re proven, but now we have (governments backing that up) with policy,” Sexton said.

“It’s small, but it’s growing.”

“After a few years with (hybrid) vehicles, we have a lot of people now requesting those vehicles,” said general sales manager of Lethbridge Mitsubishi Rick Gharzeddine.

“Hybrid vehicles are stepping up slowing in the right direction.”

Gharzeddine believes while gas cars are still at the forefront of sales, hybrid and electric will only become more popular as time goes by.

Related News

Arrival is probably the most valuable electric vehicle company you’ve never heard of. Based in the UK and listed on the US Nasdaq stockmarket, it is worth $8bn (£5.7bn). But it isn’t making cars, it is focusing on commercial vehicles – vans, buses and taxis.

Instead of setting up huge factories to build as many vehicles as quickly as possible and ship them around the world, Arrival plans to set up small, so-called micro-factories to build products close to where they’ll be sold.

Reporting by Theo Leggett and video editing by Peter Page

Electric vehicle charging stations went online at the end of June in the City of Grand Marais. How much use have these stations received? WTIP’s Rhonda Silence checked in with Shane Steele, the sustainability coordinator for the City of Grand Marais to find out.

Steele tells WTIP that the city currently has two “level 2” stations and one “DC fast” charging station. The level two station can charge two cars at once and would typically charge an electric vehicle (EV) in the range of three to five hours.

One of level two stations is at city hall, along with the DC fast charging station. The other level two charging station is at the Grand Marais Recreation Park, in the parking area where the swimming pool used to be.

There are other EV charging stations in the county—one at Bearskin Lodge on the Gunflint Trail; at Arrowhead Cooperative, Clearview General Store, Lutsen Mountains, and Lutsen Resort in Lutsen, and one at Bluefin Bay Resort in Tofte and at Grand Portage Lodge and Casino. Locations of EV charging stations can be found on PlugShare.com and similar applications.

The city-owned EV charging stations were installed by the city’s power provider, the Southern Minnesota Municipal Power Agency (SMMPA), so there were no initial costs for city taxpayers or utility customers.

Sustainability Coordinator Steele is able to track use of the charging stations and fees collected. He said between the time the charging stations went online on June 26 and the end of July, there were 163 charging sessions that collected $838 in fees.

Steele explained that the fees cover the cost of the electricity used by EV station users.

WTIP’s Rhonda Silence learns more about the city’s electric vehicle charging stations in this interview. 
 

DUBLIN, Aug. 12, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — The “Global Electric Vehicle Outlook 2021” report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com’s offering.

In 2020, 3.2 million units were sold, of which 69.4% were Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) and 30.3% were Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs). Europe emerged as a market leader with 43.3% market share for the first time in the history, overtaking China with 41.0%. Global EV penetration increased from 3.4% to 4.5% in 2020. Europe also recorded the highest Year-over- Year (YoY) growth of 137.1% in the last 6 years, helping to climb to the number one position in 2020, ahead of China. Tesla emerged as the global leader with sales of 499,512 units, followed by the VW Group with 423,871 units. Collectively, Tesla (15.2%) and VW Group (13.3%) held more than 28.5% of the EV market. Totally, 450,000 MWh of capacity has been delivered globally in the last 10 years, with 2020 delivering 139,000 MWh, 38% higher than in 2019.

EV charging installations surpassed 1.1 million points compared to 750,000 in 2019, with China (accounting for 61%) having the highest number of installations. The continuously evolving sensor suite, alternate powertrain, electrical/electronic architecture, power requirements, and new chassis platforms are being integrated on a skateboard architecture, which can be used for multiple powertrains.

Key Topics Covered:

1. Growth Environment

• Key Highlights of the Electric Vehicle Market, 2020
• Impact of COVID-19 on the EV Industry
• The 2020 Global Electric Vehicle Market – Actuals Versus Forecast
• Electric Vehicles Sold in the Last Decade
• Global EV Market, 2020
• EV Growth and Penetration – Top 10 Countries
• EV Growth and Penetration – Top 10 OEMs
• Hybrid Electric Vehicles Sold in the Last Decade
• Global HEV Market, 2020
• Top Predictions, 2021
• Global EV Market, 2021e
• EV Growth and Penetration, Top 10 OEMs
• Global Uptake of xEVs, 2015 to 2030 (Favorable Scenario)
• EV Sales Mix by Segment
• Potential Key OEM Launches
• EV Growth and Penetration – Top 10 Countries

2. Growth Environment, 2021 Global Economic Outlook

• COVID-19 Impact on World GDP Growth
• Global Growth Scenario Analysis – Assumptions
• World GDP Growth Under Differing Scenarios
• COVID-19 Impact on Key Regions

3. Strategic Imperatives

• Why Is It Increasingly Difficult to Grow?
• The Strategic Imperative 8T
• The Impact of the Top-three Strategic Imperatives on Electric Vehicle Industry
• Growth Opportunities Fuel the Growth Pipeline EngineT

4. Segmentation and Scope, Global Electric Vehicle Industry

• Research Scope
• Vehicle Segmentation

5. xEV Market Overview – Europe, 2020

• Europe – Key Highlights (BEV and PHEV)
• Top Predictions for 2021 – Europe
• Europe – Historic EV Sales
• Europe – Market Trends in 2020
• Europe – Market Trends in 2021e
• Market Transition – 2019 Versus 2020
• Europe – Top 10 Models
• Impact of Incentives on EV Growth
• Europe – Potential Launches
• Europe – Key Highlights (FHEV and MHEV)
• Europe – Historic HEV Sales
• Europe – Market Trends in 2020
• 2019 Versus 2020
• Europe – Charging Station Installations
• Europe – Charging Station Installations

6. xEV Market Overview – China, 2020

• China – Key Highlights (BEV and PHEV)
• Top Predictions for 2021 – China
• China – Historic EV Sales
• China – Market Trends in 2020
• China – Market Trends in 2021e
• Market Transition – 2019 Versus 2020
• China – Top 10 Models
• Market Evaluation Dashboard – China Overview
• China – Potential Launches
• China – Key Highlights (FHEV and MHEV)
• China – Historic HEV Sales
• China – Market Trends in 2020
• Market Transition – 2019 Versus 2020
• China – Charging Station Installations
• China – Charging Station Installations

7. xEV Market Overview – Americas, 2020

• Americas – Key Highlights (BEV and PHEV)
• Top Predictions for 2021e – Americas
• Americas – Historic EV Sales
• Americas – Market Trends in 2020
• Americas – Market Trends in 2021e
• Market Transition – 2019 Versus 2020
• Americas – Top 10 Models
• Impact of EV Incentives on EV Growth
• Americas – Potential Launches
• Americas – Key Highlights (FHEV and MHEV)
• Americas – Historic HEV Sales
• Americas – HEV Market Trends in 2020
• Market Transition – 2019 Versus 2020
• Americas – Charging Station Installations
• Americas – EV Charging Station Installations

8. xEV Market Overview – APAC (excluding China), 2020

• APAC – Key Highlights (BEV and PHEV)
• Top Predictions for 2021 – APAC
• APAC – Historic EV Sales
• APAC – Market Trends in 2020
• APAC – Market Trends in 2021e
• Market Transition – 2019 Versus 2020
• APAC – Top 10 Models
• APAC – Potential Launches
• Impact of Incentives on EV Growth
• APAC – Key Highlights (FHEV and MHEV)
• APAC – Historic HEV Sales
• APAC – Market Trends in 2020
• Market Transition – 2019 Versus 2020
• APAC – Charging Station Installations
• APAC – EV Charging Station Installations

9. xEV Market Overview – The Middle East and Africa (MEA), 2020

• MEA – Key Highlights (BEV and PHEV)
• Top Predictions for 2021 – MEA
• MEA – Historic EV Sales
• MEA – Market Trends in 2020
• MEA – Market Trends in 2021e
• Market Transition – 2019 Versus 2020
• MEA – Top 10 Models
• The Middle East and Africa – Charging Station Installations and Impact of Incentives
• MEA – Potential Launches
• MEA – Key Highlights (FHEV and MHEV)
• MEA – Historic HEV Sales
• MEA – Market Trends in 2020
• Market Transition – 2019 Versus 2020

10. DC Charging and Ultra Fast Charging Infrastructure Trends

• Current Trends and Dynamics
• Ultra-fast Charging Trends
• Charging Standards – Overview of DC
• Charging Standards – Combined Charging System (CCS)
• Potential Business Model – Ultra-fast Charging
• Potential Business Models
• Charging Standards – CHAdeMO, GB/T, ChaoJi ROADMAP
• Charging Standards – CharIN Association (CCS)
• Charging Standards – Tesla
• EV Charging Roadmap, DC Charging Strategy of BEV OEMs
• EV Roadmap – DC Charging Strategy of PHEV OEMs

11. EV Battery Second Life

• Current Trends and Dynamics
• EV Battery Second Life Trends
• Secondary Life Applications
• Establishment of a Circular Economy
• Synergies and Partnerships between OEMs and Recycling Companies
• Recycling and Reuse Market Outlook

12. Recycling and Reuse Market Outlook

• Battery Reuse and Recycling – Installed Battery
• Estimated Reuse and Recycling Capacity – Up to 2030

13. EV Battery Recycling Regulations

• Reuse and Recycling of Lithium-based Batteries in EVs
• Shared Stakeholder Responsibility (SSR) – Global Scenario
• Battery Collection Targets by Country

14. Electric Vehicle Battery Outlook

• Popular Lithium Battery Chemistries
• Global EVs – 2020 Split by Chemistries and Top 5 OEMs’ Battery Utilization
• Global EVs – 2020 Split by Chemistries and Suppliers’ Battery Capacity
• Lithium Batteries Continue to Make Promising Gains
• Evolution of Battery (Pack) Energy Density
• Cost and Composition of a Typical Battery, 2020

15. Growth Opportunity Universe, Global Electric Vehicle Market

• Growth Opportunity 1 – Electric Vehicles with Advanced Battery Packs for Improved Efficiency and Lower Cost
• Growth Opportunity 2 – Electrification of Flagship Models with a Preference toward BEV with Ultra-fast Charging Capability
• Growth Opportunity 3 – Evolving Business Models

16. Appendix

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/brxspv

Media Contact:

Research and Markets
Laura Wood, Senior Manager
[email protected]   

For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470
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Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

SOURCE Research and Markets

Related Links

http://www.researchandmarkets.com

DENVER, Aug. 12, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Forge Nano and TexPower are collaborating under a recently-awarded SBIR Phase I grant to further enhance TexPower’s cobalt-free, nickel-based ultrahigh energy cathode powders with Forge Nano’s low-cost materials modification nanotechnology. Results from initial trials show >230 mAh/g, which equates to a 25% increase in energy density and a 10% reduction in battery costs for electric vehicles over existing battery materials.

“The precision and versatility of Forge Nano’s advanced coating technologies are enhancing TexPower’s cobalt-free, ultrahigh energy cathode powders! We look forward to the improved performance and safety benefits atomic layer deposition will bring to our commercial materials. The TexPower-ForgeNano collaboration will help bring TexPower cathodes to the rapidly evolving EV market and beyond.” – Dr. Evan Erickson, CEO TexPower.

“We’re extremely impressed with TexPower’s cathode materials. We have tested over 50 cathode materials from global Fortune 500 companies and startups over the past few years and TexPower’s energy density is second to none. We’re even more excited that our proprietary atomic layer deposition coatings will enable the required cycle life for these US-made materials to enter commercial adoption in the near future. This collaboration is yet another example of our relentless drive to enhance the best battery materials domestically and globally to enable lower cost electric vehicles, consumer products, and energy storage systems.” – Dr. Paul Lichty– CEO Forge Nano.

The SBIR award, entitled ‘Taming Ultrahigh Energy Cathodes with Stabilizing Coatings: Harnessing Atomic Layer Deposition to Deploy High-Nickel, Cobalt-Free Cathodes in Electric Vehicles’, grants the TexPower/ForgeNano team $206,500 to advance current state-of-the-art battery chemistries. In this project, spearheaded by Dr. Ryan Pekarek, TexPower will enhance the stability of their cobalt-free, ultrahigh energy cathode materials using the coatings deposited by atomic layer deposition (ALD). TexPower is casting a wide net, exploring several ALD coating chemistries in order to learn how TexPower’s new class of cathode materials interacts with ALD-deposited coatings. Upon completion of this project, TexPower will identify a product line of ALD-coated cathode materials that they will scale and commercialize. Early results from the collaboration show that ALD improves TexPower’s lifetime by 30% in full cells, while also reducing resistance by at least 5X over the lifetime of the cell.

From energy storage materials to pharmaceutical research, Forge Nano’s ALD platform makes products better from the atoms up. Forge Nano’s suite of ALD technologies can be found in various products from Li-ion batteries, high reliability electronics, vaccines and more.

About Forge Nano:

Based in Denver, CO., Forge Nano is a global leader in surface engineering and precision nano-coating technology, using ALD. Forge Nano’s proprietary technology and manufacturing processes make angstrom-thick coatings fast, affordable, and commercially viable for a wide range of materials, applications and industries. Forge Nano’s suite of ALD and PALD products and services covers the full spectrum from lab-scale tools to commercial-scale manufacturing systems. 

For more information visit www.ForgeNano.com

About TexPower:

TexPower was founded by Drs. Evan Erickson, Wangda Li, and Prof. Arumugam Manthiram from the world-renowned battery research labs at the University of Texas at Austin where they initially developed the cobalt-free, ultrahigh energy cathode materials for lithium-ion batteries. This new class of cathode leapfrogs current low-cobalt alternatives, making more affordable, higher energy, longer life batteries supplied by a secure supply chain. After raising seed money through DOE, DOD, and private funding to build their Houston-based R&D facility, they have recently secured Series A funding for their pilot production capable of more than 100 tons per annum.

For more information visit www.TexPower.us

CONTACT
Michael Talarico
Marketing Director
[email protected] 
(720) 259-8579

SOURCE Forge Nano

Related Links

http://www.ForgeNano.com

Mark Kenny of Huntington is on his third all-electric car and he’s not looking back.

Kenny, a biology professor, said it’s not just the fact that his 2019 Nissan Leaf never needs gas and rarely needs maintenance, or that it aligns with his principles of a low-carbon footprint (he also has solar panels).

“I was never a car guy, but I’ve become one,” he said. “I really love it. You step on the accelerator and it just goes.” His only reservation: He generally doesn’t use the car for long trips, because his model has a 150-mile range capacity (newer ones can go beyond 300 miles on a single charge).

So Kenny was glad to hear that LIPA and PSEG are embarking on a plan to rev up the region’s infrastructure for electric vehicles. “That would be super,” he said, noting he currently uses the family’s second car, a gasoline powered one, for longer trips. “If there were a better network of chargers I would take the car up to Maine.”

More charging stations

As automakers race to bring more electric vehicles to market, LIPA and grid manager PSEG Long Island are racing to keep up by providing more chargers, more flexible recharging rates and ultimately an advanced grid with the capability to handle hundreds of thousands of plug-in cars in the coming decade.

PSEG recently issued a request to the state to spend $88 million to drastically increase the number of publicly available fast chargers for the cars, which draw kilowatts of energy rather than gasoline to power up, said Mike Voltz, director of energy efficiency and renewable energy programs for PSEG.

“We want to focus on charging and give discounts for charging at night,” he said.

PSEG said about $66 million of the $88 million EV Make-Ready program would cover the cost of deploying and incentivizing the new charging stations; the $22 million balance includes costs to manage the program, computer system investments, consulting services, “lease management” and money to contribute to a state prize program for EVs. LIPA trustees and the state must approve the plan, and they could take it up later this year.

The local effort got a big federal boost earlier this month, when the Biden administration announced a goal to make electric vehicles half of the national fleet by 2030. Carmakers say they’re on board, planning to increase EVs from just 2% of sales this year to upward of 50% in just over nine years.

“We’re really for the first time in 100 years changing the type of transportation that’s going to be out there,” said Mark Schienberg, president of the Greater New York Automobile Dealers Association, which operates the New York International Auto Show. The massive event, which had been scheduled for Aug. 20-29, was canceled earlier this month because of COVID, but Schienberg said the plan for an entire floor of EVs was only a signal of the greater momentum driving the industry. He remembers the days when his father taught him about changing oil and spark plugs — all of which is going away, he said. “It’s quite an amazing time.”

Environmental impact

From a public policy perspective, the driving factor for the aggressive push is more urgent: converting to electric cars can have a bigger impact on greenhouse gas emissions and pollution than tackling soot-belching power plants.

On Long Island and across the state, cars, buses, trucks and other combustion engines contribute about 40% of the emissions. That compares with just 15% from fossil-fueled power plants, which on Long Island are being used considerably less in recent years and are actually burning cleaner than they did a decade ago, said Tom Falcone, chief executive of LIPA, who himself became a recent convert to EVs. (Heating buildings account for 20% to 25% of emissions, according to LIPA.)

For years, much of the focus on lowering emissions has been on the power-generation sector. LIPA and New York State are in the midst of a multibillion dollar transition that will essentially end greenhouse gas emissions from power plants by 2040. Older plants that burn natural gas and fuel oil will be replaced with hundreds of wind turbines the size of the Chrysler Building in the waters around Long Island’s South Shore, along with lots more solar power.

Long Island already has an edge on the electric vehicle front, with around 23,000 EVs on the road in Nassau and Suffolk as of the end of July, a higher percentage than the rest of the state, which has a total of around 79,000, according to a state database. More than 29,000 of those cars are Teslas. Still, EVs make up only around 2% of Long Island’s nearly 2 million cars, said PSEG’s Voltz. Over the next four years, the utility wants to increase that Long Island number nearly eightfold, to 180,000, he said. By 2035, according to one LIPA study, the figure could be as high as 1.3 million, though some experts project a more modest 700,000 by that time.

Charging speeds

The $88 million, four-year plan proposed by PSEG, if approved by the state, would increase the number of publicly available fast chargers to include more than 499 superfast charging stations, and 4,247 Level 2 chargers by 2025. Level 2 chargers can recharge a battery in three to four hours, while superfast units can get a car reloaded in under an hour. That’s a sharp increase from the 29 superfast chargers and 280 public Level 2 chargers that are now publicly available, said PSEG, which has also provided rebates for some 2,500 home and small-business Level 2 chargers. Standard customer-based home charging takes around 10 hours to fully charge a car.

To encourage faster charging at home while collecting data on EV charging trends, PSEG is offering homeowners a Smart Charger rebate of $500 off the cost of a Level 2 charger. Level 2 chargers with 240-volt service need to be specially installed. One unit offered in the PSEG program costs about $700 before the rebate, and about $800-$1,000 to install.

The utility also offers a 5-cents-a-kilowatt-hour rate discount to customers who sign up for a special program using qualified chargers, which collect data on customer usage to determine charging trends for future expansion. It’s only available for specially approved chargers, and doesn’t work with Tesla chargers.

Retrofitting the grid

Making sure there are enough public chargers available in the region to reduce range anxiety is one thing. Making sure the underlying grid is prepared for a potentially large increase in home and public charging is another. And that entails making sure the equipment that brings power to households is ready to handle the load.

“We know that whenever you’re making an energy switch like this there’s going to be some investment that’s required,” said LIPA’s Falcone, who described the grid upgrade as largely a block-by-block retrofit of distribution infrastructure. He thinks the transition might happen more quickly, just based on the benefits of owning an EV.

LIPA says the grid can handle the relatively low penetration of EVs for at least the next half decade, but Falcone said grid upgrades will be needed over the decade and beyond, when perhaps the majority of homes on a street have EVs and many are charging at once. It can be the equivalent of adding several homes on that street, factors that LIPA and PSEG monitor when adding capacity. The utility’s job is to right-size the transformers — the bucket-like devices that hang from local utility poles and regulate the amount of power that pulses through a neighborhood — and perform other upgrades to fit usage, Falcone said.

No oil changes and ‘fun to drive’

“I don’t have to go to the gas station, I don’t have to maintain the car,” as it doesn’t need oil changes and brake wear is considerably less, he said. “It costs less, it’s good for the environment … and it’s fun to drive. It handles like a BMW, it’s as fast as a Porsche, and it has seven seats and I put my little kids in it. That’s a pretty good package.” He owns a Tesla Y model, the federal tax credit for which recently ended.

Falcone said it costs about $11 in electricity to charge an EV versus the $40 he spent to fill his Subaru with gas. Electric vehicle chargers increase power usage to an average household by 25% or 30%, so expect your bill to go up proportionately, he said.

In terms of the grid, that’s not a problem when one or two homes on a block charge their vehicles at the same time; but it can be if 15 of 20 homes served by a transformer do so during summertime peak. (Overloaded circuits can cause transformers to overheat and fail.) He predicted that over time, particularly if EV adoption is faster than predicted, it could mean changing out most of the existing transformer network.

In a 2018 study, LIPA predicted that the annual cost to upgrade transformers to make sure the local distribution grid could handle all that charging could reach up to $30 million a year. And the study found that the need for those upgrades would begin by about 2028.

By then, the study found, electric vehicles would begin to have a “significant” impact on system consumption. In addition to the need to upgrade transformers, the study recommended additional “smart-grid integration” to help balance out that higher level consumption. While each $35 million in LIPA spending adds around 1% to customer bills, the study found the increased costs are still a benefit for customers because the utility will be using more of the available power it contracts for, helping offset the upgrade costs by maximizing its resources, while giving EV owners a lower transportation bill compared with gasoline cars. A study by MIT found that EVs are both cheaper to operate and maintain.

LIPA’s study projected the Long Island territory had a medium but “achievable” growth scenario of close to 700,000 electric vehicles on the road by 2035.

“Vehicle electrification increases utility revenue [and] could save ratepayers money,” the report said, while reducing operating expenses for EV drivers and reducing emissions, which had tangible health benefits. The net economic benefits of upgrading transformers to make sure there’s enough capacity on local streets and business districts could “exceed proposed costs,” the study found.

Time frame and incentives

The need to make system upgrades will occur once adoption hits around 6% on Long Island, the study said. Less than 2% of Long Islanders have electric vehicles.

Rate-discount programs that seek to better manage when electric vehicle owners charge their cars will be key to managing system impacts between now and 2025, said PSEG’s Voltz. The programs would offer incentives to charge at specific times during the overnight period to reduce overloads.

That’s not a problem for environmentally conscious ratepayers like Kenny, who noted the benefits of owning his EV increase exponentially given his home solar panels, which send much of their excess kilowatt-hours to recharging his Leaf and generally reduce his fueling costs to zero.

“All our transportation [power] is coming from the sun,” he said. “It’s a good feeling.”

Mark Harrington, a Newsday reporter since 1999, covers energy, wineries, Indian affairs and fisheries.