Ford to build 3 battery factories, page-3

Right now batterie's are the key. PM motors are the best solution, there are many other solutions that are almost as good. BMW I8 ( I think ) is a non PM design. 3 phase syncrouns could be very competitive if all the advances in PM motors and controllers were applied to them. Some of the biggest advances for PM motors comes from improvements to the stator and stator drive circuits which generates the rotating magnetic field. ALL non PM motors have stators for rotating fields. So all these improvements transfer very easily. All that is needed is incentive. Higher REE prices I do not think would be an incentive. Who cares if motor cost go up $100~ $200 in a $50,000 car. Undependable supply would be a major incentive.

So far LI is still the best solution for batteries. It is light has high cycle efficiency at low charge and discharge rates. Light compared to other technology Now it can even survive high charge and discharge rates with out heavy loss of performance. It has one very big problem. At very low charge and discharge rates it can achieve round trip cycle efficiencies of nearly 90%. At high charge and discharge rates that efficiency can drop below 70% and for very high charge rates sometimes below 50%. JMO Right now the only promising new technology is solid state batteries. Once there is one you will hear allot less about batteries. Right now PM motors can be 97~98% efficient at steady state cruising. Even during hard acceleration they seldom drop below 85%. Light braking about 85 % Hard braking 70 %. This could be improved but not without bringing down the generating power numbers. Look at all the EV adds nothing about motors just batteries. the manufactures know what is important to people.