...our Australian Govt has already envisaged that the demand for lithium and correspondingly its price would in the longer run be compromised despite the continued growth of the EV industry, specifically due to ongoing efforts to improve battery chemicals technology towards something cheaper, lighter and with reasonable range.
...in the longer run EV Growth is not synonymous with lithium (demand and pricing) growth, but the markets being efficient discounting mechanism would have imputed these risks long before reality eventuates.
EVs are bloated. It's posing not only a safety problem, but also an efficiency one that sends automakers in a seemingly endless loop of balancing EV range, weight, and battery size. Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares says that needs to stop.
Welcome to Critical Materials, your daily roundup for all things EV and automotive tech. Today, we're discussing Stellantis CEO's call for lighter EV batteries. Plus, Tesla begins scouting locations for a potential Gigafactory in India, and one shipping company stuck in the port of Baltimore says the Key Bridge disaster will cost it up to $10 million. Let's jump in. 30%: Stellantis CEO Says EVs Need Lighter Batteries
More specifically, their battery packs are causing the scales to move in the wrong direction. That's not exactly new information—we've known that EVs are generally heavier than their gas-powered counterparts, but Tavares believes that it's a bigger problem than it's currently made out to be.
Tavares says that it takes about 1,000 pounds of raw materials to construct a battery that achieves a "decent" range of 250 miles. He might not be far off either, as the battery pack in a Tesla Model 3 weighs in at as little as 1,060 pounds. On the other side of the scale, the GMC Hummer EV's humongous pack weighs as much as a Honda Civic at 2,818 pounds.
To do that, automakers must look at increasing the energy density of cells. Here's what Tavares has to say: The industry, based on new chemistries, needs to achieve in the next decade a breakthrough in terms of power density of the cells, so that we reduce by at least 50 percent the weight and the raw material usage of EVs. I think that that's on the way. That is going to be broken over the next decade by a new chemistry, which, by the way, hopefully, will solve the problem of the scarcity of lithium."
He's not wrong, you know. One of the biggest drawbacks to current EVs is the weight. Most of that extra poundage comes from large battery packs needed to achieve the 300-plus range that many consumers want—all in the name of avoiding the possibility of an extended charging session at a public charger.
All of that extra weight requires wasted energy to move. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, a gas-powered vehicle's efficiency is reduced by about 2% for every extra 100 pounds it carries. It's likely that translates into a similar efficiency loss for EVs. So, as Tavares is alluding to, shaving that pack weight by half (or more) would increase range.
Lighter EVs could potentially mean less tire maintenance, less road wear, and safer collisions. It seems like shaving off a few pounds would be a great move, no?
In actuality, it seems like automakers are going to need to perform a complex balancing act. These next-gen batteries must be quick to charge, energy-dense for lighter packs, and still achieve great range. It almost seems like an impossible task when it would be so easy to keep vehicles at the same weight and stuff denser batteries in them for the bragging right of "class-topping range."
